'He doesn't count any longer.' Mrs. Bonfill pronounced the sentence ruthlessly. 'No, not politically. And in every other way he's no more than a tool of Fricker's. Fricker must have him in the hollow of his hand. He knows how he stands; that's the meaning of his bitterness. But he can make poor Mortimer feel, all the same. Still, as you say, there's an end of him!' 'And of her too! She was an extraordinary young woman, George.' 'Uncommonly attractive--no ballast,' summed up Glentorly. 'You never see her now, I suppose?' 'Nobody does,' said Mrs. Bonfill, using 'nobody' in its accepted sense. She sighed gently. 'You can't help people who won't be helped.' 'So Viola Blixworth implies,' he reminded her with a laugh. 'Oh, Viola's hopelessly flippant; but she'll manage it in the end, I expect.' She sighed again and went on, 'I don't know that, after all, one does much good by meddling with other people's affairs.' 'Come, come, this is only a moment of despondency, Sarah.' 'I suppose so,' she agreed, with returning hope. To consider that her present mood represented a right and ultimate conclusion would have been to pronounce a ban on all her activities. 'I've half a mind to propose myself for a visit to Barslett.' 'You couldn't do better,' Lord Glentorly cordially agreed. 'Everything will soon be over here, you see.' She looked at him a little suspiciously. Did he suggest that she should retreat for a while and let the talk of her failures blow over? He was an old friend, and it was conceivable that he should seek to convey such a hint delicately. 'I had one letter from Trix,' she continued. 'A confused rigmarole--explanations, and defence, and apologies, and all the rest of it.' 'What did you write to her?' 'I didn't write at all. I put it in the fire.' Glentorly glanced at his friend as she made this decisive reply. Her handsome, rather massive features were set in a calm repose; no scruples or doubts as to the rectitude of her action assailed her. Trix had chosen to jump over the pale; outside the pale she must abide. But that night, when a lady at dinner argued that she ought to have a vote, he exclaimed with an unmistakable shudder, 'By Jove, you'd be wanting to be judges next!' What turned his thoughts to that direful possibility? But of course he did not let Mrs. Bonfill perceive any dissent from her judgment or her sentence. He contented himself with saying, 'Well, she's made a pretty mess of it!' 'There's nothing left for her--absolutely nothing,' Mrs. Bonfill concluded. Her tone would have excused, if not justified, Trix's making an end of herself in the river. Lady Glentorly was equally emphatic on another aspect of the case. 'It's a lesson to all of us,' she told her husband. 'I don't acquit myself, much less can I acquit Sarah Bonfill. This taking up of people merely because they're good-looking and agreeable has gone far enough. You men are mainly responsible for it.' 'My dear!' murmured Glentorly weakly.