"You are wrong," I replied--then suddenly remembered that I had given a solemn promise to Lady Helen. No doubt Hubbard marked the change in my expression. His sneer grew more pronounced. But I had a task to get through somehow. "Lady Helen, with all due deference to you, Hubbard," I said slowly, "is not a woman I could ever care about. I feel certain she is even less interested in me than I am in her. But even were the reverse the case with her, as you suspect, what odds? I have the utmost contempt for her; and I think that she deserves--but there, you have the misfortune to be her husband, so I'll say no more." His face was scarlet. "What reason have you to despise her?" he demanded. "Is it not enough that she has most unwarrantably caused you a great deal of unhappiness?" I retorted. "Besides, you have told me sufficient of her character to convince me that she is one of those flighty butterfly women whom all honest men regard with only one step short of loathing." "And you are an honest man?" he sneered. "I try to be," I answered modestly. He was furious. In order to hide it, he sprang out of bed, flung on his dressing-gown and rushed to the bath. I thought of Lady Helen's acute prevision of the event, and almost contrived to smile. Hubbard had come within an ace of defending his defamed wife with naked fists on my impertinent face, according to the simple rules of the Supreme Court of Appeals of primeval unlettered aborigines. We tabooed the subject by tacit consent for the remainder of the forenoon, but Hubbard announced his intention of accompanying me to the inquest, and as soon as we were seated in the train he opened fire again. "I am afraid I have given you an exaggerated idea of Lady Helen's shortcomings," he commenced, looking anywhere but at me. "I am afraid I have created a false impression in your mind. I don't want you to consider her entirely blameworthy, Pinsent; if she were that I should long ago have ceased to care a pin for her." I shrugged my shoulders and looked out of the window. He went on presently. "I'm afraid, Pinsent, I have done a foolish thing, perhaps even a caddish thing, in telling you anything about our private quarrel. It did not occur to me at the time that I might prejudice you against her. To be honest, there were faults on both sides, and if you knew all you might consider me the more deserving of censure, her the more deserving of pity."