"A good many tight places, from the time you've been at it, I should say. While your mother was pinching and denying herself, and your sisters were deprived of all society and every pleasure natural to their age and station. While your cousin was out in the world, working for daily bread----" "Whose fault but her own? My mother's house always was and is open to her. My mother has begged and implored her to stay; it is the greatest grief to her to lose her." "Your cousin is not the kind of woman to add to the burdens of those dear to her. Do you know that she supplies your sisters with typewriting work?" "My sisters? Typewriting? What on earth for?" "To help keep the house over your mother's head. People don't go on selling stock without lessening their income." "Selling stock?" "How do you suppose widows raise money without selling stock, or land, or whatever they happen to possess?" "But I thought--I thought--her money was safely tied up." "There are such things as releases--when the beneficiaries are of age----" "Then that is what Agatha meant. She was bound not to let it out; she only hinted. I wish I had blown my brains out this morning." "You'd never have felt the loss." "I'm not the first man driven to the dogs by a woman's falseness, and I shan't be the last. They're all alike--cold, and hard, and unforgiving, making no allowance for a man's temptations, which they can't understand. Heaven defend us all from good women, de Konski." "The good woman to whom I suppose you allude, your cousin, has been a great blessing to me." "Oh, has she? And how?" "In many ways. Partly by the stimulus of a brave and beautiful nature, purified by suffering, and unselfish to the core. In a more material sense, as a most capable and useful and discreet secretary." "Secretary? Private secretary? To you--to a man?" "Certainly. The calling is recognized and honourable. There are many more arduous and less pleasant ways of earning a competence--for women. Still, I shall be glad for her sake when the day comes, as it surely will, for me to lose my valuable secretary by a suitable marriage, though I can't help being a little grateful to you for making it necessary for her to work." "I? When I've been ready to marry her, and would have asked her any time this two years, but for her everlasting snubbing and coldness?" "Oh, I thought you said she was false." "When I implored her not to leave my mother----" "Whose bread you were taking to help disreputable females out of tight places." "By Heaven, de Konski, you hit hard! Of course I knew that my cousin was in some way working for pay, but somehow I didn't realize---- Oh, Lord, a private secretary! Mixed up in political intrigues! A paid secretary!" "Who is to defend good women from dissipated boys? Yes, that sweet and noble lady's fate is hard indeed. And the boy's mother! If good women are hard, some of them have a pretty hard time of it."