Lawyer Mossop was still silent. But the mobile lips were working curiously. "Not for me to advise," he said at last, very slowly, with much hesitation, "but if I might----" Josiah cut him short with a stern lift of the hand. "I know what you're going to say, but if she was your gel what'd you do, eh?" Lawyer Mossop rubbed his cheek perplexedly. "At bottom I might be rather proud of her." "You--might--be--rather--proud--of--her!" It was the tone of Alderman Munt J.P. to a particularly unsatisfactory witness at a morning session at the City Hall. An obvious lie, yet a white one because it was used for a moral purpose. Mossop had no ax to grind; he merely wanted to soften things a bit for a client and neighbor. "You can't tell _me_, Mossop, you really think _that_." The solicitor gazed steadily past the purple face of his client through the open window to the riot of color beyond. "Why not?" he said. "Think of the pluck required to do a thing like that." Josiah shook his head angrily. "It's the devil that's in her." He spoke with absolute conviction. "And it's always been there. When she was that high"--he made an indication with his hand--"I've fair lammoxed her, but I could never turn her an inch. If she wanted to do a thing she'd do it--and if she didn't nothing would make her." "A lady of strong character." "Cussedness, my friend, cussedness. The devil. And it's brought her to this." The lawyer, however, shook his head gently. "Well, Mr. Munt, as I say, it is not for me to advise, but if she was a daughter of mine----" "You'd be proud of her." The sneer was rather ugly. "In a way--yes--perhaps ... I don't say positively ... because one quite sees.... On the other hand, I might ... I don't say I should ... I _might_ be just as angry as you are." The thundercloud began to lift a little. "Come now, that's sense. Of course, Mossop, you'd be as mad as anybody--it's human nature. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry pointin' the finger of scorn"--_Sally out of Quod yet_ was still searing him like a flame--"you'd be so mad, Mossop, that you'd want to forget that she belonged to you." "It might be so." Mr. Mossop's far-looking eyes were still fixed on the pergola. "At the same time, before I took any definite step, I think I should give myself a clear fortnight in which to think it over." Josiah laughed harshly. "No, Mossop--not if you were as mad as I am." It was so true that the solicitor was not able to reply. "When I think on her"--the great veins began to swell in the head and neck of the lord of Strathfieldsaye--"I feel as if I'd like to kill her. Did you see that picture in the _Morning Mirror_? And that paragraph in the _Mail_? It's horrible, Mossop, horrible. And first and last her education's cost me every penny of three thousand pound." Mr. Mossop nodded appreciatively; then, sympathetically, he lifted the lid of a silver box on a charming walnut-wood stand and asked his visitor to have a cigar.