“Pardon me; you don’t altogether follow my argument. I yield to no one in my admiration of the conclusions at which women arrive. They are often--one might say very often--astonishingly correct, but they are purely the result of a leap in the dark, and not of any process of reasoning. And since this is so, no wise man can feel safe in acting upon them, while where the lady--as is not infrequently the case with her charming sex--is biassed by her personal feelings, they are liable to be dangerously deceptive.” Mabel closed the book with a bang. “I wonder,” she said angrily, “at your talking in this way, as if I wasn’t horribly humiliated enough already. It was simply a chance that I didn’t identify the right men, and I _know_ just the same that it was Bahram Khan who employed them.” Mr Burgrave raised his eyebrows slightly. “Indeed, my dear Miss North, you must pardon my maladroitness. I assure you that I had no intention whatever of alluding to the--let us say the disagreeable incident of yesterday. I was dealing purely with generalities.” “But you yourself know perfectly well--though you pretend not to think so--that it was Bahram Khan,” persisted Mabel. The Commissioner raised himself on his elbow and looked straight at her, and Mabel quailed. “And is it possible,” he demanded, “that you believe I am deliberately sheltering from justice, contrary to the dictates of my own conscience, a wretch who has dared to raise his hand against an Englishwoman--against a lady for whom I have the highest regard? No, Miss North, you must be good enough to withdraw those words. Even your brother and his wife are sufficiently just to believe me an honourable man, although we differ on so many points.” The stern blue eyes under the lowering brows seemed to pierce Mabel through and through. She half rose from her chair, then sat down again, and repressed with difficulty a threatened burst of tears. “I--I didn’t mean that,” she faltered. “All I meant was that I didn’t see how you could think anything else when we are all so sure of it.” “Allow me to say that I credit you with the sincerity you refuse to recognise in me. Your brother has a strong prejudice--there is no other word for it--against Bahram Khan, which he has transmitted to you, and you look at the facts in the light of that prejudice. I was perfectly willing to be convinced of the young man’s guilt by the merest shred of anything that could be called evidence, but none was produced. The case against him broke down completely. Would you have me withdraw my countenance from a man whom I conscientiously believe to be innocent, and ruin all his prospects, simply on the score of an unf-- unsupported opinion of yours? No, Miss North, I won’t believe it of you. You must perceive that I am right.” “But you said our intuitions were wonderfully correct, and that your judgment was incomplete by itself,” urged Mabel.