“I would not go to White Gables,” Mr. Cupples resumed. “You know my views, I think, upon the economic constitution of society, and the proper relationship of the capitalist to the employee, and you know, no doubt, what use that person made of his vast industrial power upon several very notorious occasions. I refer especially to the trouble in the Pennsylvania coal-fields, three years ago. I regarded him, apart from an all personal dislike, in the light of a criminal and a disgrace to society. I came to this hotel, and I saw my niece here. She told me what I have more briefly told you. She said that the worry and the humiliation of it, and the strain of trying to keep up appearances before the world, were telling upon her, and she asked for my advice. I said I thought she should face him and demand an explanation of his way of treating her. But she would not do that. She had always taken the line of affecting not to notice the change in his demeanour, and nothing, I knew, would persuade her to admit to him that she was injured, once pride had led her into that course. Life is quite full, my dear Trent,” said Mr. Cupples with a sigh, “of these obstinate silences and cultivated misunderstandings.” “Did she love him?” Trent enquired abruptly. Mr. Cupples did not reply at once. “Had she any love left for him?” Trent amended. Mr. Cupples played with his teaspoon. “I am bound to say,” he answered slowly, “that I think not. But you must not misunderstand the woman, Trent. No power on earth would have persuaded her to admit that to any one—even to herself, perhaps—so long as she considered herself bound to him. And I gather that, apart from this mysterious sulking of late, he had always been considerate and generous.” “You were saying that she refused to have it out with him.” “She did,” replied Mr. Cupples. “And I knew by experience that it was quite useless to attempt to move a Domecq where the sense of dignity was involved. So I thought it over carefully, and next day I watched my opportunity and met Manderson as he passed by this hotel. I asked him to favour me with a few minutes’ conversation, and he stepped inside the gate down there. We had held no communication of any kind since my niece’s marriage, but he remembered me, of course. I put the matter to him at once and quite definitely. I told him what Mabel had confided to me. I said that I would neither approve nor condemn her action in bringing me into the business, but that she was suffering, and I considered it my right to ask how he could justify himself in placing her in such a position.” “And how did he take that?” said Trent, smiling secretly at the landscape. The picture of this mildest of men calling the formidable Manderson to account pleased him.