“I have a reason for telling you all this,” began Mr. Cupples as they paced slowly up and down. “Trust you for that,” rejoined Trent, carefully filling his pipe again. He lit it, smoked a little, and then said, “I’ll try and guess what your reason is, if you like.” Mr. Cupples’s face of solemnity relaxed into a slight smile. He said nothing. “You thought it possible,” said Trent meditatively—“may I say you thought it practically certain?—that I should find out for myself that there had been something deeper than a mere conjugal tiff between the Mandersons. You thought that my unwholesome imagination would begin at once to play with the idea of Mrs. Manderson having something to do with the crime. Rather than that I should lose myself in barren speculations about this, you decided to tell me exactly how matters stood, and incidentally to impress upon me, who know how excellent your judgement is, your opinion of your niece. Is that about right?” “It is perfectly right. Listen to me, my dear fellow,” said Mr. Cupples earnestly, laying his hand on the other’s arm. “I am going to be very frank. I am extremely glad that Manderson is dead. I believe him to have done nothing but harm in the world as an economic factor. I know that he was making a desert of the life of one who was like my own child to me. But I am under an intolerable dread of Mabel being involved in suspicion with regard to the murder. It is horrible to me to think of her delicacy and goodness being in contact, if only for a time, with the brutalities of the law. She is not fitted for it. It would mark her deeply. Many young women of twenty-six in these days could face such an ordeal, I suppose. I have observed a sort of imitative hardness about the products of the higher education of women today which would carry them through anything, perhaps. “I am not prepared to say it is a bad thing in the conditions of feminine life prevailing at present. Mabel, however, is not like that. She is as unlike that as she is unlike the simpering misses that used to surround me as a child. She has plenty of brains; she is full of character; her mind and her tastes are cultivated; but it is all mixed up”—Mr. Cupples waved his hands in a vague gesture—“with ideals of refinement and reservation and womanly mystery. I fear she is not a child of the age. You never knew my wife, Trent. Mabel is my wife’s child.” The younger man bowed his head. They paced the length of the lawn before he asked gently, “Why did she marry him?” “I don’t know,” said Mr. Cupples briefly. “Admired him, I suppose,” suggested Trent.