The Doctor eyed her a moment. “You women are all the same! But the type to which your brother belongs was made to be the ruin of you, and you were made to be its handmaids and victims. The sign of the type in question is the determination—sometimes terrible in its quiet intensity—to accept nothing of life but its pleasures, and to secure these pleasures chiefly by the aid of your complaisant sex. Young men of this class never do anything for themselves that they can get other people to do for them, and it is the infatuation, the devotion, the superstition of others that keeps them going. These others in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred are women. What our young friends chiefly insist upon is that some one else shall suffer for them; and women do that sort of thing, as you must know, wonderfully well.” The Doctor paused a moment, and then he added abruptly, “You have suffered immensely for your brother!” This exclamation was abrupt, as I say, but it was also perfectly calculated. The Doctor had been rather disappointed at not finding his compact and comfortable little hostess surrounded in a more visible degree by the ravages of Morris Townsend’s immorality; but he had said to himself that this was not because the young man had spared her, but because she had contrived to plaster up her wounds. They were aching there, behind the varnished stove, the festooned engravings, beneath her own neat little poplin bosom; and if he could only touch the tender spot, she would make a movement that would betray her. The words I have just quoted were an attempt to put his finger suddenly upon the place; and they had some of the success that he looked for. The tears sprang for a moment to Mrs. Montgomery’s eyes, and she indulged in a proud little jerk of the head. “I don’t know how you have found that out!” she exclaimed. “By a philosophic trick—by what they call induction. You know you have always your option of contradicting me. But kindly answer me a question. Don’t you give your brother money? I think you ought to answer that.” “Yes, I have given him money,” said Mrs. Montgomery. “And you have not had much to give him?” She was silent a moment. “If you ask me for a confession of poverty, that is easily made. I am very poor.” “One would never suppose it from your—your charming house,” said the Doctor. “I learned from my sister that your income was moderate, and your family numerous.” “I have five children,” Mrs. Montgomery observed; “but I am happy to say I can bring them up decently.” “Of course you can—accomplished and devoted as you are! But your brother has counted them over, I suppose?” “Counted them over?” “He knows there are five, I mean. He tells me it is he that brings them up.” Mrs. Montgomery stared a moment, and then quickly—“Oh yes; he teaches them Spanish.” The Doctor laughed out. “That must take a great deal off your hands! Your brother also knows, of course, that you have very little money.”