wo ways: Either they sink till the lunatic asylums and the
workhouses are full of them, and cause Mr. Wilcox to write letters to
the papers complaining of our national degeneracy, or else they entrap a
boy into marriage before it is too late. She--I can't blame her."

"But this isn't all," she continued after a long pause, during which the
landlady served them with coffee. "I come now to the business that took
us to Oniton. We went all three. Acting on Mr. Wilcox's advice, the man
throws up a secure situation and takes an insecure one, from which he is
dismissed. There are certain excuses, but in the main Mr. Wilcox is to
blame, as Meg herself admitted. It is only common justice that he should
employ the man himself. But he meets the woman, and, like the cur that
he is, he refuses, and tries to get rid of them. He makes Meg write.
Two notes came from her late that evening--one for me, one for Leonard,
dismissing him with barely a reason. I couldn't understand. Then it
comes out that Mrs. Bast had spoken to Mr. Wilcox on the lawn while we
left her to get rooms, and was still speaking about him when Leonard
came back to her. This Leonard knew all along. He thought it natural he
should be ruined twice. Natural! Could you have contained yourself?"

"It is certainly a very bad business," said Tibby.

His reply seemed to calm his sister. "I was afraid that I saw it out of
proportion. But you are right outside it, and you must know. In a day or
two--or perhaps a week--take whatever steps you think fit. I leave it in
your hands."

She concluded her charge.

"The facts as they touch Meg are all before you," she added; and Tibby
sighed and felt it rather hard that, because of his open mind, he should
be empanelled to serve as a juror. He had never been interested in human
beings, for which one must blame him, but he had had rather too much of
them at Wickham Place. Just as some people cease to attend when books
are mentioned, so Tibby's attention wandered when "personal relations"
came under discussion. Ought Margaret to know what Helen knew the Basts
to know? Similar questions had vexed him from infancy, and at Oxford he
had learned to say that the importance of human beings has been vastly
overrated by specialists. The epigram, with its faint whiff of the
eighties, meant nothing. But he might have let it off now if his sister
had not been ceaselessly beautiful.

"You see, Helen--have a cigarette--I don't see what I'm to do