Cleeve returns to
the Palazzo Arconati and find that Mrs. Ebbsmith has flown.

AMOS. That result, at least, was inevitable.

ST. OLPHERTS. Whereupon he hurries back to the Danieli and denounces us
all for a set of conspirators.

AMOS. Your Grace doesn't complain of the injustice of that charge?

ST. OLPHERTS. [Smilingly.] No, no, I don't complain. But the brother--
the wife! Just when they imagined they had bagged the truant--there's
the sting!

GERTRUDE. Oh, then Mr. Cleeve now refuses to carry out his part of the
shameful arrangement?

ST. OLPHERTS. Absolutely. [Rising, taking a chair, and placing it by
the settee.] Come into this, dear Mrs. Thorn--!

AMOS. Thorpe.

ST. OLPHERTS. Come into this! [Sitting again.] You understand the sort
of man we have to deal with in Mr. Cleeve.

GERTRUDE. [Sitting.] A man who prizes a woman when he has lost her.

ST. OLPHERTS. Precisely.

GERTRUDE. Men don't relish, I suppose, being cast off by women.

ST. OLPHERTS. It's an inversion of the picturesque; the male abandoned
is not a pathetic figure. At any rate, our poor Lucas is now raving
fidelity to Mrs. Ebbsmith.

GERTRUDE. [Indignantly.] Ah--!

ST. OLPHERTS. If you please, he cannot, will not, exist without her.
Reputation, fame, fortune are nothing weighed against--Mrs. Ebbsmith.
And we may go to perdition, so that he recovers--Mrs. Ebbsmith.

AMOS. Well--to be plain--you're not asking us to sympathise with Mrs.
Cleeve and her brother-in-law over their defeat?

ST. OLPHERTS. Certainly not. All I ask, Mr. Winterfield, is that you
will raise no obstacle to a meeting between Mr. Cleeve and--and--

GERTRUDE. No!

[ST. OLPHERTS signifies assent; GERTRUDE makes a movement.]

ST. OLPHERTS. [To her.] Don't go.

AMOS. The object of such a meeting?

ST. OLPHERTS. Mrs. Cleeve desires to make a direct, personal appeal to
Mrs. Ebbsmith.

GERTRUDE. Oh, what kind of woman can this Mrs. Cleeve be?

ST. OLPHERTS. A woman of character, who sets herself to accomplish a
certain task--

GERTRUDE. Character!

AMOS. Hush, Gerty!

ST. OLPHERTS. And who gathers her skirts tightly around her and
tip-toes gently into the mire.

AMOS. To put it clearly: in order to get her unfaithful husband back to
London, Mrs. Cleeve would deliberately employ this weak, unhappy woman
as a lure.

ST. OLPHERTS. Perhaps Mrs. Cleeve is an unhappy woman.

GERTRUDE. What work for a wife!

ST. OLPHERTS. Wife--nonsense! She is only married