As to whether what our ancestors called purity has any ultimate ethical
value indeed, science hesitates with a high, proud hesitation.
But what hesitation can there be about the baseness of a citizen
who ventures, by brutal experiments upon living females, to anticipate
the verdict of science on such a point?

"The woman mentioned by Curate Percy as living with Smith
in Highbury may or may not be the same as the lady he married
in Maidenhead. If one short sweet spell of constancy and heart
repose interrupted the plunging torrent of his profligate life,
we will not deprive him of that long past possibility.
After that conjectural date, alas, he seems to have plunged deeper
and deeper into the shaking quagmires of infidelity and shame."

Dr. Pym closed his eyes, but the unfortunate fact that there was no more
light left this familiar signal without its full and proper moral effect.
After a pause, which almost partook of the character of prayer, he continued.

"The first instance of the accused's repeated and irregular nuptials,"
he exclaimed, "comes from Lady Bullingdon, who expresses herself
with the high haughtiness which must be excused in those who look
out upon all mankind from the turrets of a Norman and ancestral keep.
The communication she has sent to us runs as follows:--

"Lady Bullingdon recalls the painful incident to which reference
is made, and has no desire to deal with it in detail.
The girl Polly Green was a perfectly adequate dressmaker,
and lived in the village for about two years. Her unattached
condition was bad for her as well as for the general morality
of the village. Lady Bullingdon, therefore, allowed it to be
understood that she favoured the marriage of the young woman.
The villagers, naturally wishing to oblige Lady Bullingdon,
came forward in several cases; and all would have been well had it
not been for the deplorable eccentricity or depravity of the girl
Green herself. Lady Bullingdon supposes that where there is
a village there must be a village idiot, and in her village,
it seems, there was one of these wretched creatures.
Lady Bullingdon only saw him once, and she is quite aware
that it is really difficult to distinguish between actual
idiots and the ordinary heavy type of the rural lower classes.
She noticed, however, the startling smallness of his head
in comparison to the rest of his body; and, indeed, the fact
of his having appeared upon election day wearing the rosette