expenses to the end of the
year. I have advanced what has been necessary since then, and if you
really wish the thing dropped, that is entirely my own affair. But I do
most earnestly hope that you will not do anything so wrong. I feel very
strongly my responsibility towards Sir David's memory in this matter."

"I feel," said Rose, but her manner was irresolute, "that the scandal
has been forgotten by now; things come and go so fast. He will be
remembered only as a great soldier who died for his country."

"It may be forgotten," said Mr. Murray in a stern voice she had never
heard before. "It may be forgotten in a society which is always needing
some new sensation and is always well supplied. But there is a less
fluctuating public opinion. We men of business keep a clearer view of
character, and we know better how through all classes there is a verdict
passed on men that does not pass away in a season. Do you think, madam,
that when men treasure a good name it is the gossip of a London season
they regard? No; it is the thoughts of other good men in which they wish
to live. It is the sympathy of the good that a good man has a right to.
I believe in a future life, but I don't imagine I know whether in
another world they rejoice or suffer pain by anything that affects their
good name here. But I do know, Lady Rose, that deep in our nature is the
sense of duty to their memory, and I cannot believe that such an
instinct is without meaning or without some actual bearing on departed
souls. I don't expect Sir David to visit me in dreams, but I do expect
to feel a deep and reasonable self-reproach if I do not try to clear his
name."

The heavy features of the solicitor had worked with a good deal of
emotion. The thought, the words "departed souls," were no mere words to
him in these summer days while Mrs. Murray, Junior, was supposed to be
doing well after an operation in a nursing home, and the doctors were
inclined to speak of next month's progress and on that of the month
after that, and to be silent as to any dates far ahead. In his
professional hours he did not dwell on these things, but it was the
actual spiritual conditions of the life he and his wife were leading
that gave a strange force to his words.

"She never loved him," thought Mr. Murray as he looked out of the
window. He was on the same side of the writing-table that he had been on
when he had first told her of the deep insult offered to her by Sir
David. He