m the social standpoint what's really important as
regards Dick? That he should go out to dinner? No. That he should have
children? Yes!"

And here Mrs. Pettifer interposed again.

"But they must be the right children," she exclaimed. "Better that he
should have none than that he should have children--"

"With an hereditary taint," Pettifer agreed. "Admitted, Margaret. If we
come to the conclusion that Stella Ballantyne did what she was accused of
doing we, in spite of all the verdicts in the world, are bound to resist
this marriage. I grant it. Because of that conviction I dismiss the plea
that we are unfair to the woman in reviewing the trial. There are wider,
greater considerations."

These were the first words of comfort which Mrs. Pettifer had heard since
her husband began to expound. She received them with enthusiasm.

"I am so glad to hear that."

"Yes, Margaret," Pettifer retorted drily. "But please ask yourself
this question: (it is where, to my thinking, the social and the
personal elements join) if this marriage is broken off, is Dick likely
to marry at all?"

"Why not?" asked Margaret.

"He is thirty-four. He has had, no doubt, many opportunities of
marriage. He must have had. He is good-looking, well off and a good
fellow. This is the first time he has wanted to marry. If he is
disappointed here will he try again?"

Mrs. Pettifer laughed, moved by the remarkable depreciation of her own
sex which women of her type so often have. It was for man to throw the
handkerchief. Not a doubt but there would be a rush to pick it up!

"Widowers who have been devoted to their wives marry again," she argued.

"A point for me, Margaret!" returned Pettifer. "Widowers--yes. They miss
so much--the habit of a house with a woman its mistress, the
companionship, the order, oh, a thousand small but important things. But
a man who has remained a bachelor until he's thirty-four--that's a
different case. If he sets his heart at that age, seriously, for the
first time on a woman and does not get her, that's the kind of man who,
my experience suggests to me--I put it plainly, Margaret--will take one
or more mistresses to himself but no wife."

Mrs. Pettifer deferred to the worldly knowledge of her husband but she
clung to her one clear argument.

"Nothing could be worse," she said frankly, "than that he should marry a
guilty woman."

"Granted, Margaret," replied Mr. Pettifer imperturbably. "Only suppose
that she's no