What would a jury
say to such evidence? And when Julius said it only freed himself
morally from the secrecy, poor Jenny was bitter against his
scruples, even though he had never said more than that he should
have been perplexed. The most bitter anti-ritualist could hardly
have uttered stronger things than she thought, and sometimes said,
against what seemed to her to be keeping Archie in banishment; while
the brothers' reluctance to expose Mr. Moy, and blast his reputation
and that of his family, was in her present frame of mind an
incomprehensible weakness. People must bear the penalty of their
misdeeds, families and all, and Mrs. and Miss Moy did not deserve
consideration: the pretensions of the mother had always been half
scorn, half thorn, to the old county families, and the fast airs of
the daughter had been offensive enough to destroy all pity for her.
If an action in a Court of Justice were, as Miles and Julius told
her, impossible,--and she would not believe it, except on the word
of a lawyer,--public exposure was the only alternative for righting
Archie, and she could not, or would not, understand that they would
have undergone an action for libel rather than not do their best to
clear their cousin, but that they thought it due to Mr. Moy to give
him the opportunity of doing the thing himself; she thought it
folly, and only giving him time and chance for baffling them.

The strange thing was, that not only when she argued with the two
brothers, but when she brooded and gave way to these thoughts as she
kept her watch, it probably made her less calm--for an access of
restlessness and fever never failed to come on--with Herbert.
Probably she was less calm externally, and the fret of face and
manner communicated itself to him, for the consequences were so
invariable that Cranstoun thought they proved additionally what she
of course believed, that Miss Joan could not be trusted with her
brother. At last Jenny, in her distress and unwillingness to
abandon Herbert to Cranky's closed windows, traced cause and effect,
and made a strong resolution to banish the all-pervading thought,
and indeed his ever-increasing weakness and danger filled her mind
so as to make this easier and easier, so that she might no longer
have to confess to herself that Rollo was a safer companion, since
Herbert, with a hand on that black head, certainly only derived
soothing influences from those longing sympathetic eyes. And he
coul