nd a common retort sprang to his lips.

"I should hope so! I cannot bear to think of your having known him
well under any circumstances. The man is low! Whether drunk or sober
he has nothing to commend him, and I believe him to be utterly
irreclaimable and lost."

"In this world perhaps. But not necessarily in the next? Do you
decline, then, to continue the work of reformation?"

He winced, and upon recalling what he had said saw his error. "No, I
retract that. He is human, therefore a soul to be saved, as one of
God's creatures, but whether the man can be reinstated in society is a
doubtful matter. You are right to defend him, and I am sad only when I
grudge you those memories of him. You knew him then so very well?"

She understood the pleading tone and she endeavoured to be candid, but
how explain certain things to a man of Ringfield's calibre? To
another, a glance, a smile, the inflection of a word, of a syllable,
and all would be clear. How was she to frame an explanation which
should receive his tacit and grave but unenlightened approval? How far
he could conjecture, disassociate, dissect, limit and analyse, weigh
and deduct, the various progresses in a crude amalgamation people call
Love, she did not know, and there lay her difficulty.

"I will tell you what I can. I was quite young when I met Mr. Hawtree,
'Crabbe,' as he is now known. It is his second name. He had been
unfortunate in money affairs, I understood, and had not been trained to
any kind of work. It was after I returned from Sorel that I found him
here. He frequently came to visit Henry; they described themselves as
gentlemen together, and I suppose they were not wise company for one
another, but at first I did not take any notice. He fell in love with
me, and talked a great deal to me, improving my English as he called
it, and you can understand how little opportunity I had had of reading
or continuing my studies. I have no talent for the _menage_; besides,
Henry's methods had been long in practice, and I could not unchange
them, at the age of nineteen! Mr. Hawtree and I were thus thrown very
much together, yet one thing kept occurring which made me very
miserable. I found out that he was drinking, and Henry too! Then
another thing--my bad temper. Ah! how I suffered, suffered, in those
days with that man, Mr. Ringfield!"

"I can well believe it."

"And he with me! Perhaps some other kind of woman would have suited
him