 thinking of her money. Indeed, I knew Mrs Reardon only very slightly.«
    »I don't think you need regret it,« Dora remarked.
    »Oh well, come, come!« put in her brother. »We know very well that there was
little enough blame on her side.«
    »There was great blame!« Dora exclaimed. »She behaved shamefully! I wouldn't
speak to her; I wouldn't sit down in her company!«
    »Bosh! What do you know about it? Wait till you are married to a man like
Reardon, and reduced to utter penury.«
    »Whoever my husband was, I would stand by him, if I starved to death!«
    »If he ill-used you?«
    »I am not talking of such cases. Mrs Reardon had never anything of the kind
to fear. It was impossible for a man such as her husband to behave harshly. Her
conduct was cowardly, faithless, unwomanly!«
    »Trust one woman for thinking the worst of another,« observed Jasper with
something like a sneer.
    Dora gave him a look of strong disapproval; one might have suspected that
brother and sister had before this fallen into disagreement on the delicate
topic. Whelpdale felt obliged to interpose, and had of course no choice but to
support the girl.
    »I can only say,« he remarked with a smile, »that Miss Dora takes a very
noble point of view. One feels that a wife ought to be staunch. But it's so very
unsafe to discuss matters in which one cannot know all the facts.«
    »We know quite enough of the facts,« said Dora, with delightful pertinacity.
    »Indeed, perhaps we do,« assented her slave. Then, turning to her brother,
»Well, once more I congratulate you. I shall talk of your article incessantly,
as soon as it appears. And I shall pester every one of my acquaintances to buy
Reardon's books - though it's no use to him, poor fellow. Still, he would have
died more contentedly if he could have foreseen this. By-the-by, Biffen will be
profoundly grateful to you, I'm sure.«
    »I'm doing what I can for him, too. Run your eye over these slips.«
    Whelpdale exhausted himself in terms of satisfaction.
    »You deserve to get on, my dear fellow. In a few years you will be the
Aristarchus of our literary world.«
    When the visitor rose to depart,
