use, for Whitaker
to abandon his new and pleasant ways of life in order to return and
shatter hers?

He was self-persuaded of his generosity toward the girl.

Casuistry of the Wilful Missing!...

It's to be feared he had always a hard-headed way of considering matters
in the light of equity as distinguished from the light of ethical or
legal morality. This is not to be taken as an attempt to defend the man,
but rather as a statement of fact: even as the context is to be read as
an account of some things that happened rather than as a morality....

When at length he did make up his mind to go Home, it wasn't because he
felt that duty called him; plain, everyday, human curiosity had
something to do with his determination--a desire to see how New York was
managing to get along without him--together with a dawning apprehension
that there was an uncomfortable amount of truth in the antiquated
bromidiom about the surprising littleness of the world.

He was in Melbourne at that time, with Lynch, his partner. Having
prospered and laid by a lump of money, they had planned to finance their
holdings in the traditional fashion--that is, to let in other people's
money to do the work, while they rested and possessed their souls and
drew dividends on a controlling interest. Capital in Melbourne had
proved eager and approachable; the arrangement they desired was quickly
consummated; the day the papers were signed, Whitaker passed old friends
in the street. They were George Presbury and his wife--Anne Forsythe
that was--self-evident tourists, looking the town over between steamers.
Presbury, with no thought in his bumptious head of meeting Hugh Whitaker
before the Day of Judgment, looked at and through him without a hint of
recognition; but his wife was another person altogether. Whitaker could
not be blind to the surprise and perplexity that shone in her eyes, even
though he pretended to be blind to her uncertain nod; long after his
back alone was visible to her he could feel her inquiring stare boring
into it.

The incident made him think; and he remembered that he was now a man of
independent fortune and of newly idle hands as well. After prolonged
consideration he suddenly decided, told Lynch to look out for his
interests and expect him back when he should see him, and booked for
London by a Royal Mail boat--all in half a day. From London Mr. Hugh
Morten crossed immediately to New York on the _Olympic_, landing in the
month o