u have escaped from all that, and
I really can't understand why you should be so awfully cruel to the
poor girl." Then she signed herself "Yours always, F. A." as though
she had not been a woman at all.

In all this there was much guile. She had already taken the length
of his foot, and knew how to flatter him, and to cheat him at the
same time. "That poor young woman of mine seems to have got into
difficulties," he said to Dick Ross, who had gone down with him to
Scotland.

"You have made the difficulties for her," said Dick.

"Well; I paved the way perhaps. That was only justice. Did she
think that she was going to hit me and that she wasn't to be hit in
return?"

"A woman," growled Dick.

"Women are human beings the same as men, and when they make
themselves beasts have got to be punished. You can't horsewhip a
woman; but if you look at it all round I don't see that she ought to
get off so much better than a man. She is a human creature and ought
to be made to feel as a man feels."

But this did not suit Dick's morality or his sense of chivalry.
According to his thinking a woman in such matters ought to be allowed
to do as she pleased, and the punishment, if punishment there is to
be, must come from the outside. "I shouldn't like to have done it;
that's all."

"You've always treated women well; haven't you?"

"I don't say that. I don't know that I've ever treated anybody
particularly well. But I never set my wits to work to take my revenge
on a woman."

"Look here, old fellow," said Sir Francis. "You had better contrive
to make yourself less disagreeable or else you and I must part. If
you think that I am going to be lectured by you, you're mistaken."

"You ask me, and how can I help answering you? It was a shabby trick.
And now you may bluster as much as you please." Then the two sat
together, smoking in silence for five minutes. It was after breakfast
on a rainy day, such as always made Dick Ross miserable for the time.
He had to think of creditors whom he could not pay, and of his future
life which did not lie easily open before him, and of all the years
which he had misused. Circumstances had lately thrown him much into
the power of this man whom he heartily disliked and despised, but at
whose hands he had been willing to accept many of the luxuries of his
life. But still he resolved not to be put down in the expression of
his opinions, although he might in truth be turned off at a moment's
notice.