newspaper, and it proves that sensational journalists have their
distinct place in the cosmogony of nature, being bound to print what is
scandalous, either for the sake of those who are libelled or out of
simple justice to those who start and spread the libel. This desire to
give fair play all round, even to slanderers and malefactors, and the
common father of these, is the crown and apex of civilization.

The consequence of this gentleman's activity was that Cora found plenty
of assistance in her malicious design, to take away the characters of
Alan and Lettice. The charges which she brought against her husband were
printed and commented on in some very respectable newspapers, and were
repeated with all kinds of enlargement and embellishment wherever the
retailers of gossip were gathered together. If Alan had been under a
cloud before, he was now held up to scorn as a mean-spirited creature
without heart or conscience, who had allowed his lawful wife to sink
into an abyss of degradation. However bad she might be, the blame
certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live
with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long
ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond into which she had
fallen.

This was not, of course, the universal judgment; but it was the popular
one. It might not even have been the popular judgment a year before, or
a year after, but it was the judgment of the day. The multitude is
without responsibility in such cases, it decides without deliberation,
and it often mistakes its instincts for the dictates of equity. Alan was
judged without being heard, or what he did say in his defence was
received as though it were the mere hard-swearing of a desperate man.

The storm had begun to rage when he went to Birchmead, and it reached
its height soon after he returned. His lawyer advised him to bring an
action for libel against one paper which had committed itself more
deeply than the rest, and the threat of this had the effect of checking
public references to his case; but the mischief was already done.
Nothing could make him more disgusted and wretched than he had been for
some time past, so far as his own interests were concerned. It was only
the dragging of Lettice's name into the miserable business which now
pained and tormented him.

But there was one who had more right than himself to come forward as the
champion of Lettice's fair fame, and was able to do