n love half a dozen times; which only amounted to saying that women he
had liked had been in love with him or had thought that they were, or
had wished to have it thought that he loved them or had perhaps, like
poor Lady Fan, been willing to risk a good deal on the bare chance of
marrying one of the best of society's matches in the end. He was too
young to look upon such affairs very seriously. When he had been tired
of the game he had not lacked the courage to say so, and in most cases
he had been forgiven. Lady Fan might prove an exception, but he hoped
not. He was enormously far removed from being a saint, it is true, but
it is due to him to repeat that he had drawn the line rigidly at a
certain limit, and that all women beyond that line had been to him as
his own mother, in thought and deed. Let those who have the right to
cast stones--and the cruelty to do so--decide for themselves whether
Brook Johnstone was a bad man at heart, or not. It need not be hinted
that a proportion of the stone-throwing Pharisees owe their immaculate
reputation to their conspicuous lack of attraction; the little band has
a place apart and they stand there and lapidate most of us, and secretly
wish that they had ever had the chance of being as bad as we are without
being found out. But the great army of the pure in heart are mixed with
us sinners in the fight, and though they may pray for us, they do not
carp at our imperfections--and occasionally they get hit by the
Pharisees just as we do, being rather whiter than we and therefore
offering a more tempting mark for a jagged stone or a handful of pious
mud. You may know the Pharisee by his intimate knowledge of the sins he
has never committed.

Besides, though the code of honour is not worth much as compared with
the Ten Commandments, it is notably better than nothing, in the way of
morality. It will keep a man from lying and evil speaking as well as
from picking and stealing, and if it does not force him to honour all
women as angels, it makes him respect a very large proportion of them as
good women and therefore sacred, in a very practical way of sacredness.
Brook Johnstone always was very careful in all matters where honour and
his own feeling about honour were concerned. For that reason he had told
Clare that he had never done anything very bad, whereas what she had
seen him do was monstrous in her eyes. She had not reflected that she
knew nothing about Lady Fan; and if she had heard