I do not doubt."

"I don't doubt all of you are ready. She doesn't encourage one?"

"On the contrary, all."

"She's clever. This has been going on for now seven years, and, as far
as I know, she has my brother fast."

"She may have done the clever trick of having him fast from the
beginning."

"She'd like people to think it."

"She has an aunt to advertise it."

"Ormont can't swallow the woman, I'm told."

"Trying, if one is bound to get her down!"

"Boasts of the connection everywhere she's admitted, Randeller says."

"Randeller procures the admission to various parti-coloured places."

"She must be a blinking moll-owl! And I ask any sane Christian or
Pagan--proof enough!--would my brother Rowsley let his wife visit those
places, those people? Monstrous to have the suspicion that he would, you
know him! Mrs. Lawrence Finchley, for example. I say nothing to hurt the
poor woman; I back her against her imbecile of a husband. He brings a
charge he can't support; she punishes him by taking three years' lease
of independence and kicks up the grass all over the paddock, and then
comes cuckoo, barking his name abroad to have her home again. You can
win the shyest filly to corn at last. She goes, and he digests ruefully
the hotch-potch of a dish the woman brings him. Only the world spies a
side-head at her, husbanded or not, though the main fault was his, and
she had a right to insist that he should be sure of his charge before
he smacked her in the face with it before the world. In dealing with
a woman, a man commonly prudent--put aside chivalry, justice, and the
rest--should bind himself to disbelieve what he can't prove. Otherwise,
let him expect his whipping, with or without ornament. My opinion is,
Lawrence Finchley had no solid foundation for his charge, except his
being an imbecile. She wasn't one of the adventurous women to jump the
bars,--the gate had to be pushed open, and he did it. There she is; and
I ask you, would my brother Rowsley let his wife be intimate with her?
And there are others. And, sauf votre respect, the men--Morsfield for
one, Randeller another!"

"They have a wholesome dread of the lion."

"If they smell a chance with the lion's bone--it's the sweeter for being
the lion's. These metaphors carry us off our ground. I must let these
Ormont Memoirs run and upset him, if they get to print. I've only to
oppose, printed they'll be. The same if I say a word of this woman, he
marries her to-m