but I would not allow it. "Before I consent to accept the expression of
your gratitude," I said, "I must know a little more of you than I know
now. This is only the second occasion on which we have met. Let us look
back a little, Mr. Philip Dunboyne. You were Eunice's affianced husband;
and you broke faith with her. That was a rascally action. How do you
defend it?"

His head sank. "I am ashamed to defend it," he answered.

I pressed him without mercy. "You own yourself," I said, "that it was a
rascally action?"

"Use stronger language against me, even than that, sir--I deserve it."

"In plain words," I went on, "you can find no excuse for your conduct?"

"In the past time," he said, "I might have found excuses."

"But you can't find them now?"

"I must not even look for them now."

"Why not?"

"I owe it to Eunice to leave my conduct at its worst; with nothing
said--by me--to defend it."

"What has Eunice done to have such a claim on you as that?"

"Eunice has forgiven me."

It was gratefully and delicately said. Ought I to have allowed this
circumstance to weigh with me? I ask, in return, had _I_ never committed
any faults? As a fellow-mortal and fellow-sinner, had I any right to
harden my heart against an expression of penitence which I felt to be
sincere in its motive?

But I was bound to think of Eunice. I did think of her, before I
ventured to accept the position--the critical position, as I shall
presently show--of Philip's friend.

After more than an hour of questions put without reserve, and of answers
given without prevarication, I had traveled over the whole ground laid
out by the narratives which appear in these pages, and had arrived at my
conclusion--so far as Philip Dunboyne was concerned.

I found him to be a man with nothing absolutely wicked in him--but with
a nature so perilously weak, in many respects, that it might drift into
wickedness unless a stronger nature was at hand to bold it back. Married
to a wife without force of character, the probabilities would point to
him as likely to yield to examples which might make him a bad husband.
Married to a wife with a will of her own, and with true love to sustain
her--a wife who would know when to take the command and how to take the
command--a wife who, finding him tempted to commit actions unworthy
of his better self, would be far-sighted enough to perceive that her
husband's sense of honor might sometimes lose its balance, without be