BRASSBOUND. You forget that I am like my uncle, according to you. Have
you any doubt as to the reality of HIS badness?

LADY CICELY. Bless me! your uncle Howard is one of the most harmless
of men--much nicer than most professional people. Of course he does
dreadful things as a judge; but then if you take a man and pay him 5,000
pounds a year to be wicked, and praise him for it, and have policemen
and courts and laws and juries to drive him into it so that he can't
help doing it, what can you expect? Sir Howard's all right when he's
left to himself. We caught a burglar one night at Waynflete when he was
staying with us; and I insisted on his locking the poor man up until the
police came, in a room with a window opening on the lawn. The man came
back next day and said he must return to a life of crime unless I gave
him a job in the garden; and I did. It was much more sensible than
giving him ten years penal servitude: Howard admitted it. So you see
he's not a bit bad really.

BRASSBOUND. He had a fellow feeling for a thief, knowing he was a thief
himself. Do you forget that he sent my mother to prison?

LADY CICELY (softly). Were you very fond of your poor mother, and always
very good to her?

BRASSBOUND (rather taken aback). I was not worse than other sons, I
suppose.

LADY CICELY (opening her eyes very widely). Oh! Was THAT all?

BRASSBOUND (exculpating himself, full of gloomy remembrances). You don't
understand. It was not always possible to be very tender with my mother.
She had unfortunately a very violent temper; and she--she--

LADY CICELY. Yes: so you told Howard. (With genuine pity for him) You
must have had a very unhappy childhood.

BRASSBOUND (grimily). Hell. That was what my childhood was. Hell.

LADY CICELY. Do you think she would really have killed Howard, as she
threatened, if he hadn't sent her to prison?

BRASSBOUND (breaking out again, with a growing sense of being morally
trapped). What if she did? Why did he rob her? Why did he not help her
to get the estate, as he got it for himself afterwards?

LADY CICELY. He says he couldn't, you know. But perhaps the real reason
was that he didn't like her. You know, don't you, that if you don't like
people you think of all the reasons for not helping them, and if you
like them you think of all the opposite reasons.

BRASSBOUND. But his duty as a brother!

LADY CICELY. Are you going to do your duty as a nephew?

BRASSBOUND. Don't quibble with