Sunday morning came, and Frank, being in the country, considered himself absolved from the duty of going to church, and went for a long stroll. At half-past one he presented himself at Mrs Hopgood’s house.

‘I have had a letter from London,’ said Clara to Frank, ‘telling me a most extraordinary story, and I should like to know what you think of it. A man, who was left a widower, had an only child, a lovely daughter of about fourteen years old, in whose existence his own was completely wrapped up. She was subject at times to curious fits of self-absorption or absence of mind, and while she was under their influence she resembled a somnambulist rather than a sane human being awake. Her father would not take her to a physician, for he dreaded lest he should be advised to send her away from home, and he also feared the effect which any recognition of her disorder might have upon her. He believed that in obscure and half-mental diseases like hers, it was prudent to suppress all notice of them, and that if he behaved to her as if she were perfectly well, she would stand a chance of recovery. Moreover, the child was visibly improving, and it was probable that the disturbance in her health would be speedily outgrown. One hot day he went out shopping with her, and he observed that she was tired and strange in her manner, although she was not ill, or, at least, not so ill as he had often before seen her. The few purchases they had to make at the draper’s were completed, and they went out into the street. He took her hand-bag, and, in doing so, it opened and he saw to his horror a white silk pocket-handkerchief crumpled up in it, which he instantly recognised as one which had been shown him five minutes before, but he had not bought. The next moment a hand was on his shoulder. It was that of an assistant, who requested that they would both return for a few minutes. As they walked the half dozen steps back, the father’s resolution was taken. “I am sixty,” he thought to himself, “and she is fourteen.” They went into the counting-house and he confessed that he had taken the handkerchief, but that it was taken by mistake and that he was about to restore it when he was arrested. The poor girl was now herself again, but her mind was an entire blank as to what she had done, and she could not doubt her father’s statement, for it was a man’s handkerchief and the bag was in his hands. The draper was inexorable, and as he had suffered much from petty thefts of late, had determined to make an example of the first offender whom he could catch. The father was accordingly prosecuted, convicted and sentenced to imprisonment. When his term had expired, his daughter, who, I am glad to say, never for an instant lost her faith in him, went away with him to a distant part of the country, where they lived under an assumed name. About ten years afterwards he died and kept his secret to the last; but he had seen the complete recovery and happy marriage of his child. It was remarkable that it never occurred to her that she might have been guilty, but her father’s confession, as already stated, was apparently so sincere that she could do nothing but believe him. You will wonder how the facts were discovered. After his death a sealed paper disclosing them was found, with the inscription, “Not to be opened during my daughter’s life, and if she should have children or a husband who may survive her, it is to be burnt.” She had no children, and when she died as an old woman, her husband also being dead, the seal was broken.’

‘Probably,’ said Madge, ‘nobody except his daughter believed he was not a thief. For her sake he endured the imputation of common larceny, and was content to leave the world with only a remote chance that he would ever be justified.’

‘I wonder,’ said Frank, ‘that he did not admit that it was his daughter who had taken the handkerchief, and excuse her on the ground of her ailment.’

‘He could not do that,’ replied Madge. ‘The object of his life was to make as little of the ailment as possible. What would have been the effect on her if she had been made aware of its fearful consequences? Furthermore, would he have been believed? And then—awful thought, the child might have suspected him of attempting to shield himself at her expense! Do you think you could be capable of such sacrifice, Mr Palmer?’

Frank hesitated. ‘It would—’

‘The question is not fair, Madge,’ said Mrs Hopgood, interrupting him. ‘You are asking for a decision when all the materials to make up a decision are not present. It is wrong to question ourselves in cold blood as to what we should do in a great strait; for the emergency brings the insight and the power necessary to deal with it. I often fear lest, if such-and-such a trial were to befall me, I should miserably fail. So I should, furnished as I now am, but not as I should be under stress of the trial.’

‘What is the use,’ said Clara, ‘of speculating whether we can, or cannot, do this or that? It is now an interesting subject for discussion whether the lie was a sin.’

‘No,’ said Madge, ‘a thousand times no.’

‘Brief and decisive. Well, Mr Palmer, what do you say?’

‘That is rather an awkward question. A lie is a lie.’

‘But not,’ broke in Madge, vehemently, ‘to save anybody whom you love. Is a contemptible little two-foot measuring-tape to be applied to such an action as that?’

‘The consequences of such a philosophy, though, my dear,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘are rather serious. The moment you dispense with a fixed standard, you cannot refuse permission to other people to dispense with it also.’

‘Ah, yes, I know all about that, but I am not going to give up my instinct for the sake of a rule. Do what you feel to be right, and let the rule go hang. Somebody, cleverer in logic than we are, will come along afterwards and find a higher rule which we have obeyed, and will formulate it concisely.’

‘As for my poor self,’ said Clara, ‘I do not profess to know, without the rule, what is right and what is not. We are always trying to transcend the rule by some special pleading, and often in virtue of some fancied superiority. Generally speaking, the attempt is fatal.’

‘Madge,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘your dogmatic decision may have been interesting, but it prevented the expression of Mr Palmer’s opinion.’

Madge bent forward and politely inclined her head to the embarrassed Frank.

‘I do not know what to say. I have never thought much about such matters. Is not what they call casuistry a science among Roman Catholics? If I were in a difficulty and could not tell right from wrong, I should turn Catholic, and come to you as my priest, Mrs Hopgood.’

‘Then you would do, not what you thought right yourself, but what I thought right. The worth of the right to you is that it is your right, and that you arrive at it in your own way. Besides, you might not have time to consult anybody. Were you never compelled to settle promptly a case of this kind?’

‘I remember once at school, when the mathematical master was out of the class-room, a boy named Carpenter ran up to the blackboard and wrote “Carrots” on it. That was the master’s nickname, for he was red-haired. Scarcely was the word finished, when Carpenter heard him coming along the passage. There was just time partially to rub out some of the big letters, but CAR remained, and Carpenter was standing at the board when “Carrots” came in. He was an excitable man, and he knew very well what the boys called him.

‘“What have you been writing on the board, sir?”

‘“Carpenter, sir.”

‘The master examined the board. The upper half of the second R was plainly perceptible, but it might possibly have been a P. He turned round, looked steadily at Carpenter for a moment, and then looked at us. Carpenter was no favourite, but not a soul spoke.

‘“Go to your place, sir.”

‘Carpenter went to his place, the letters were erased and the lesson was resumed. I was greatly perplexed; I had acquiesced in a cowardly falsehood. Carrots was a great friend of mine, and I could not bear to feel that he was humbugged, so when we were outside I went up to Carpenter and told him he was an infernal sneak, and we had a desperate fight, and I licked him, and blacked both his eyes. I did not know what else to do.’

The company laughed.

‘We cannot,’ said Madge, ‘all of us come to terms after this fashion with our consciences, but we have had enough of these discussions on morality. Let us go out.’

They went out, and, as some relief from the straight road, they turned into a field as they came home, and walked along a footpath which crossed the broad, deep ditches by planks. They were within about fifty yards of the last and broadest ditch, more a dyke than a ditch, when Frank, turning round, saw an ox which they had not noticed, galloping after them.

‘Go on, go on,’ he cried, ‘make for the plank.’

He discerned in an instant that unless the course of the animal could be checked it would overtake them before the bridge could be reached. The women fled, but Frank remained. He was in the habit of carrying a heavy walking-stick, the end of which he had hollowed out in his schooldays and had filled up with lead. Just as the ox came upon him, it laid its head to the ground, and Frank, springing aside, dealt it a tremendous, two-handed blow on the forehead with his knobbed weapon. The creature was dazed, it stopped and staggered, and in another instant Frank was across the bridge in safety. There was a little hysterical sobbing, but it was soon over.

‘Oh, Mr Palmer,’ said Mrs Hopgood, ‘what presence of mind and what courage! We should have been killed without you.’

‘The feat is not original, Mrs Hopgood. I saw it done by a tough little farmer last summer on a bull that was really mad. There was no ditch for him though, poor fellow, and he had to jump a hedge.’

‘You did not find it difficult,’ said Madge, ‘to settle your problem when it came to you in the shape of a wild ox.’

‘Because there was nothing to settle,’ said Frank, laughing; ‘there was only one thing to be done.’

‘So you believed, or rather, so you saw,’ said Clara. ‘I should have seen half-a-dozen things at once—that is to say, nothing.’

‘And I,’ said Madge, ‘should have settled it the wrong way: I am sure I should, even if I had been a man. I should have bolted.’

Frank stayed to tea, and the evening was musical. He left about ten, but just as the door had shut he remembered he had forgotten his stick. He gave a gentle rap and Madge appeared. She gave him his stick.

‘Good-bye again. Thanks for my life.’

Frank cursed himself that he could not find the proper word. He knew there was something which might be said and ought to be said, but he could not say it. Madge held out her hand to him, he raised it to his lips and kissed it, and then, astonished at his boldness, he instantly retreated. He went to the ‘Crown and Sceptre’ and was soon in bed, but not to sleep. Strange, that the moment we lie down in the dark, images, which were half obscured, should become so intensely luminous! Madge hovered before Frank with almost tangible distinctness, and he felt his fingers moving in her heavy, voluptuous tresses. Her picture at last became almost painful to him and shamed him, so that he turned over from side to side to avoid it. He had never been thrown into the society of women of his own age, for he had no sister, and a fire was kindled within him which burnt with a heat all the greater because his life had been so pure. At last he fell asleep and did not wake till late in the morning. He had just time to eat his breakfast, pay one more business visit in the town, and catch the coach due at eleven o’clock from Lincoln to London. As the horses were being changed, he walked as near as he dared venture to the windows of the cottage next door, but he could see nobody. When the coach, however, began to move, he turned round and looked behind him, and a hand was waved to him. He took off his hat, and in five minutes he was clear of the town. It was in sight a long way, but when, at last, it disappeared, a cloud of wretchedness swept over him as the vapour sweeps up from the sea. What was she doing? talking to other people, existing for others, laughing with others! There were miles between himself and Fenmarket. Life! what was life? A few moments of living and long, dreary gaps between. All this, however, is a vain attempt to delineate what was shapeless. It was an intolerable, unvanquishable oppression. This was Love; this was the blessing which the god with the ruddy wings had bestowed on him. It was a relief to him when the coach rattled through Islington, and in a few minutes had landed him at the ‘Angel.’