"The more fool you," said Loring, bluntly. "You call yourself a lawyer,
and you have not yet learned one of the first principles of common
justice, which is that a woman has some rights which even a besotted lover
is bound to respect. You made love to her that summer at Croydon; you
needn't deny it. And at the end of things you walk off to make your
fortune without committing yourself; without knowing, or apparently
caring, what your stiff-necked poverty-pride may cost her in years of
uncertainty. You deserve to lose her."

Kent's smile was a fair measure of his unhopeful mood.

"You can't well lose what you have never had. I'm not such an ass as to
believe that she cared greatly."

"How do you know? Not by anything you ever gave her a chance to say, I'll
dare swear. I've a bit of qualified good news for you, but the spirit is
moving me mightily to hold my tongue."

"Tell me," said Kent, his indifference vanishing in the turning of a leaf.

"Well, to begin with, Miss Brentwood is still unmarried, though the
gossips say she doesn't lack plenty of eligible offers."

"Half of that I knew; the other half I took for granted. Go on."

"Her mother, under the advice of the chief of the clan Brentwood, has been
making a lot of bad investments for herself and her two daughters: in
other words, she has been making ducks and drakes of the Brentwood
fortune."