his next of kin left him in peace, biding their time as patiently as
they could. They had not to wait long; in four years a good constitution
broke up, suddenly at last, and the count exchanged stupor for a sleep
with his fathers, without benefit of clergy. Perhaps they would not have
given him absolution, for he died certainly not in charity with all
men."

"I don't know," Mrs. Bellasys objected, with a timid obstinacy; "I can
not argue with you; but I am sure it was very wrong."

I struck in to the meek little woman's rescue.

"That's right, Mrs. Bellasys, don't let him put you down with the high
hand; it's always his way when truth is against him; but I never knew
him break down a stubborn fact yet."

Guy turned upon me directly.

"Frank, I have often remarked in you, with pain, quite a feminine
propensity to theorize. Women _will_ do it. My dear Mrs. Bellasys, don't
look so dreadfully like an accusing angel about to bring me to book; you
know I am a hopeless heretic. They get up a sort of _Memoria Technica_
in early youth, and it clings to them all their life through. If they go
astray, they never cease proclaiming aloud that 'they know it's very
wrong;' though eminently unpractical, they think it due to themselves to
pet certain abstract truths (circumstances don't affect them in the
least), like that priestess of Cotytto, who said to the magistrate,
through her tears, 'I may have been unfortunate, but I've always been
respectable!' Sometimes principle gets the pull over passion, but, in
such a case, regrets come as often afterward as remorse does in the