really needed to live in India, to economize, to let the house at
Branshaw Teleragh.

Of course, at that date, I had never heard of the Kilsyte case.
Ashburnham had, you know, kissed a servant girl in a railway
train, and it was only the grace of God, the prompt functioning of
the communication cord and the ready sympathy of what I believe
you call the Hampshire Bench, that kept the poor devil out of
Winchester Gaol for years and years. I never heard of that case
until the final stages of Leonora's revelations. . . .

But just think of that poor wretch. . . . I, who have surely the right,
beg you to think of that poor wretch. Is it possible that such a
luckless devil should be so tormented by blind and inscrutable
destiny? For there is no other way to think of it. None. I have the
right to say it, since for years he was my wife's lover, since he
killed her, since he broke up all the pleasantnesses that there were
in my life. There is no priest that has the right to tell me that I
must not ask pity for him, from you, silent listener beyond the
hearth-stone, from the world, or from the God who created in him
those desires, those madnesses. . . .

Of course, I should not hear of the Kilsyte case. I knew none of
their friends; they were for me just good people--fortunate people
with broad and sunny acres in a southern county. Just good
people! By heavens, I sometimes think that it would have been
better for him, poor dear, if the case had been such a one that I
must needs have heard of it--such a one as maids and couriers and
other Kur guests whisper about for years after, until gradually it
dies away in the pity that there is knocking about here and there in