law, namely, the resignation of certain personal rights for the
securing of other and more important ones: she understood, was
mildly interested, and entirely satisfied.

They seated themselves in the summer-house, a little wooden room
under the down-sloping boughs of a huge cedar, and pursued their
conversation--or rather Bascombe pursued his monologue. A lively
girl would in all probability have been bored to death by him, but
Helen was not a lively girl, and was not bored at all. Ere they went
into the house she had heard, amongst a hundred other things of
wisdom, his views concerning crime and punishment--with which, good
and bad, true and false, I shall not trouble my reader, except in
regard to one point--that of the obligation to punish. Upon this
point he was severe.

No person, he said, ought to allow any weakness of pity to prevent
him from bringing to punishment the person who broke the laws upon
which the well-being of the community depended. A man must remember
that the good of the whole, and not the fate of the individual, was
to be regarded.

It was altogether a notable sort of tete-a-tete between two such
perfect specimens of the race, and as at length they entered the
house, they professed to each other to have much enjoyed their walk.

Holding the opinions he did, Bascombe was in one thing inconsistent:
he went to "divine service" on the Sunday with his aunt and
cousin--not to humour Helen's prejudices, but those of Mrs.
Ramshorn, who, belonging, as I have said, to the profession, had
strong opinions as to the wickedness of not going to church. It was