"It was dishonorable and untrue."

"The people down my way don't think much of the civil-service laws.
They call them frills, something to get round if you can. That's how
they excuse him." She spoke with nervous rapidity and a little warmth.

"But they are our country's laws just the same. And a good man--a
patriotic man--ought not to break them." Mary was conscious of voicing
George Colfax's sentiments as well as her own. The responsibility of
the burden imposed on her was trying, and she disliked her part of
mentor. Nevertheless, she felt that she must not abstain from stating
the vital point clearly; so she continued:

"Is not the real difficulty, my dear, that the man who could be false
in one thing might be false in another when the occasion arose?"

Miss Burke flushed at the words, and suddenly covered her face with
her hands.

"That's it, of course. That's what haunts me. I could forgive him the
other--the having been in jail and all that; but it's the possibility
that he might do something worse after we were married--when it was
too late--which frightens me. 'False in one thing, false in
everything,' that's what the proverb is. Do you believe that is true,
Miss Wellington?"

Her unmasked conscience revealed clearly the distress caused by its
own sensitiveness; but she spoke beseechingly, as though to invite
comfort from her companion on the score of this adage.