And now this girl of his, who was so much dearer to him than anything else left to him, was doing exactly as her mother had done.

The young man might be stamped out.

He might be made to vanish as that other young man had vanished.

But the fact that he had been there, cherished in the girl's heart,--that could not be stamped out.
He struggled gallantly to acquit the memory of his wife.

He could best do that by leaning with the full weight of his mind on the presumed iniquity of Mrs.Finn.Had he not known from the first that the woman was an adventuress?
And had he not declared to himself over and over again that between such a one and himself there should be no intercourse, no common feeling?
He had allowed himself to be talked into an intimacy, to be talked almost into an affection.