That the explanation of his action would always be believed to be an unseemly and shameful one was to her respectable serving-class mind a bitter thing.

That it would always be contemptuously said that a vicious elderly man had educated the daughter of his mistress, that he might marry her and leave an heir of her blooming youth, was almost worse than if he had been known to have committed some decent crime like honest murder.

Even the servants' hall in the slice of a house, discussing the ugly whisper had somewhat revolted at it and thought it "a bit too steep even for these times." But he had plainly looked the whole situation in the face and had made up his mind to do what he had done.

He hadn't cared for himself; he had only cared that the child who was to be born should be his legitimatised successor and that there should remain after him a Head of the House of Coombe.

That such houses should have heads to succeed to their dignities was a simple reverential belief of Dowie's and--apart from all other feeling--the charge she had undertaken wore to her somewhat the aspect of a religious duty.