He took a personal pride in her at once and wanted her to come out triumphant in the end, regardless of any conventional morality.
True, his admiration for the dark little woman's tragic utterance at times drew him away from his breathless study of the queenly Mercy, but such moments were few.

Within a half hour he was deeply in love with the heroine and wondered how she could possibly endure the fat man who played the part of Horace, and who pitched into the practicable supper of cold ham, biscuit and currant wine with a gusto that suggested gluttony as the reason for his growing burden of flesh.
And so the play went on.

The wonderful old lady in the cap and spectacles, the mysterious dark little woman who popped in at short intervals to say "Beware!" in a very deep contralto voice, the tender and repentant Mercy, all were new and wonderful, beautiful things to the boys, and though they stood up the whole evening through, it passed so swiftly that the curtain's fall drew from them long sighs of regret.
From that time on they were to dream of that wonderful play and that beautiful, repentant woman.

So securely was she enthroned in their regard that no rude and senseless jest could ever unseat her.

Of course, the men, as they went out, laughed and joked in the manner of such men, and swore in their disappointment because it was a serious drama in place of the comedy and the farce which they had expected.
"It's a regular sell," Bill said.