CHAPTER VIII.
The Lady and the Problem.
She is a good woman, the Heroine of the Problem Play, but accidents will happen, and other people were to blame.
Perhaps that is really the Problem: who was responsible for the heroine's past?
Was it her father?
She does not say so--not in so many words.
That is not her way.

It is not for her, the silently-suffering victim of complicated antecedent incidents, to purchase justice for herself by pointing the finger of accusation against him who, whatever his faults may be, was once, at all events, her father.

That one fact in his favour she can never forget.

Indeed she would not if she could.

That one asset, for whatever it may be worth by the time the Day of Judgment arrives, he shall retain.