.

.

'Oh, if she had had any one to advise her, to restrain her! But she had no mother! No mother! Poor Stephen!' The pity of it, not for himself but for the woman he loved, overcame him.
Sitting down heavily before his desk, he put his face on his hands, and his great shoulders shook.
Long, long after the violence of his emotion had passed, he sat there motionless, thinking with all the power and sincerity he knew; thinking for Stephen's good.
When a strong man thinks unselfishly some good may come out of it.

He may blunder; but the conclusion of his reasoning must be in the main right.

So it was with Harold.