I would have. I would at any time. I have always thought of her as beautiful and kind. But I heard you say the words: "has been behaving very badly," and I thought you meant that Captain Tietjens had. I denied it. If you meant that his wife has, I deny it, too. She's an admirable wife...and mother...that sort of thing, for all I know...

She said to herself:

'Now why do I say that? What's Hecuba to me?' and then:

'It's to defend his honour, of course...I'm trying to present Captain Tietjens as English Country Gentleman complete with admirably arranged establishment, stables, kennels, spouse, offspring...That's a queer thing to want to do!'

Miss Wanostrocht who had breathed deeply said now:

'I'm extremely glad to hear that. Lady Macmaster certainly said that Mrs Tietjens was--let us say--at least a neglectful wife...Vain, you know; idle; overdressed...All that...And you appeared to defend Mrs Tietjens.'

'She's a smart woman in smart Society,' Valentine said, 'but it's with her husband's concurrence. She has a right to be...

'We shouldn't,' Miss Wanostrocht said, 'be in the extraordinary muddle to which you referred if you did not so continually interrupt me. I was trying to say that, for you, an inexperienced girl, brought up in a sheltered home, no pitfall could be more dangerous than a man with a wife who neglected her duties!'

Valentine said:

'You will have to excuse my interrupting you. It is, you know, rather more my funeral than yours.'

Miss Wanostrocht said quickly:

'You can't say that. You don't know how ardently...Valentine said:

'Yes, yes...Your schwärm for my father's memory and all...But my father couldn't bring it about that I should lead a sheltered life...I'm about as experienced as any girl of the lower classes...No doubt it was his doing, but don't make any mistakes.'

She added:

'Still, it's I that's the corpse. You're conducting the inquest. So it's more fun for you.'

Miss Wanostrocht had grown slightly pale:

'If; if ...' she stammered slightly, 'by "experience" you mean...'

'I don't,' Valentine exclaimed, 'and you have no right to infer that I do on the strength of a conversation you've had, but shouldn't have had, with one of the worst tongues in London...I mean that my father left us so that I had to earn my and my mother's living as a servant for some months after his death. That was what his training came to. But I can look after myself...In consequence...

Miss Wanostrocht had thrown herself back in her chair.

'But...' she exclaimed: she had grown completely pale--like discoloured wax. 'There was a subscription...We...' She began again: 'We knew that he hadn't...'

'You subscribed,' Valentine said, 'to purchase his library and presented it to his wife...who had nothing to eat but what my wages as a tweeny maid got for her.' But before the pallor of the other lady she tried to add a touch of generosity: 'Of course the subscribers wanted, very naturally, to preserve as much as they could of his personality. A man's books are very much himself. That was all right.' She added: 'All the same I had that training: in a suburban basement. So you cannot teach me a great deal about the shady in life. I was in the family of a Middlesex County Councillor. In Ealing.'

Miss Wanostrocht said faintly:

'This is very dreadful!'

'It isn't really!' Valentine said. 'I wasn't badly treated as tweeny maids go. It would have been better if the Mistress hadn't been a constant invalid and the cook constantly drunk...After that I did a little office work. For the suffragettes. That was after old Mr Tietjens came back from abroad and gave mother some work on a paper he owned. We scrambled along then, somehow. Old Mr Tietjens was father's greatest friend, so father's side, as you might say, turned up trumps--If you like to think that to console you...

Miss Wanostrocht was bending her face down over her table, presumably to hide a little of it from Valentine or to avoid the girl's eyes.

Valentine went on:

'One knows all about the conflict between a man's private duties and his public achievements. But with a very little less of the flamboyant in his life my father might have left us very much better off. It isn't what I want--to be a cross between a sergeant in the army and an upper housemaid. Any more than I wanted to be an under one.'

Miss Wanostrocht uttered an 'Oh!' of pain.