"I do not object to telling you," replied Westgate. "It should have been plain to you at the time. My purpose was to make it clear to the bishop that the woman whom you or your friends produced in your behalf was utterly unworthy to testify in any matter relating to the welfare of the Church."
"Why unworthy?"
"Because she is a menace to society, a disbeliever in God, a scoffer at religion, a woman who violates all rules of womanly propriety at her pleasure."
"Why do you make that last assertion?"
"As she appears to be your assistant and associate in your economic enterprises, I presumed that you were familiar with her character and reputation. However, I may say that a woman who within three months of her husband's death spreads her alluring net to entrap the weak-minded son of a millionaire, and at the same time openly consorts with another man, a demagogue, an atheist, a villifier of both Church and state, surely such a woman cannot be described as a model of propriety."
The minister, by the exercise of great self-restraint, maintained his coolness and intrepidity.
"The two men to whom you refer," he said, "are Barry Malleson and Stephen Lamar. Will you kindly give me a single instance of unwomanly conduct on the part of Mrs. Bradley with either of them?"
"Certainly! Had it not been for your interruption last night you would have heard it all then and there. It is a fact, as I intended to make her admit, that in the early evening, on the Malleson foot-bridge, she indulged in most unseemly demonstrations of affection with this man Lamar."
"Was that the occasion to which you referred last evening?"
"It was."
"And it is your information that Lamar is the man who was with her on the bridge?"
