“Do you mean to say,” he demanded, in a voice choked with rage, “that that young scoundrel has dared …”
“He?” She shook her head. “Gracious no! He isn't that sort! It was up to me to make the advances …”
“Jane!”
“It's all right, dad. He wouldn't let me. But I am fond of him, and I do believe he is innocent, and … oh, dear …”
And then her father took her on his knees as he used to do when she was a small girl and had broken her pet doll, and talked to her at length and very gently. For, while he believed devoutly in a holy trinity composed of money, respectability, and pedigree, he also believed in fairness: fairness hedged in by certain safety-first, protective, social conventions.
“If Mr. Wade is innocent,” he wound up, “let him prove it. And then—well—we'll talk about it again. But promise me that you will keep away from him as long as he is under a cloud—right or wrong—innocent or guilty. Our social prejudices may be wretched and mean and narrow, but—there they are! We simply have to live up to them this side of Utopia.”
“That's exactly what Hector says,” she replied through her tears. “He told me that he has no right to speak to me—that …”
And then her father mumbled something about Hector Wade, after all, not being such a bad fellow, and thought to himself that he would strengthen the younger man's resolution to keep away from Jane by a few, kindly, but decisive words.
