One quick movement was made by Margaret Pettifer.  The truth of her husband’s description was a revelation, so exact it was.  Therein lay Stella Ballantyne’s charm, and her power to create champions and friends.  Her history was known to you, the miseries of her marriage, the suspicion of crime.  You expected a woman of adventures and lo! there stood before you one with “something virginal” in her appearance and her manner, which made its soft and irresistible appeal.

“I recognise that feeling of mine,” Pettifer resumed, “and I try to put it aside.  And putting it aside I ask myself and you, Margaret, this:  Here’s a woman who has been through a pretty bad time, who has been unhappy, who has stood in the dock, who has been acquitted.  Is it quite fair that when at last she has floated into a haven of peace two private people like Hazlewood and myself should take it upon ourselves to review the verdict and perhaps reverse it?”

“But there’s Dick, Robert,” cried Mrs. Pettifer.  “There’s Dick.  Surely he’s our first thought.”

“Yes, there’s Dick,” Mr. Pettifer repeated.  “And Dick’s my second point.  You are all worrying about Dick from the social point of view—­the external point of view.  Well, we have got to take that into our consideration.  But we are bound to look at him, the man, as well.  Don’t forget that, Margaret!  Well, I find the two points of view identical.  But our neighbours won’t.  Will you?”

Mrs. Pettifer was baffled.

“I don’t understand,” she said.

“I’ll explain.  From the social standpoint what’s really important as regards Dick?  That he should go out to dinner?  No.  That he should have children?  Yes!”

And here Mrs. Pettifer interposed again.

“But they must be the right children,” she exclaimed.  “Better that he should have none than that he should have children—­”

“With an hereditary taint,” Pettifer agreed.  “Admitted, Margaret.  If we come to the conclusion that Stella Ballantyne did what she was accused of doing we, in spite of all the verdicts in the world, are bound to resist this marriage.  I grant it.  Because of that conviction I dismiss the plea that we are unfair to the woman in reviewing the trial.  There are wider, greater considerations.”

These were the first words of comfort which Mrs. Pettifer had heard since her husband began to expound.  She received them with enthusiasm.

“I am so glad to hear that.”

“Yes, Margaret,” Pettifer retorted drily.  “But please ask yourself this question:  (it is where, to my thinking, the social and the personal elements join) if this marriage is broken off, is Dick likely to marry at all?”

“Why not?” asked Margaret.

“He is thirty-four.  He has had, no doubt, many opportunities of marriage.  He must have had.  He is good-looking, well off and a good fellow.  This is the first time he has wanted to marry.  If he is disappointed here will he try again?”