“Marguerite is coming to live with me in my studio.”

And her challenging gaze met George’s.

“Oh!” George could not suppress his pained inquietude at this decision having been made without his knowledge.  Both girls misapprehended his feeling.  “That’s it, is it?”

“Well,” said Agg, “what can Mr. Haim expect?  Here Marguerite’s been paying this woman two shillings a day and her food, and letting her take a parcel home at nights.  And then all of a sudden she comes dressed up for tea, and sits down, and Mr. Haim says she’s his future wife.  What does he expect?  Does he expect Marguerite to kiss her and call her mamma?  The situation’s impossible.”

“But you can’t stop people from falling in love, Agg, you know.  It’s not a crime,” said Mr. Prince in his weak voice surprisingly from the press.

“I know it’s not a crime,” said Agg sharply.  “And nobody wants to stop people from falling in love.  If Mr. Haim chooses to go mad about a charwoman, when his wife, and such a wife, ’s been dead barely three years, that’s his concern.  It’s true the lady isn’t much more than half his age, and that the whole business would be screamingly funny if it wasn’t disgusting; but still he’s a free agent.  And Marguerite’s a free agent too, I hope.  Of course he’s thunder-struck to discover that Marguerite is a free agent.  He would be!”

“He certainly is in a state,” said George, with an uneasy short laugh.

Agg continued: 

“And why is he in a state?  Because Marguerite says she shall leave the house?  Not a bit.  Only because of what he thinks is the scandal of her leaving.  Mr. Haim is a respectable man.  He’s simply all respectability.  Respectability’s his god—­Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.  Always has been.  He’d sacrifice everything to respectability—­except the lovely Lobley.  It’s not respectable in a respectable family for a girl to leave home on account of her stepmother.  And so he’s in a state, if you please!...  If he wanted to carry on with Mrs. Lobley, let him carry on with her.  But no!  That’s not respectable.  He’s just got to marry her!” Agg sneered.

George was startled, perhaps excusably, at the monstrous doctrine implied in Agg’s remarks.  He had thought himself a man of the world, experienced, unshockable.  But he blenched, and all his presence of mind was needed to preserve a casual, cool demeanour.  The worst of the trial was Marguerite’s tranquil acceptance of the attitude of her friend.  She glanced at Agg in silent, admiring approval.  He surmised that until that moment he had been perfectly ignorant of what girls really were.

“I see,” said George courageously.  And then, strangely, he began to admire too.  And he pulled himself together.

“I think I shall leave to-morrow,” Marguerite announced.  “Morning.  It will be much better.  She can look after him.  I don’t see that I owe any duty ...”