"
"Intimacy? Yes, I suppose it _is_ intimacy, of a sort."
"And how it could have happened with a man like that--"
"A man like what?"
"Well, my dear girl, a man that Horace wouldn't dream of allowing you
to meet, even in his own house."
"Horace? You talk about my being under an obligation. It was he who
helped to put me under it."
"And how?"
"By never delivering one of my messages to him; by letting him believe
that I behaved horribly to him; that I sent him away and never gave
him a thought--when he had been so magnificent. There were a thousand
things I wanted to explain and set right; and I asked Horace for an
opportunity and he never gave it me. He can't blame me if I take it
now."
"If Horace did all these things, he did them for the best possible
reasons. He knows rather more of this young man than you do, or could
have any idea of. I don't know what he is now, but he was, at one
time, thoroughly disreputable."
"Whatever _did_ he do?"
"Do? He did everything. He drank; he ran after the worst sort of
women--he mixes now with the lowest class of journalists in town; he
lived for months, Horace says, with a horrid little actress in the
next house to this."
Lucia's face quivered like a pale flame.
"I don't believe it. I don't believe it for a moment."
"It's absurd to say you don't believe what everybody knows, and what
anybody here can tell you."
"I never heard a word against him here.
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