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The old gentleman’s expression, when subsequently Faust presented him to Marguerite, would have been interesting:

“Allow me, my wife. My dear, a–a friend of mine. You may remember meeting him that night at your aunt’s.”

As I have said, there would have been ructions; but I do not myself see what could have been done. There was nothing in the bond to the effect that Faust should not marry, so far as we are told. The Old Man had a sense of humour. My own opinion is that, after getting over the first annoyance, he himself would have seen the joke. I can even picture him looking in now and again on Mr. and Mrs. Faust. The children would be hurried off to bed. There would be, for a while, an atmosphere of constraint.

But the Old Man had a way with him. He would have told one or two stories at which Marguerite would have blushed, at which Faust would have grinned. I can see the old fellow occasionally joining the homely social board. The children, awed at first, would have sat silent, with staring eyes. But, as I have said, the Old Man had a way with him. Why should he not have reformed? The good woman’s unconsciously exerted influence–the sweet childish prattle! One hears of such things. Might he not have come to be known as “Nunkie”?

Myself–I believe I have already mentioned it–I would not have married Marguerite. She is not my ideal of a good girl. I never liked the way she deceived her mother. And that aunt of hers! Well, a nice girl would not have been friends with such a woman. She did not behave at all too well to Sybil, either. It is clear to me that she led the boy on. And what was she doing with that box of jewels, anyhow? She was not a fool. She could not have gone every day to that fountain, chatted with those girl friends of hers, and learnt nothing. She must have known that people don’t go leaving twenty thousand pounds’ worth of jewels about on doorsteps as part of a round game. Her own instinct, if she had been a good girl, would have told her to leave the thing alone.

I don’t believe in these innocent people who do not know what they are doing half their time. Ask any London magistrate what he thinks of the lady who explains that she picked up the diamond brooch:-

“Not meaning, of course, your Worship, to take it. I would not do such a thing. It just happened this way, your Worship. I was standing as you might say here, and not seeing anyone about in the shop I opened the case and took it out, thinking as perhaps it might belong to someone; and then this gentleman here, as I had not noticed before, comes up quite suddenly and says; ‘You come along with me,’ he says. ‘What for,’ I says, ‘when I don’t even know you?’ I says. ‘For stealing,’ he says. ‘Well, that’s a hard word to use to a lady,’ I says; ‘I don’t know what you mean, I’m sure.'”

And if she had put them all on, not thinking, what would a really nice girl have done when the gentleman came up and assured her they were hers? She would have been thirty seconds taking them off and flinging them back into the box.

“Thank you,” she would have said, “I’ll trouble you to leave this garden as quickly as you entered it and take them with you. I’m not that sort of girl.”

Marguerite clings to the jewels, and accepts the young man’s arm for a moonlight promenade. And when it does enter into her innocent head that he and she have walked that shady garden long enough, what does she do when she has said good-bye and shut the door? She opens the ground-floor window and begins to sing!