‘And if his faults — ’ I began.

‘Faults!’ she cried, bursting into passionate tears. ‘Who dares malign him? He had a soul worth millions of the friends to whom he stooped!’

‘No one can have loved him better, no one can hold him in dearer remembrance than I,’ I replied. ‘I meant to say, if you have no compassion for his mother; or if his faults — you have been bitter on them — ’

‘It’s false,’ she cried, tearing her black hair; ‘I loved him!’

‘ — if his faults cannot,’ I went on, ‘be banished from your remembrance, in such an hour; look at that figure, even as one you have never seen before, and render it some help!’