Some of the husbands, indeed, even now ventured to offer excuses for Sophy, and to point out that a good deal might be urged in her behalf--her lonely position, her ignorance of the world, and of the character of the man she had gone off with; and, still more, the temptation to which she would be exposed by such an unprincipled blackguard as Robert Gregory. But these suggestions were contemptuously put aside. The bad character of the man, in place of being a palliation, was an aggravation of the offence, and this was satisfactorily proved by that _argumentum ad hominem_ in which women so delight.
"You know very well, my dear, that if your own daughter had gone off with such a man, you would have considered it a very much worse business, and have been far more angry about it, than if she had run away with some gentleman of position and character; so how can you now talk such nonsense as to say that the man's bad character is a palliation of her fault?"
I have often wondered why it is that we women are so much more severe upon offenders of our own sex than men are. Is it that men know so much more of life and human nature than we do? Is it that they know how comparatively few women ever are seriously thus tempted during their lives, and how hard it is to withstand great trials of this kind? Is it because they know, too, that very few of us who are so loud and so bitter in our contempt for those who fall, but would, if placed under the same circumstances, and exposed to the same temptation, have acted precisely in the same way? I think it must be that; and when I hear women so loud and bitter in their denunciations, and when I see men look grieved and sorry, but say nothing, I cannot help thinking sometimes, that it would be better if we judged not so harshly and scornfully of those who have fallen under a temptation to which we, through God's mercy, have never been exposed.
Of course, next to the startling events which had taken place, the great question upon which the interest of Canterbury was fixed, was whether Mr. Harmer had destroyed his will or not before he died. But this was a point upon which no one could enlighten them, and all awaited with intense interest the day of the funeral, after which it would, of course, be known all about it.