_Mrs. V. B._ Ruth Tredgett, I am very, very sorry for you. If you are willing to leave this unhappy course of life I will provide you with the means of earning your living honestly.
_Ruth._ Honestly! Why, lady, I’m too fur gone for that!
_Mrs. V. B._ I hope not. I have assisted many, very many such women as yourself, and I have seldom found my efforts wasted.
_Ruth._ But you--a lady, high-born, high-bred, beautiful, rich, good--(_In amazement._)
_Mrs. V. B._ Hush. (_Rises._) No matter what I am. (_With emotion._) Who shall say what the very best of us might not have been but for the accident of education and good example? Tell me, Ruth Tredgett, will you accept my offer?
_Ruth._ (_kneels at her feet and looks up into her face_). I will!
_Mr. S._ (_very gently_). Will you have the goodness to tell Mrs. Van Brugh that Mr. Smailey is here to see her, by appointment?
_Serv._ Mr. Smailey, sir? Yes, sir. (_Going._)
_Fitz._ (_stopping SERVANT_). _And_ his solicitor.
_Mr. S._ (_with mild sternness_). You have followed me again, sir?
_Fitz._ Followed you again, sir; according to contract.
_Mr. S._ There is no contract between us that entitles you to dog my footsteps as though you were hunting down a thief.
_Fitz._ Hunting down a thief? Oh, yes. To enable me to assist you in blighting the character of the best and loveliest woman that ever shed a light upon a private detective’s thorny path, I am to have the free run of your house and papers; I am to accompany you wherever you go, and you are to introduce me everywhere as your solicitor.
_Mr. S._ Sir, you are not in the least like a solicitor. You are a ridiculously dressed person. You are like nothing in the world but what you are--a private detective. I desire to press hardly on no fellow-creature, but you are a spy! that base and utterably abject thing--a spy!
_Fitz._ Mr. Smailey, when you complain that you find my society irksome, you have my profoundest sympathy; I find it so myself. When you revile my profession, my sentiments are entirely in accord, for I have the very poorest opinion of it. But when you imply that I don’t look the character I undertake to represent, why _then_, sir, you touch the private detective on the most sensitive part of his moral anatomy. I’m not a blameless character, but if I undertook to personate the Archbishop of Canterbury I believe I should look the part, and my conversation would be found to be in keeping with the character.