I didn't want to write you; I wanted first to see how it would turn out; and when I saw that it was turning out perfectly, I thought it better to wait until you could return and hear all about it from me, because one can't write that sort of thing--" "Nina!" "What, dear ?" she said, startled.
"Who the dickens _is_ Eileen ?" "Philip! You are precisely like Austin; you grow impatient of preliminary details when I'm doing my very best attempting to explain just as clearly as I can.

Now I will go on and say that Eileen is Molly Erroll's daughter, and the courts appointed Austin and me guardians for her and for her brother Gerald." "Oh!" "Now is it clear to you ?" "Yes," he said, thinking of the tragedy which had left the child so utterly alone in the world, save for her brother and a distant kinship by marriage with the Gerards.
For a while he sat brooding, arms loosely folded, immersed once more in his own troubles.
"It seems a shame," he said, "that a family like ours, whose name has always spelled decency, should find themselves entangled in the very things their race has always hated and managed to avoid.

And through me, too." "It was not your fault, Phil." "No, not the divorce part.

Do you suppose I wouldn't have taken any kind of medicine before resorting to that! But what's the use; for you can try as you may to keep your name clean, and then you can fold your arms and wait to see what a hopeless fool fate makes of you." "But no disgrace touches you, dear," she said tremulously.
"I've been all over that, too," he said with quiet bitterness.

"You are partly right; nobody cares in this town.