"
"Perhaps nobody--nobody but you, mother--is brave in the right time and
place."
She knew that this was not meant in irony. "I am glad you say that,
Philip."
"It's only your due. But aren't you a little too hard upon cowards, at
times? For the sort of person she is, if you infer the sort from the
worst appearance she has made in the whole business, I think she has done
pretty well."
"Why had she left the Brown girl to take all your resentment alone for
the last six or eight months?"
"She may have thought that she was getting her share of the punishment in
the fever my resentment brought on?"
"Philip, do you really believe that her fever, if she had one, came from
that?"
"I think she believes it, and there's no doubt but she was badly scared."
"Oh, there's no doubt of that!"
"But come, mother, why should we take her at the worst? Of course, she
has a complex nature. I see that as clearly as you do. I don't believe
we look at her diversely, in the smallest particular. But why shouldn't
a complex nature be credited with the same impulses towards the truth as
a single nature? Why shouldn't we allow that Miss Shirley had the same
wish to set herself right with me as Miss Andrews would have had in her
place?"
"I dare say she wished to set herself right with you, but not from the
same wish that Miss Andrews would have had.
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