"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you originally came."

She looked at him rather quizzically.

"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"

"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or less true one."

But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say:

"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the divorce as soon as possible."

"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."

He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight, my dear d.u.c.h.ess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the Duke."

She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went on to make out her case for her.

"He has quite spoiled your life. He has been a brute, and not in the least worth your----"

But the d.u.c.h.ess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him.

"It's a _piege_," she murmured, "an _autodafe_."

"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the justice and right, my dear d.u.c.h.ess, are all on your side."

"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such words."

Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"

"If he were," emphasized the d.u.c.h.ess, "didn't I forgive him?"

"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more, therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."

She said pa.s.sionately: "What do you mean, Mr. Bulstrode? How--why do you speak to me like this?"

Her extraordinary guest drank his tea with singular peace of mind.

"I think he is dreadfully to be blamed."

"But why should you tell it to me?"

"Why not?" he returned, his charming eyes on hers with the greatest tribute of affection and sympathy--"I've known you for years, I'm fond of you, you've been horribly wronged, and I'm going to see that things are made right for you. I've been very blind. I have longed for a reconciliation, I admit, with this husband who, poor stuff as he is, loves you still. But I see what a sentimental a.s.s I've been, and how right you are."

She put her hand to her throat as if the soft lace suffocated her; she had grown very pale indeed.

"What," she gasped, "do you know of my plans and my intentions, Mr.

Bulstrode? I have not told them to you."

"But I've been able to guess them," he replied.

"You've dared to, then?" she flashed.

"Oh, don't blame me," he returned. "Seeing you as I have all the while, I've been forced to make out something--to attach some reason to your living in this isolation. You've wanted, not unnaturally and very cleverly, I acknowledge, to see what's been going on at Westboro', what the Duke's been up to."

Her voice was suffocated as she said:

"Oh, stop, please! Whatever has come to you, Mr. Bulstrode, I don't know, or why you dare to speak to me as you do."

Seeing her agitation he said smoothly: "My dear child, you're so right in everything you've done, and of course I shall stand by you."

She made a dismissing gesture. "Oh, I don't need you, I don't want you."

He smiled benignly on her. "But I'm here, and I'm going to see you through."

"See me through what?"

"Through your divorce," he said practically.

"But you're Westboro's friend," she stammered, and he repudiated with just a little hesitation in his voice:

"Oh, not so much as yours. But I'm the friend of both of you in this.

It's the best thing all round."

The gentleman's att.i.tude so baffled her, he was so serious, and yet he took it so lightly, apparently, that she was obliged to believe he meant what he said.

"You talked to me very differently," she reminded him, and he shrugged.

"Oh, I've been far too emotional and unpractical. I'm going henceforth to look at things from the worldly and conventional stand-point."

She put out her hand beseechingly. "Oh, leave that for the rest of us.

It quite spoils you."

"I don't pretend to think--" He made his gaze small as he looked past her in an att.i.tude of reflection. "Oh, I don't claim that, it's an ideal way of looking at things. But there is not much idealism in the modern divorce, is there?"

The d.u.c.h.ess took a turn across the floor, twisting her fair hands together, then came round to his side and sat down on a low chair near him.

"Are you quite serious?" she asked. "But I know that you are not. Let me at least think so. Your words shock me horribly"--and she looked piteously at him. "I have felt you to be such a gentle person, and yours is such an understanding atmosphere."

Bulstrode had given himself methodically another cup of tea, and helped himself now to sugar.

"Oh, atmosphere!" he repeated scornfully. "One can't live on air, you know. And I have been of the most colorless kind."

"Well, you've changed terribly," she accused him.

"I've only come down to solid earth," he explained. "And the earth's after all where we belong, d.u.c.h.ess. Stand firm, keep to your own part of it, and don't cloud-gaze, or somebody with a claim will knock you off your little foothold."

"Oh, _heavens_!" exclaimed his companion.

The gentleman, who appeared at length quite to have finished his material enjoyment of the tea, put his second empty cup down and looked at the lady.