"I know perfectly well," the Duke acknowledged, "what a rotten bore I've been, and how sick of me you must be." He wrote on: "I shall ask Mrs. Falconer (her husband is in the States); she is quite alone in town at Lady Sorgham's." As he quoted this last name the Duke folded his list up. He nodded affectionately at Jimmy. "You'll arrange perhaps to come down with Mrs. Falconer on the Friday train?"

And Bulstrode capitulating weakly, murmured, "Oh, we'll fetch the toys and things for the tree," he offered.

"Ripping!" his Grace nodded.

Jimmy, on his way at last to London, stopped once more at The Dials, and was hurrying across the forest when the d.u.c.h.ess herself appeared to him at the big dial. She wore her furs, m.u.f.f, and big enveloping stole, her hat with fur on it, and a veil. She was not in house or garden trim. The urban air of her toilet was a surprise to Bulstrode, and he took in her readiness for something he had not expected, something great, something decisive.

"It's good of you to come when you must be full of delightful ways of pa.s.sing your time, Mr. Bulstrode," she said, "and I wanted so much to see you again."

"Again?"

"Of course," she replied nodding, "again and many times. But I mean I wanted to see you _here_." Bulstrode did not want her to tell him a piece of final news. He did not care to learn of an arbitrary departure, and he said, laughing: "Then you don't like my property?

Any repairs you...?"

"Oh, I adore The Dials," she said gravely, "and I can't think why they ever let you buy it, or what you'll do with it after I'm gone." She smiled. ".... or with whom." Before he could speak she added: "Where is my husband to-day?"

"I left him wandering about the house like a lost spirit," Bulstrode replied. "Looking," he went on, "all about for something or other. I expect he himself didn't quite know what. For something to cheer up the empty rooms."

"Oh, don't," she murmured.

But he seemed pleased with the picture he drew. "I doubt if Westboro'

stops in the house alone; he's probably gone out shooting."

"But he has a house full of people....?"

"No one has come, or is coming, after all."

"You don't mean to say that they've all refused!"

"Yes," Jimmy said, "every man of them, and all the women as well."

The d.u.c.h.ess put out her hand quickly, and said touchingly: "Oh, but you don't for a moment think----"

"That it's because of the scandal, dear lady?" he smiled. "Well, that would be a new phase. No, I think on the other hand they would revel, and the only reason in the world that they have not come down is that they were really asked too late. Christmas week, you know--

"And, of course, then, Mrs. Falconer," the d.u.c.h.ess's face brightened.

"She----"

"Oh, _she_!" Bulstrode exclaimed, "she's as right as possible. She's sure to be along in good season."

"Oh!" accepted the d.u.c.h.ess, "and with whom does she come?"

Bulstrode waited. "Well, of course, the poor thing expects to find more or less some one to help her bear up her end. And I can't say how she will take the fact of only us two."

The d.u.c.h.ess interrupted cheerfully:

"Why, she, of course, will go directly back! You don't think for a second that she would stop on alone like that?"

"Alone?" Bulstrode gave her with a little malice. "But she'll have Westboro' and me so entirely to herself and one can always ask in the rector or curate or corral a neighbor."

But the d.u.c.h.ess shook her head as if she understood. "Oh, no, not at this time."

Bulstrode miscomprehended blithely: "Christmas time? You see, I know the visiting lady pretty well, and I believe she'll feel me to be more or less of a standby, and I know her spirit and her human kindness. I am inclined to think that she will feel it's up to her not to run off like a hare; to think that Westboro' may, in a way, need her; and that when she finds everybody's gone back on the poor man, and there's to be no tree after all, why, I'm tempted, by jove, to think----"

The d.u.c.h.ess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it."

"Yes, if you like," he laughed. "Or be a sport," he preferred to put it. "Stay on, stand by. It will be perfectly ripping of her, you know."

But the d.u.c.h.ess had no sympathy for the other woman. Her eyes fixed themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it?

Does he shoot birds on your premises?"

Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had intended going up to see her husband.

"Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off place, I have an engagement."

Impulsively putting out her hand the d.u.c.h.ess exclaimed: "I can't ever, ever thank you."

"Oh, after your divorce----"

But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me to think then that you do not believe...."

"Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "It's I who am as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict."

He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone a problem which it takes two to answer. When you see Westboro' you will know."

She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?"

He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner.

"I thought you didn't believe in divorces?"

"Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!"

He laughed. "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?"

With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes, you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend.

If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to you."

He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing."

There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to, and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away again. Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?"

"Yes, at Methodist meetings."

She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever _has_ happened it's only been since you told me things."

Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden, that her companion found himself embarra.s.sed and could hardly find words to say good-by to her. She went on to say, in a tone so low that he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "You told me you could not advise my husband to come to me."