Many people fancied that Sir Donald looked more ghostly, more faded even than usual as the season wore on. They said he was getting too old to go about so much as he did, and that it was a pity Society "got such a hold" on men who ought to have had enough of it long ago. One night he met Lady Holme at the Opera. She was in her box and he in the stalls.

After the second act she called him to her with a gay little nod of invitation. Lady Cardington had been with her during the act, but left the box when the curtain fell to see some friends close by. When Sir Donald tapped at the door Lady Holme was quite alone. He came in quietly--even his walk was rather ghostly--and sat down beside her.

"You don't look well," she said after they had greeted each other.

"I am quite well," he answered, with evident constraint.

"I haven't seen you to speak to since that little note of yours."

A very faint colour rose in his faded cheeks.

"After Miss Schley's first night?" he murmured.

His yellow fingers moved restlessly.

"Do you know that your son told me you would write?" she continued.

She was leaning back in her chair, half hidden by the curtain of the box.

"Leo!"

Sir Donald's voice was almost sharp and startling.

"How should he--you spoke about me then?"

There was a flash of light in his pale, almost colourless eyes.

"I wondered where you had gone, and he said you would write next day."

"That was all?"

"Why, how suspicious you are!"

She spoke banteringly.

"Suspicious! No--but Leo does not understand me very well. I was rather old when he was born, and I have never been able to be much with him. He was educated in England, and my duties of course lay abroad."

He paused, looking at her and moving his thin white moustache. Then, in an uneasy voice, he added:

"You must not take my character altogether from Leo."

"Nor you mine altogether from Miss Schley," said Lady Holme.

She scarcely knew why she said it. She thought herself stupid, ridiculous almost, for saying it. Yet she could not help speaking.

Perhaps she relied on Sir Donald's age. Or perhaps--but who knows why a woman is cautious or incautious in moments the least expected? God guides her, perhaps, or the devil--or merely a bottle imp. Men never know, and that is why they find her adorable.

Sir Donald said nothing for a moment, only made the familiar movement with his hands that was a sign in him of concealed excitement or emotion. His eyes were fixed upon the ledge of the box. Lady Holme was puzzled by his silence and, at last, was on the point of making a remark on some other subject--Plancon's singing--when he spoke, like a man who had made up his mind firmly to take an unusual, perhaps a difficult course.

"I wish to take it from you," he said. "Give me the right one, not an imitation of an imitation."

She knew at once what he meant and was surprised. Had Leo Ulford been talking?

"Lady Holme," he went on, "I am taking a liberty. I know that. It's a thing I have never done before, knowingly. Don't think me unconscious of what I am doing. But I am an old man, and old men can sometimes venture--allowance is sometimes made for them. I want to claim that allowance now for what I am going to say."

"Well?" she said, neither hardly nor gently.

In truth she scarcely knew whether she wished him to speak or not.

"My son is--Leo is not a safe friend for you at this moment."

Again the dull, brick-red flush rose in his cheeks. There was an odd, flattened look just above his cheekbones near his eyes, and the eyes themselves had a strange expression as of determination and guilt mingled.

"Your son?" Lady Holme said. "But--"

"I do not wish to assume anything, but I--well, my daughter-in-law sometimes comes to me."

"Sometimes!" said Lady Holme.

"Leo is not a good husband," Sir Donald said. "But that is not the point. He is also a bad--friend."

"Why don't you say lover?" she almost whispered.

He grasped his knee with one hand and moved the hand rapidly to and fro.

"I must say of him to you that where his pleasure or his vanity is concerned he is unscrupulous."

"Why say all this to a woman?"

"You mean that you know as much as I?"

"Don't you think it likely?"

"Henrietta--"

"Who is that?"

"My daughter-in-law has done everything for Leo--too much. She gets nothing--not even gratitude. I am sorry to say he has no sense of chivalry towards women. You know him, I daresay. But do you know him thwarted?"

"Ah, you don't think so badly of me after all?" she said quickly.

"I--I think of you that--that--"

He stopped.

"I think that I could not bear to see the whiteness of your wings smirched by a child of mine." he added.

"You too!" she said.

Suddenly tears started into her eyes.