n it all. I am longing to
have it all off my mind. But first of all, there is just one thing which
I want to ask you."

His face as he looked towards her gave her almost a shock. Very little
was left of his healthy colouring. Already there were lines under his
eyes, and he was certainly thinner. And there was something else which
almost appalled her. There was fear in his manner. He sat like a man
waiting for sentence, a man fore-doomed.

"I want to know," she said, "what has brought you--here. I want to know
what manner of persuasion has prevailed--when mine was so ineffectual.
Don't think that I am not glad that you decided as you did. I am
glad--very. You are in your rightful place, and I am only too thankful
to hear about you, and read--and watch. But--we are jealous creatures, we
women, you know, and I want to know whose and what arguments prevailed,
when mine were so very insufficient."

He answered her without hesitation, but his tone was dull and spiritless.

"I cannot tell you!"

There was a short silence. She gathered her skirts for a moment in her
hand as though about to rise, but apparently changed her mind. She waited
for some time, and then she spoke again.

"Perhaps you think that I ought not to ask?"

He looked at her hopelessly.

"No, I don't think that. You have a right to ask. But it doesn't alter
things, does it? I can't tell you."

"You asked me to marry you."

"It was at Blakely. We were so far out of the world--such a different
world. I think that I had forgotten all that I wished to forget.
Everything seemed possible there."

"You mean that you would have married me and told me nothing of
circumstances in your life, so momentous that they have practically
exercised in this matter of your return to politics a compelling
influence over you?"

"I am sure," he said, "that I should not have told you!"

His unhappiness moved her. She still lingered. She drew a little breath,
and she went a good deal further than she had meant to go.

"It has been suggested to me," she said, "that your reappearance was due
to a woman's influence. Is this true?"

"A woman had something to do with it," he admitted.

"Who is she?"

"Her name," he answered, "is Blanche Phillimore. It was the person to
whom you yourself alluded."

The Duchess maintained her self-control. She was quite pale, however, and
her tone was growing ominously harder.

"Is she a connection of yours?"

"No!"

"Is there anyt