ain man, Wingrave? Do you wish to pose
as the friend of a woman whom the world has thought too ambitious to
waste time upon such follies? There is the Marchioness! She would do you
more credit still."

"Thank you," he answered. "I like to choose the path myself when I pass
into the maze of follies!"

"You have not yet explained yourself," she reminded him. "Of all people
in world, you have chosen us for your presumptive friends. Why? You
hate us both. You know that you do. Is it part of a scheme? Lumley is
investing money on your advice, I am allowing myself to be seen about
with you more than is prudent--considering all things. Do you want
to rake out the ashes of our domestic hearth--to play the part
of--melodramatic villain? You are ingenious enough, and powerful
enough."

"You put strange ideas into my head," he told her lightly. "Why should
I not play the part that you suggest? It might be amusing, and you
certainly deserve all the evil which I could bring upon you."

She leaned a little across the table towards him. Her eyes were soft
and bright, and they looked full into his. The color in her cheeks was
natural. The air around him was faintly fragrant with the perfume of her
clothes and hair.

"We couldn't leave off playing at the game--and act it, could we?" she
murmured. "We couldn't really--be friends?"

Lady Ruth had played her trump card. She had touched his fingers with
hers, her eyes shone with the promise of unutterable things. But if
Wingrave was moved, he did not show it.

"I wish," he said, "that I could accept your offer in the spirit
with which you tender it. Unfortunately, I am a maimed person. My
sensibilities have gone. Friendship, in the more intimate sense of
the word, I may never hope to feel again. Enmity--well, that is more
comprehensible; even enmity," he continued slowly, "which might prompt a
woman to disguise herself as her own lady's maid, to seek out a tool
to get rid of the man she feared. Pardon me, Lady Ruth, you are eating
nothing."

She pulled down her veil.

"Thank you, I have finished," she said in a low tone.

He called for the bill.

"Pray, don't let my little remark distress you," he said. "I had almost
forgotten the circumstance until something you said brought it into
my mind. It is you yourself, you must remember, who set the example of
candor."

"I deserve everything you can say," she murmured, "everything you can
do. There is nothing left, I suppose, but