"I fancy I shall marry the other woman."

Bulstrode started. The complexion of the idea was so foreign to him
that he could not for a moment let himself think that he understood it.

"You will," he said, "marry one woman whilst you distinctly love
another?"

The Duke nodded. "Love," he reflected, "I begin to believe I don't
know anything about. It must, of course, suppose some sort of return.
If, as you say, I love another woman, I'm not made of the stuff that
can go along doing so without anything on her side."

The dressing clock at the bedside on the little stand chimed the hour.
It was two o'clock. The Duke of Westboro' rose.

"You must think me a colossal ass, my dear friend, but if it had not
been for your awfully good companionship and your kindness, I dare say
that by now I should have already made some sort of fatal blunder."

At the door Bulstrode put his hand on his friend's arm, and, as though
nothing in the conversation apart from the Duchess had any real
significance, he said simply:

"You are then, in sum, simply waiting...?"

"Oh, yes," agreed the other rather blankly. And the other man knew
that he had been told only half the thought in his friend's mind.

"She may get a divorce at any time, you know, quite easily, without my
taking any further steps."

"Oh, I see perfectly," Jimmy accepted; and as the door closed after his
host, he said, almost aloud: "He thinks, then, there is half a chance
that the Duchess will return." And wondering very much how far a woman
is willing to sacrifice herself for a man, granted that she loves him,
he did not finish his phrase.

The next day Bulstrode, no longer able to resist the beckoning country,
went out, as it were, to it as if he said "Here I am--what will you do
with me?"

If Glousceshire could, for a while, make him forget the problems he had
been housed with, brush him up a bit, he thought it would be a good
thing. Therefore, when his horse came up to the door he threw himself
on the animal in a nervous haste to be gone, and setting off in the
direction of Penhaven, obeyed its summons at last.

Westboro' had run up to London for overnight, and Bulstrode, at the
Duke's something more than invitation, a sort of appeal, was to stay
indefinitely on. It must be confessed that he rather selfishly looked
forward to the course of an untroubled afternoon, to an evening amongst
the books whose files had tempted him for days.

But the pity of