new
how her thoughts travelled down the hall to the open nursery doors with
their waiting gates. Whatever were her reasons for being here,
Bulstrode saw that he had surprised her in a moment of sadness, and
that his visit in spite of his indiscretion, was not wholly unwelcome.
But in the sudden way coming upon some one connected with her own life,
she had been completely taken unawares, and her lapse into something
like sentiment was short. Even as he looked at her she hardened.

"You have naturally not asked me anything, Mr. Bulstrode," she said,
coldly enough now, "and more naturally still I have no explanations to
give. By to-morrow I may be gone. I may live here for the rest of my
life. I never leave my garden, I am quite unknown to the people about.
If any one in Westboro' learns that I am here I shall leave at once.
You will not come again. It is discourteous to say so--to ask it."

He had risen from his chair.

"Oh, but it's quite, quite dark. However will you manage?"

"We'll pick our way back well enough," he assured her. "The distance
to the road is nothing, and from here on it runs straight to the abbey."

The Duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked
abruptly: "Is Westboro' to be down all winter? I didn't know it. I
thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all."

"Oh," Bulstrode answered, "he's too restless to be long anywhere. I
expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it. He's away just now
at any rate, and I'm kicking my heels up there quite alone. I'm not to
return--ever?" he ventured. "You may so fully trust me that--" and he
saw that she hesitated and pursued, "I shall ride up to the little gate
again, and if it is unlatched...."

"Oh, don't count on it," she advised him, "don't--it's against all my
plans."

Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded
Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate
caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road,
through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a
deserted garden.

"You see," he put it to her delicacy to understand, "it's scarcely, in
a way, fair to him--I feel it so at least. It gives me the sensation
of knowing more than he does in his own house about that which
presumably should be Westboro's secret."

"You mean to say,"--the Duchess pinned him down, "that you'll give me
away because of on