ful security and
contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this. But the
cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows.

"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'Find
her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by
mistake at your club. Of course she can be found. There are not many
mysteries that search can't solve in these days. And Duchesses don't
drop off the face of the earth. I could no doubt have found her in
twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to. I don't know that I want to
find her. It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts--that she
wanted to go--that she has voluntarily made the separation final and
complete."

"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really _want_ to find her?"

"Jove!" the Duke turned on him. "You don't know what it is to love a
woman! You've got some imagination--try to use it, can't you? Can't
you?"

He met the American's handsome eyes. A flush rose under Bulstrode's
cheek. Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I beg your
pardon, dear old chap."

"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully.

"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for
any one to ignore the inevitable! It's such a prodigal throwing out of
the window of riches!"

Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the
winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its
broken stairs of crumbling stone before her.

"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write
down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and
Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and
the confidence of one."

"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?"

"Of your husband, yes," Bulstrode found himself startled into betrayal.

She drew her hands from him and walked on a little in the sunshine, and
he followed by her side.

"I don't mind," she permitted, "you're such a perfect dear. I
shouldn't mind at all if I thought that the confidence were a good one."

Her tone was light and cool, but the gentleman never failed to notice
when the Duchess spoke of the Duke that there was a tremor under her
words, a warmth, an agitation, which she vainly tried to control.

"Confidences," she said, "are very rarely just, you know, and _les
absents ont toujours tort_."

"Oh, you don't me