mouth,
and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed
over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he
credited his suspicions or not.

"Good heavens! _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple
country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but
Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and
showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a
vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect
such a _liason_ with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began
to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he
suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more
sinless than other men--than himself? He couldn't answer his own
question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house
party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The
Dials was certainly not she.

Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in
the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human,
rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had
felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed.
Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his
own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be.
And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt
himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.

By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had
stopped at one of the side doors of the castle.

"There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke
decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all.
Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's
own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps
he's going to marry. Why not?

Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal
position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an
affectionate hand on the American's shoulder.

"Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your
sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials."

Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn
in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard
here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I