'm not too
sharply tempted."

"Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live
here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm
coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll
understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared.
Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place."

The Duchess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be
obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly
agreed with her.

"I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you
originally came."

She looked at him rather quizzically.

"You mean to say then that you don't really know?"

"Oh,"--he was truthful--"I have rather an idea, and I hope a more or
less true one."

But the lady did not confess or in anywise help him. He went on to say:

"Your love for the castle couldn't, of course, long continue to keep
you mewed up here; and you'll be shortly discovered. As far as your
own interests are concerned it will be rather better to obtain the
divorce as soon as possible."

"Oh, Mr. Bulstrode," she interposed, "don't misread me."

He nodded sagely. "On the contrary, I am translating you from sight,
my dear Duchess. And you are decidedly in your right regarding the
Duke."

She was so at his mercy that she hardly moved her lips, watching his
face. And as Bulstrode lit the cigarette she permitted him, and took
his seat before the tea things which she had set at his elbow, he went
on to make out her case for her.

"He has quite spoiled your life. He has been a brute, and not in the
least worth your----"

But the Duchess had dropped her tongs; they fell ringing on the
hard-wood floor. She raised a scarlet face to him.

"It's a _piege_," she murmured, "an _autodafe_."

"No," he said quietly, "it's a plain truth. Westboro' has told me
everything. I must think that he has done so. The man of me naturally
condones him, and the friend in me is inclined to be lenient. But the
justice and right, my dear Duchess, are all on your side."

"Oh, justice and right!" she dismissed, "only criminals need such
words."

Bulstrode said cooly: "But Westboro' has been a criminal!"

"If he were," emphasized the Duchess, "didn't I forgive him?"

"Of course, you did, my dear," her friend agreed warmly, "how
wonderfully, how beautifully, everyone knows. And he is all the more,
therefore, dreadfully to be blamed."