much matter as did the fact that he had not, whatever festivities he
had honored, dined. Shouldn't they have something here together before
the fire?

"I seem," she said, "to have a blighting effect upon my host."

"My friend Westboro' is the happiest man in Glousceshire."

"Which means that he has found his Duchess?"

"He has found his Duchess."

When her friend entered the room, by the light on his face like the
brightness of the morning as he caught sight of her, Mary Falconer saw
that for Jimmy Bulstrode she was still the one woman in the world. In
the relief that this knowledge brought her she half attempted to play
with what had been her suspicions, and to tease him, but this mood
passed.

"That's a horrid old parson they chose to have me dine with," she said.
"He told me dreadful scandals but I think now that I see through them
all. The Duchess of Westboro' has been living incognita at The Dials,
hasn't she, and her husband at last found her there?"

Bulstrode acknowledged that she had read the drama correctly. And Mary
Falconer laughed.

"Yes, evidently the Duchess has a strong dramatic sense; she's very
romantic, isn't she?"

And the man absently exclaimed: "Oh, I dare say, I dare say." Then
turning to her with unusual vehemence: "Do, for Heaven's sake leave
them and everybody. I want to forget them all."

He threw up his hand with a sort of supplication. He had seated
himself on a tapestried stool close beside the chair she had taken
again. Using her Christian name for one of the rare times in his life,
he pleaded: "Can't we leave all other people, Mary, can't we?"

She looked at him startled and said that their host seemed pretty
effectually to have left _them_, rising from her chair with the words,
and crossing the room to one of the long windows, drew back the curtain.

The cold glass against which she pressed her cheek sent a shock through
her, but she stayed for a second close to the pane as if she would
implore the newer transport, the stiller transport, of the icy cold to
transfuse her veins.

The changed temperature had chased away the fog, and the night spread
its serene beauty over the park, where the moonlight lay along the
terrace like snow. Far down the slope rose the outlines of the bare
trees, and the wide landscape shone and shone until it finally was lost
in the mists.

Bulstrode had followed over and stood by Mary Falconer's side, and the
scene before him seemed fu