impulse needed no special explanation. She had the art of making it
seem quite natural that they should move away together to the
remotest of Mrs. Boykin's far-drawn salons, and that there, in a
glaring privacy of brocade and ormolu, she should turn to him with a
smile which avowed her intentional quest of seclusion.

"Confess that I have done a great deal for you!" she exclaimed,
making room for him on a sofa judiciously screened from the
observation of the other rooms.

"In coming to dine with my cousin?" he enquired, answering her
smile.

"Let us say, in giving you this half hour."

"For that I am duly grateful--and shall be still more so when I know
what it contains for me."

"Ah, I am not sure. You will not like what I am going to say."

"Shall I not?" he rejoined, changing colour.

She raised her eyes from the thoughtful contemplation of her painted
fan. "You appear to have no idea of the difficulties."

"Should I have asked your help if I had not had an idea of them?"

"But you are still confident that with my help you can surmount
them?"

"I can't believe you have come here to take that confidence from
me?"

She leaned back, smiling at him through her lashes. "And all this I
am to do for your _beaux yeux?_"

"No--for your own: that you may see with them what happiness you are
conferring."

"You are extremely clever, and I like you." She paused, and then
brought out with lingering emphasis: "But my family will not hear of
a divorce."

She threw into her voice such an accent of finality that Durham, for
the moment, felt himself brought up against an insurmountable
barrier; but, almost at once, his fear was mitigated by the
conviction that she would not have put herself out so much to say so
little.

"When you speak of your family, do you include yourself?" he
suggested.

She threw a surprised glance at him. "I thought you understood that
I am simply their mouthpiece."

At this he rose quietly to his feet with a gesture of acceptance. "I
have only to thank you, then, for not keeping me longer in
suspense."

His air of wishing to put an immediate end to the conversation
seemed to surprise her. "Sit down a moment longer," she commanded
him kindly; and as he leaned against the back of his chair, without
appearing to hear her request, she added in a low voice: "I am very
sorry for you and Fanny--but you are not the only persons to be
pitied."

She had dropped her light manner as she might