Pale and agitated as no other woman had ever seen him, Gervase bows low
and leaves her abruptly, pushing open one of the glass doors on to the
garden and closing it with a clash behind him.

Xenia Sabaroff goes towards the large library, her silvery train
catching the lights and shadows as she goes.

Brandolin meets her with his hands outstretched.

"You are content, then?" she asks.

"I am more than content,--if I may be allowed to atone to you for all
that you have suffered."

His own eyes are dim as he speaks.

"But you know that the world will always say that he was my lover?"

"I do not think that the world will say it--of my wife; but, if it do,
I, at least, shall not be troubled."

"You have a great nature," she says, with deep emotion.

Brandolin smiles. "Oh, I cannot claim so much as that; but I have a
great love."

* * * * *

"I'm awfully glad that prig's got spun," says George Usk, as Gervase
receives a telegram from the Foreign Office which requires his departure
from Surrenden at four o'clock that afternoon.

"Spun! What imagination!" says his wife, very angrily. "Who should have
spun him, pray will you tell me?"

"We shall never hear it in so many words," says Usk, with a grim
complacency, "but I'll swear, if I die for it, that he's asked your
Russian friend to marry him and that she's said she won't. Very wise of
her, too. Especially if, as you imply, they carried on together years
ago: he'd be eternally throwing it in her teeth: he's what the Yanks
call a 'tarnation mean cuss.'"

"I never implied anything of the sort," answers the lady of Surrenden,
with great decorum and dignity. "I never suppose that all my friends are
all they ought to be, whatever _yours_ may leave to be desired. If he
were attached long ago to Madame Sabaroff, it is neither your affair nor
mine. It may possibly concern Lord Brandolin, if he have the intentions
which you attribute to him."

"Brandolin can take care of himself," says Usk, carelessly. "He knows
the time of day as well as anybody, and I don't know why you should be
rough on it, my lady: it will be positively refreshing if anybody
marries after one of your house-parties; they generally only get
divorced after them."

"The Waverleys are very good friends still, I believe," says Dorothy
Usk, coldly.

The reply seems irrelevant, but to the ear of George Usk it carries
considerable relevancy.

He laughs a little nerv