"Yes." She shrugged her pretty shoulders.

"Alone?"

"That unspeakable creature, Mornac, was with him. I had no idea he
was here; had you?"

I was silent. Did Mornac mean trouble for me? Yet how could he, shorn
now of all authority?

The thought seemed to occur to her, too, and she looked up quickly,
asking if I had anything to fear.

"Only for you," I said.

"For me? Why? I am not afraid of such men. I have servants on whom I
can call to disembarrass me of such people." She hesitated; the memory
of her deception, of what she had suffered at Buckhurst's hands,
brought a glint of anger into her beautiful eyes.

"My innocence shames me," she said. "I merited what I received in
such company. It was you who saved me from myself."

"A noble mind thinks nobly," I said. "Theirs is the shame, not
yours, that you could not understand treachery--that you never can
understand it. As for me, I was an accident, which warned you in time
that all the world was not as good and true as you desired to believe
it."

She sat looking at me curiously. "I wonder," she said, "why it is
that you do not know your own value?"

"My value--to whom?"

"To ... everybody--to the world--to people."

"Am I of any value to you, madame?"

The pulsing moments passed and she did not answer, and I bit my lip
and waited. At last she said, coolly: "A man must appraise himself.
If he chooses, he is valuable. But values are comparative, and depend
on individual taste.... Yes, you are of some value to me,... or I
should not be here with you,... or I should not find it my pleasure to
be here--or I should not trust you, come to you with my petty
troubles, ask your experience to help me, perhaps protect me."

She bent her head with adorable diffidence. "Monsieur Scarlett, I
have never before had a friend who thought first of me and last of
himself."

I leaned on the back of the bench, resting my bandaged forehead on my
hand.

She looked up after a moment, and her face grew serious.

"Are you suffering?" she asked. "Your face is white as my sleeve."

"I feel curiously tired," I said, smiling.

"Then you must have some tea, and I will brew it myself. You shall
not object! No--it is useless, because I am determined. And you shall
lie down in the little tea-room, where I found you that day when you
first came to Trecourt."

"I shall be very happy to do anything--if you are there."

"Even drink tea when you abhor it? Then I certainly ought