Part 32 (1/2)

”Oh, but it's quite, quite dark However will you h,” he assured her ”The distance to the road is nothing, and froht to the abbey”

The duchess followed him slowly to the door, and there she asked abruptly: ”Is Westboro' to be down all winter? I didn't know it I thought he was out of England or I should not have come here at all”

”Oh,” Bulstrode answered, ”he's too restless to be long anywhere I expect he'll pack up and be off before we know it He's away just now at any rate, and I' my heels up there quite alone I'm not to return--ever?” he ventured ”You may so fully trust me that--” and he saw that she hesitated and pursued, ”I shall ride up to the little gate again, and if it is unlatched”

”Oh, don't count on it,” she advised hiainst all my plans”

Somebody in the shape of a lad had unfastened the mare, and preceded Bulstrode on foot with a lantern, by whose flicker, with much delicate caution and pretended shyness, Banshee picked her way to the road, through the woods which Bulstrode an hour before had fancied led into a deserted garden

”You see,” he put it to her delicacy to understand, ”it's scarcely, in a way, fair to hi more than he does in his own house about that which presumably should be Westboro's secret”

”You ive me away because of one of those peculiar crises of honor that makes a person betray a trust in order to salve his conscience?”

Bulstrode had coe to the forest road, and he was not surprised that it should have finally turned out so that one day the gate yielded to his touch, and he found the duchess if not waiting for hihtful little talks--and they had been so--not once had the name of Bulstrode's host beenher lord and once master, she did not display it to the visitor

”I e which was fiery, ”that I really don't want to play false to Westboro', more false than I shall in the course of events be forced to be Of course, your secret--I need not say so--is entirely safe But the Duke comes back in a day or two, and rather than face hi back to London before he returns”

The sewing she had chosen to finger--a duchess, and an American one at that, is not expected to do more--lay at her feet By her side was a basket of considerable proportions, and it was full to the brim with linen: the very fine white stuff overflowed from the basket like snow

The duchess of Westboro's handiwork had already caught the eye of her guest And now, as her long hands and her long finger, tipped by its golden thi, Bulstrode watched her interestedly and found great loveliness in her bending face

”I didn't think any of you kne to sew,” he mused aloud

”Any of us!” she smiled ”Do you, by that, mean American duchesses?

Or do you mean women who have left their husbands? Or in just what class do you think ofyour last remark?”

She folded up her work and dropped her thied that his conclusion, whatever it had been, rong

”When I married,” the duchess said, ”I was the best four-in-hand whip for a woman in my set I don't think I anize a needle by sight Whenthey wore, and I can remember that I didn't even know for what the little clothes were intended, many of them, when they came home in my first son's layette

I have learned to sew since I came here to The Dials I've been three months here, now, and I really must have proved a clever pupil, for I assure you that they tell s” As she spoke she held up the sea a needle by sight, was forced to peer over the seam and endeavor to find her tiny stitches He exclaimed:

”Three months! You must have been terribly dull!”

”No”

”You are known,” he said, ”throughout the countryside--not that I've beeninquiries, but in spite of er, presumably a Frenchwoman, a ho will probably buy The Dials”

”Oh, I shall never buy the place,” she assured him, and then abruptly: ”Had you been free to speak of me, ould you have told Westboro'?”

He waited a second, then answered her lightly, but with a feeling which she did not mistake: ”I should have asked him to come and see you run up that sea very clearly how determined Westboro's decision had been, he did not affirm to the lady his belief that Westboro' would in reality have flown to her

At the door, later, she bade hiether, and, with a lapse into a simplicity so entire that she seemed only Frances Denby and to possess no more of title or distinction than any lovely woman, she said to him:

”Mr Bulstrode, please don't leave the castle”