Part 35 (1/2)

”I think,” she said with evident effort to speak in a coe Cecil to come”

”Oh, I shan't advise him so”

Bulstrode's quick answer made her look at him in so much surprise that he went on to say: ”I would not, in justice to hireat love I have been permitted to see, advise hi theand experience, had not admitted to herself that should her husband return she would receive him, nor had she decided as to quite how obdurate she would be, and she was curious at the attitude of this gentle friend She navely asked:

”Why would you not advise hi his pleasant sententiousness, ”The woman's heart must be as stable as the man's is uncertain, and the man who comes back after such a separation must not find a woman who does not know her own mind He must, on the contrary, find one who has no mind or will or life but his”

As he looked at the person to whom he spoke he was somewhat struck by the maternal look in her: he had never clearly discovered it before

Her breast from which the fur had fallen, as it rose and fell under her soft goas full, generous, and beautiful; even as he spoke in a certain accusation against her, she seemed to have altered

”Westboro',” he said a little confused, ”must come back to a woman, duchess, to a woman--to a consoler I wish I could express myself--almost to a mother--as well as to a wife”

The ardent color dyed her face again; her lips moved She put out her hand towards him, and as he took it he understood that she wished hiood-by and to leave her alone He heard what she struggled to say:

”He must not come, he must not come”

”No,” he accepted sadly for his friend, ”No, he oing to The Dials when his host was least likely to take note of his absence; but it happened thativen the direction in which Bulstrode's footsteps had turned

One ent, Westboro'--the map of the district before him--enquired what had ever been done with the property known as The Dials, and into whose hands the old place had fallen It seener, a ho lived there, and alone

Westboro' considered the farms and forests, as they lay mapped out before him, at the extreme foot of the castle's parks It was a little square of some fifty acres by itself; it had never interested hient know? He believed for another year

The Duke gave instructions to have the property looked into, with a view to purchase And as the man put up his papers, he vouchsafed to his employer:

”The present tenant is very exclusive; she sees nobody, has never, I believe, even been to the Abbey An old gardener who has been kept on says the servants are all foreign”

The Duke gave only a tepid interest to the information which would have passed entirely fro with Jimmy Bulstrode

As much to shake off the impression his last talk with the duchess had left on his one down out of the garden and across the place on foot over the rough winter fields with their rimy furrows and their barren floors As hefor a stile he kneould be there a little farther on, cutting an entrance out through the thorn to the road, he met Westboro', like himself, on foot, and with his hand upon the stile The presence of the Duke where Bulstrode kneas least thought to be, and where he was now sadly sure he was not opportune, made Ji that the fact of his being there _hih the stile As he greeted his friend, his own deo on in that direction, follow rather out of the turnstile with _me_” And he led his friend rather brusquely down the bank, hitching his ar with him into the road

”I ran down here to look over these meadows,” said Westboro' ”You see the land off!”

”Oh, I _love_ cross-country walking,” said Bulstrode warmly

”You must,” smiled the Duke, ”to have cut off into those barren fields

Were you lost?” Westboro' stopped and looked back ”You h The Dials”

”_The Dials_?” the Aarden?”

Bulstrode's manner and speech were rarely curt and evasive, but he seemed this time embarrassed and taken unawares As the two men sat in the motor which waited for the Duke down the road, Westboro' fixed his glass in his eye and looked hard for a second at his friend

Bulstrode's cheerful face was distinctly disturbed

”I' The Dials,” Westboro', after a ainst the wind