"Time'll cure me, I suppose--as much as I want to be cured," he said. "And you're just the same jolly good friend you always were, Marie. I came to wish you joy, not to whine about myself--only you happened to ask after her, and I couldn't very well hold my tongue about it. Only do remember that, whatever others may have, I have no grievance--no cause of complaint. Anything that's happened to me I brought on myself." No use! He saw that, and smiled hopelessly over it. Marie was resolved on having him a victim; he had to give in to her. She had got the idea absolutely fixed in that tenacious mind of hers. He turned back to the legitimate purpose of his visit. "And when is the wedding to be?" "In about six weeks. You'll come, won't you, Mr. Lisle?" But Arthur had noticed what she called him, when moved by sympathy. "Don't go back to that. You called me 'Arthur' just now." "Did I? I didn't notice. But I shall like to call you Arthur, if I may." She gave him her hand with the frankest heartiness. 'Arthur' felt himself established in a simple and cordial friendship; it was not quite the footing on which 'Mr. Lisle' had stood. Hopes and fears, dreams and sentiment, were gone from her thoughts of him; a great goodwill was the residuum. Perhaps she was generous to give so much, and Arthur lucky to receive it; and perhaps the news of Bernadette's misdeeds made the measure of it greater. Whatever might have been the case previously, it was now plain as day that, in any respect in which Arthur's past conduct needed excuse, he had not really been a free agent. He had been under a delusion, a spell, a wicked domination. Did ever so fair a face hide such villainy? The tidings of Arthur's tragedy went forth to the Sarradet household and the Sarradet circle. Sidney Barslow heard of it with a decorous sympathy which masked a secret snigger. Amabel twittered over it, with a new reminiscence of her Paolo--only that ended differently! Joe Halliday had strange phrases in abundance, through which he strove to express a Byronic recognition of love's joy and woe. He told Miss Ayesha Layard, and thereby invested handsome Mr. Lisle with a new romantic interest. The story of the unhappy passion and its end, the flight in early morning of the guilty pair, reached even the ears of Mr. Claud Beverley, who sorrowed as a man that such things should happen, and deplored as an artist that they should happen in that way. "There need have been no trouble. Why weren't they all open and sensible about it?" he demanded of Miss Layard--very incautiously. "Because there's a B in both--and another in your bonnet, old man," the irrepressible lady answered, to his intense disgust. CHAPTER XXVII IN THE HANDS OF THE GODS