“I am sure that it is for the best.” she said, “I feel happy already--happy feeling that a great burden has been lifted from me--that I need no longer fear to look my own people in the face. Thank you--thank you.” There was gratitude in her face as she looked at him. She could scarcely put out her hand to him considering the number of people who were about the terrace, or she would, he felt assured, have done so. But there was undoubtedly gratitude in her face. He would have given a good deal to know if she was grateful by reason of being released from the pressing care of the secret which he had imposed upon her or because she now considered herself free to listen to the other man, the man whose identity he had not been able to discover. She herself would have given a good deal to know so much. “I admit that I was in error from the very first,” said he. “I had no right to place you in a false position. I did not know--but I had no excuse for not knowing--how a sensitive creature such as you are could not but feel deeply--as I do now--that you were not one who needed to be held in the bondage of a promise. I know now how that the real bond that exists between us is one that is not dependent for its endurance upon any formal promise--upon any formal engagement. I trust you, my Josephine, and I know that you can trust me.” And then he took off his hat to Sir Digby and Lady Swan, and there was something in his action, Josephine thought, that compelled them to stop and shake hands with him and with her also, for she was acquainted with the great ex-Solicitor General and his wife. Curiously enough that little movement on his part--a movement which suggested that he expected something more than a formal recognition--imparted to her an element of distrust. But it was not until several other fellow-guests had come up and joined her group separating her effectually from Ernest Clifton, that she began to be dimly conscious of the truth--that she became aware of the fact that while he had been ostentatiously knocking off her shackles of iron he had been gently imposing on her shackles of gold. He had so contrived, by the adroitness of his words, that she should remain bound to him by a tie far stronger than that from which he had just released her. He had spoken quite truly: in telling her that he trusted her completely he had put upon her a bondage from which she would not try to escape. He had, so to speak, torn up her I O U before her eyes and had thereby turned the debt for which he held security into a debt of honour.