"No, I do not; but"--with an obstinate sticking to her point--"there was a substratum of truth in them; that was only too evident." Jim shuts his teeth tight together. His vow of silence is harder to keep than he had thought. "Since he came to himself he has never mentioned her to me," continues his companion anxiously; "has he to you?" "No." "I quite tremble whenever he opens his lips, lest he should be going to begin the subject, and one could not contradict him yet awhile; he is so quixotic, it is quite likely that he may have some distorted idea that her being--how shall I say?--_flétrie_--is an additional reason for standing by her, rehabilitating her, marrying her. He is so chivalrous." They have left the Prison Civile and the Zouave Barracks behind them. A longer interval than that usually supposed to elapse between a remark and its rejoinder has passed, before Jim can bring himself to utter the following sentence with the calmness which he wishes: "Has it never occurred to you that she may be chivalrous too?" Perhaps Mrs. Byng does not readily find a response to this question; perhaps it sets her off upon a train of speculation which does not conduce to garrulity. Certain it is that, for the rest of the drive, she is as silent as Jim could wish her. It is a sharp surprise to him two days later to be mysteriously called outside the sick man's door by her, in order to be informed that she has invited Miss Le Marchant to accompany her on a drive. "I went to call upon them," she says, avoiding--or so he fancies it--his eye as she speaks; "and I asked the girl to drive with me to the Mole, and get a good blowing about." "How kind of you!" cries Jim, a flash of real pleasure in his serious look; "how like you--like your real self, that is!" And he takes her hand to thank it by a friendly pressure. But she draws it away rather hastily. "Oh, it was nothing so very wonderful--nothing to thank me for." She seems confused and a little guilty, and escapes with some precipitation from his gratitude. Mrs. Byng is not a woman addicted to double-dealing, and if she ever makes any little essays in that direction, she does them, as on this present occasion, villainously. Burgoyne is not at the hall-door to help the ladies into the carriage when they set off. Perhaps this may be because he is in attendance upon the invalid. Perhaps because--glad as he had at first felt and expressed himself at their friendliness--some misgiving may, upon reflection, have beset him at so strange a conjunction. At all events, it is only Fritz who throws the light Arab rug over their knees and gives them his encouraging parting smile.