"Is it? I confess that was my reading of them. I accepted that version, and thinking to do you a good turn, and relieve you of both your _betes noire_ at once, I proposed to Lady Swansdown last night that she should accompany me upon my endless travels." There is a long, long pause, during which Lady Baltimore's face seems to have grown into marble. She takes a step forward now. Through the stern pallor of her skin her large eyes seem to gleam like fire. "How dare you!" she says in a voice very low but so intense that it rings through the room. "How dare you tell me of this! Are you lost to all shame? You and she to go--to go away together! It is only what I have been anticipating for months. I could see how it was with you. But that you should have the insolence to stand before me--" she grows almost magnificent in her wrath--"and declare your infamy aloud! Such a thought was beyond me. There was a time when I would have thought it beyond you!" "Was there?" says he. He laughs aloud. "There, there, there!" says she, with a rather wild sort of sigh. "Why should I waste a single emotion upon you. Let me take you calmly, casually. Come--come now." It is the saddest thing in the world to see how she treads down the passionate, most natural uprisings within her against the injustice of life: "Make me at least _au courant_ with your movements, you and she will go--where?" "To the devil, you thought, didn't you?" says he. "Well, you will be disappointed as far as she is concerned. I maybe going. It appears she doesn't think it worth while to accompany me there or anywhere else." "You mean that she refused to go with you?" "In the very baldest language, I assure you. It left nothing to be desired, believe me, in the matter of lucidity. 'No,' she would not go with me. You see there is not only one, but two women in the world who regard me as being utterly without charm." "I commiserate you!" says she, with a bitter sneer. "If, after all your attention to her, your friend has proved faithless, I----" "Don't waste your pity," says he, interrupting her rather rudely. "On the whole, the decision of my 'friend,' as you call her, was rather a relief to me than otherwise. I felt it my duty to deprive you of her society"--with an unpleasant laugh--"and so I asked her to come with me. When she declined to accompany me she left me free to devote myself to sport." "Ah! you refuse to be corrupted?" says she, contemptuously. "Think what you will," says he, restraining himself with determination. "It doesn't matter in the least to me now. Your opinion I consider worthless, because prejudiced--as worthless as you consider me. I came here simply to tell you of my determination to go abroad." "You have told me of that already. Lady Swansdown having failed you, may I ask"--with studied contempt--"who you are going to take with you now?"