"Well, my dear, we need not have been afraid about your brother and poor Louise Marshall--from what I can make out, he has hardly said a word to her since he has been here! In fact, he has hardly been here at all. He goes off in the morning and comes back late in the afternoon. He did stay and help yesterday, and made, by the way, a most charming little speech,--but then he took his evening off! I've been wondering whether there can be any counter attraction in the neighbourhood of Chillingworth--?" The speaker looked rather significantly at her guest. She had been at some trouble to find out what that attraction could be which took Berwick daily to Chancton, and as her own confidential maid was Mrs. Turke's niece, and a Chancton woman, she had come to a pretty shrewd idea of the truth. But Miss Berwick was absorbed in her grievance. "No," she said sharply, "certainly not! James hasn't ever been over to Fletchings, and we have no one staying there whom he could want to see. I suppose the truth is he wisely tries to escape from Mrs. Marshall. Knowing all you know, Albinia, and all I said to you last year, how _could_ you have the woman here? I was really aghast when I heard that she was coming, and that James was hurrying back to see her--of course everyone must be putting two and two together, and he will find himself at last in a really bad scrape!" The Duchess began to look very uncomfortable. "The poor soul wrote and asked if she might come," she said feebly; "I do think that you are rather hardhearted. It would melt your heart if you were to hear her talking about him to me. She has paid a woman--some poor Irish lady recommended to her--to look up all his old speeches, and she devotes an hour every day to reading them over, and that although she doesn't understand a word of what she's reading! It's really rather touching, and I do think he owes her something. Of course you know what she would like, what she is hoping for against hope--old Mr. Marshall was a very rich man----" Miss Berwick knew very well, but she thought the question an outrage--so foolish and so shocking that it was not worth an answer. Indeed, she shrugged her shoulders, a slight but very decided shrug, more eloquent than any words could have been from such a woman. The Duchess, kind as she was, and with a power of sympathetic insight which often made her unhappy, felt suddenly angered. She took up a book. It had a mark in it. "Reading this sentence," she said rather nervously, "I could not help thinking of your brother." Miss Berwick held out a languid hand. She thought this rather a mean way of avoiding a discussion. Then she read aloud the sentence-- "It is the punishment of Don Juanism to create continually false positions, relations in life which are false in themselves, and which it is equally wrong to break or to perpetuate."