Sitting there, with Mr. Daman babbling in her ear, mocking ghosts, evil memories, crowded round poor Barbara. She remembered the first time--the only time that really mattered--when she had been told, she herself would never have suspected or discovered it, of Pedro Rebell's infidelity, of his connection with one of their own coloured people, and the passion of outraged pride and disgust which had possessed her, wedded to a sense of awful loneliness. Even to herself it seemed amazing that she should be suffering now much as she had suffered during that short West Indian night five years ago. Nay, she was now suffering more, for then there had not been added to her other miseries that feeling of soreness and sense of personal loss. * * * * * "Are you enjoying yourself, Doctor McKirdy?" His hostess was smiling into the old Scotchman's face. She had seen with what troubled interest his eyes followed Mrs. Rebell and James Berwick--the Duchess would have given much to have been able to ask the doctor what he really thought about--well, about many things,--but her courage failed her. As he hesitated she bent forward and whispered, "Don't say that it's a splendid sight; you and I know what it is--a perfect _clanjamfray_! Confess that it is!" and as Doctor McKirdy's ugly face became filled with the spirit of laughter, the Duchess added, "You see I didn't have a Scotch mother for nothing!" And Mrs. Boringdon, watching the little colloquy with a good deal of wonderment, marvelled that her Grace could demean herself to laugh and joke with such an insufferable nobody as she considered Doctor McKirdy to be! CHAPTER XII. "Que vous me coûtez cher, ô mon coeur, pour vos plaisirs!" COMTESSE DIANE. "Will you please introduce me to the lady with whom Mr. Daman has been talking all the evening? I have something I very much want to ask her, and I don't wish to say it before that horrid old man, so will you take him aside while I speak to her?" Louise Marshall was standing before James Berwick. She looked beautiful, animated, good-humoured as he had not seen her look for a very long time, and the plaintive, rather sulky tone in which she had lately always addressed him was gone. There are women on whom the presence of a crowd, the atmosphere of violent admiration, have an extraordinary tonic effect. To-night, for the first time since she had become a widow, Mrs. Marshall felt that life, even without James Berwick, might conceivably be worth living; but unfortunately for himself, the man to whom she had just addressed what he felt to be so disquieting a request, did not divine her thoughts. Instead, suspicions--each one more hateful than the other--darted through his mind, and so, for only answer to her words he looked at her uncertainly, saying at last, "You mean Mrs. Rebell?"