But Mrs. Marshall's behaviour was quite different from that which he had expected. After he had shut the door of the boudoir, she walked away from him, and sitting down began to play with the fringe of a table cover, while he stood moodily staring down at her. "Must you stand?" she asked at last, in the plaintive tone which he so much disliked. "Oh! no, not if you wish me to sit down," and he sat down, fiercely waiting till it should be her pleasure to begin. How could he have allowed himself to be so entrapped? He had heard it asserted that women never stood by one another--well, in that case the Duchess was an exception! He ground his teeth with anger at the thought of the trick which had been played him. But stay--now, at last, Mrs. Marshall was speaking-- "Albinia has been talking to me. She has been telling me things which I did not really know before,--I mean about your position, and how important it is to you that you should remain free. You remember our talk last year?" Berwick bent his head, but into his strained face there came no sign of the inward wincing which her words brought with them. Still, he began unconsciously to revise his opinion of the Duchess; she had meant well by him after all, but he wished she had kept out of his affairs, and left him to manage them himself-- Mrs. Marshall was again speaking: "I could not understand what you meant by what you said then, it seemed so unkind! But now, of course, I realise that you were right--in fact I've brought you here to-night to tell you that I do understand." There was a long pause. Berwick was at an utter loss for words, and every moment he expected the woman before him to make some more direct allusion to the condition under which he held his fortune. He felt a kind of helpless rage to think of his affairs being thus discussed, even by one so good-natured and well-meaning as had evidently been, in this matter, the Duchess of Appleby and Kendal. But what did all this preamble signify? "I am glad you do understand," he said at last in a hoarse voice which he scarcely recognised as his own. "I know I must have seemed a great brute." "If you had only trusted me more," she said plaintively. "Of course I should have understood at once! I should have known that what I could offer was not enough--that there was no comparison----" Berwick made a sudden movement. Was it really necessary that he should listen to this? Was it part of his punishment that he should endure such unforgettable abasement? But, alas for him! Louise Marshall was in a sense enjoying both the scene and the situation. While she was speaking, there came into the still air of the room the sound of distant melody, and she felt as if she were looking on at a touching last act in some sentimental play. Also there was, after all, something uplifting in the sensation--to her a novel one--of doing a noble action, for so had the Duchess, with innocent cunning, represented her renunciation of James Berwick.