'I don't know, I don't know.... I don't know what I should do now. Don't question me, Harold.' At that moment the gong sounded for dinner. Harold refrained from saying 'I knew you'd be late.' An hour after, brother and sister were sitting by the library fire. At last Harold said: 'I'm glad you're going to stop here for the present, that you're not going back to Paris. Do you never intend to live there again?' 'There's no reason why I should go back, certainly none that I should live there again, my life in Paris is ended.' She did not recount her misfortunes in plain straightforward narrative, her story fluctuated and transpired in inflections of voice and picturesque glances. She was always aware of the effect of herself on others, and she forgot a great deal of her disappointment in the pleasure of astonishing Harold. The story unwound itself like spun silk. The principal spool was the Panama scandals.... But around it there were little spools full of various thread, a little of which Mildred unwound from time to time. When the first accusations against the Deputies were made, I warned him. I told him that the matter would not stop there, but he was over confident. Moreover, I warned him against Darres.' 'Who's Darres?' 'Oh, he was the _secretaire de la redaction_ and a sort of partner. But I never liked him. I gave him one look.... I told M. Delacour not to trust him. ... And he knew that I suspected him. He admired me, I could see that, but he wasn't my kind of man: a tall, bullet--headed fellow, shoulders thrown well back, the type of the _sous officier, le beau soudard,_ smelling of the cafe and a cigarette. A plain sensualist. I can tell them at once, and when he saw that I was not that kind of person, he went and made love to Madame Delacour. She was only too glad to listen to him.' 'Is Madame Delacour good-looking?' 'I daresay she's what some people would call good-looking. But she has wretched health, she never got over the birth of her last child.' Madame Delacour's health was the subject of many disparaging remarks, in the course of which Mildred called into question the legitimacy of one of her children, and the honourability of Darres as a card-player. The conversation at last turned on Panama. M. Delacour had, of course, denied the charge of blackmail and bribery. Neither had been proved against him. Nevertheless, his constituency had refused to re-elect him. That, of course, had ruined him politically. Nothing had been proved against him, but he had merely failed to explain how he had lived at the rate of twelve thousand a year for the last three years. 'But the paper?' 'The paper never was a pecuniary success.' 'The money you put into it, I suppose, is lost.' 'For the present at all events. Things may right themselves, Delacour may come up to the top of the wheel again.' 'He must have cheated you, he swindled you.'