“Strange!” she says simply, “that we should have felt the same to-night--that----” “_We?_” he interrupts. “Say that again, Marguerite!” “Yes! Did I not tell you the first time we spoke that you were--_my fate_!” And Marguerite’s head is very close to his shoulder, and her lips seem to seek his. But she starts away hastily as De Belcour, unannounced, strides into the room. “Pardon, Mademoiselle!” he says through his set teeth, “I forgot my gloves! I am sorry to have interrupted you.” And Marguerite, forgetting the conventional smile which is one of the tricks of her trade, sits silent and a little uncomfortable. “We may as well walk a little way together,” Lord Delaval says quietly. “Mademoiselle’s society is so charming, I really forgot the hour!” CHAPTER VIII. “DON’T YOU KNOW ME, DELAVAL?” “And where the red was--lo! the bloodless white, And where truth was--the likeness of a liar, And where day was--the likeness of the night, This is the end of every man’s desire!” The world seems very dark to Lord Delaval to-day--a terrible chaos, in fact, in which right is hopelessly, inextricably, mingled with wrong. He hates and scorns himself for this passion for Marguerite Ange, which gives him neither rest nor peace. He swears he will leave Paris and never set eyes on her again; then he believes it is Kismet, bows to the inevitable, and resolves not to struggle against a feeling that is evidently stronger than himself. Then comes a reaction once more. “There is nothing to be done but to go right away. There’s not much fear she’ll break her heart, or that I have really inspired a _grande passion_. _Her_ sort are not much given to fretting after one man, when a dozen are at her beck,” he says to himself sardonically. “But I will go and wish her good-bye. That much will be but gentlemanly.” So he goes, a few days after the supper party, to the Rue Tronchet. The lovely cause of so much heartburning leans back as usual among her vivid scarlet cushions, doing nothing, as is her wont--like the lilies of the field, she neither toils nor spins, but she looks in her shady, luxurious room, provokingly cool and languid, and far away from the troubles and perplexities of this work-a-day world. But the dreaminess of her eyes is lost in the radiant light that transfigures her face as Lord Delaval enters, and starting up, she holds out two hands without a word, but with a smile that is more than a welcome. He takes them absently and seats himself beside her in rather an abstracted way, and when he speaks, it is of the subject that is uppermost in his mind. “I’ve come to say good-bye, Marguerite.” “Good-bye?” she repeats in a startled voice. “Yes. I am going away.” “Where?” Her accents tremble, her face blanches. It dawns upon her at once that this is no ordinary leave-taking.