"My dear Duchess, what can I say? The matter rests entirely in your hands. Let it be when you please. In another month I shall be comparatively free, and we can visit Switzerland if Ethel wishes." The Duchess smiled. "That you must arrange with Ethel herself, and perhaps you had better broach the subject yourself to her. Girls are apt to be a little curious on these points." "Then I will ask her to fix the day for our marriage." He bowed with old-fashioned gallantry over the pearl-grey suede, held out in farewell, and the Duchess rustled away with Soames, the deferential, in close attendance. Soames did not like the idea of a mistress, but these "accidents" he was well aware, would happen in the best regulated families, so he was now bent on making friends with the Mammon of Unrighteousness in the shape of the Duchess of Huddersfield and the bride elect. Left alone, Sir John stood upright, his hand on the back of his chair and his brows tightly drawn together. Well, why not? What possible excuse could he make to his own heart for the delay? None, none. And yet he felt a good deal as if a thunderbolt had fallen from the skies at his feet, and it was more or less of a shock to him. Presently he rang his bell. "Who comes next, Soames?" "Lady Rutherven, Sir John, but--but a lady who has no appointment has been waiting for more than an hour, and I thought perhaps you would see her first. She seems very ill." "Show her in!" A second later the door swung open again and Soames announced: "Miss Blackall!" Sir John started, but recovered himself in the next instant. "Take a seat, madam." He waved her to a chair and for several minutes they looked at each other without speaking. The woman was the first to break the silence. "I have come back," she said with a nervous laugh. "I am ill; I thought you might try to cure me." She had seated herself, but he remained standing. What a handsome woman she had become, he was thinking, and how expensively dressed! There was something strange in the very familiarity of the countenance presented to him. It had altered much from what he remembered it, but curiously enough he remembered it the more vividly because of that very alteration. "What is your trouble?" he asked huskily--"Why have you consulted--me?" "It is my lungs. I don't know--let us call it a whim. I thought you would do me good if anyone could." She paused a second: "You used to be my husband once." "Once! Well, I am willing to be your doctor." "I suppose you would do your best for a dog if it were dying, wouldn't you? though you might not care if it recovered." "I have a very faithful dog," he said significantly. Bella winced.