“You shall go round to Mrs Palmer’s, Linnet,” he said, taking her hand in his. “The place Florian spoke of isn’t at all the right place for a girl like you. But Rue will receive you like a sister till we can arrange some other plan for you. At _her_ house, you’ll be safe from every whisper of scandal.” “You’ll take me there, won’t you?” Linnet inquired, gazing wistfully at him. On that point, however, Will was firm as a rock. “No, dearest,” he answered, laying one hand on her full round arm, persuasively. “You must go there alone, with only your maid. It’s better so. Rue has a friend or two coming in to dine with her to-night. They’ll see you arrive at her door by yourself; and if any talk comes of it, they’ll know how to answer it.” Linnet flung herself upon him once more, in a last clinging embrace. She was wildly in love with him. Will pressed her hard to his heart; then he gently disengaged himself, and led her to the door. A cab was in waiting—the cab that brought him there. Linnet got into it at once, and drove off with Ellen. In twenty minutes more, she was in Rue’s pretty drawing-room. That night, when all the rest were gone, she and Rue sat up long and late, talking together earnestly. Their talk was of Will. Linnet didn’t try to conceal from her new friend how much she loved him. Rue listened sympathetically, suppressing her own heart, so that Linnet ceased even to remember to herself how she had thought once of the grand lady as her most dangerous rival. But all the time, Rue preached to her one line of action alone: “You must get a divorce, of course, dear, and marry Will Deverill.” And all the time, Linnet shook her head, and answered through her tears, “A divorce to me is a mockery and a delusion. I’d rather stop with him openly, and defy the world and the Church together, than affront my God by pretending to marry him, when I know in my heart Andreas Hausberger is and must always be my one real husband.” At last they went to bed. Neither slept much that evening. Linnet thought about Will; Rue thought about Linnet. As things now stood, Rue would give much to help them. Since Will loved this woman far more than he loved _her_, she wished indeed Linnet might be freed at last from that hateful man, and they two might somehow be happy together. Only the Church stood in the way—that implacable Church, with its horrible dogma of indissoluble marriage. Next day, Linnet spent very quietly at Rue’s. Will never came near the house; but he wrote round a long and earnest letter to Linnet, urging her with all the force and persuasiveness he knew to go down that night as usual to the theatre. It was best, he said, in order to avoid a scandal, that she should appear to have left her unworthy husband on grounds of his own misconduct alone, and be anxious to fulfil in every other way all her ordinary engagements.