THERE was the situation; for Godfrey was quick enough to see what had happened as soon as he had read Arsenio’s letter; he finished it, which was more than I had done, and so found more lies than I had. We discussed the situation far into the night, Godfrey still doing most of the talking. He had come to Paris to see me about it, to ask my advice or to put some question to me; but he had not really got the problem clear in his mind. On subsidiary points—or, perhaps, one should rather say, on what seemed such to him—his view was characteristic, and to me amusing. He thought that most of Nina’s anger was due to the fact that she had been “done” by Arsenio, that he had got her money for Lucinda and for himself on false pretenses; whereas Nina was really furious with Lucinda herself for not having consciously accepted her charity, and made comparatively little of friend Arsenio’s roguery. He was much more full of admiration of Lucinda for not minding being discovered carrying a bandbox—and for laughing at her encounter with Lady Dundrannan while she was doing it—than of appreciation of her indignation over the blue frock; he thought she made a great deal too much of that. “Since she didn’t know, what does it come to?” he asked. And he wasted no reprobation on Arsenio. He had known Arsenio for a rogue before—a rogue after his money, and willing to use his wife as a bait to catch it; that he now knew that Arsenio was more completely a rogue all round—towards Nina as well as towards him—was merely a bit of confirmatory evidence; he saw nothing in the fact that Arsenio had, after all, given Lucinda the blue frock, though he would have been quite safe—as safe, anyhow—if he had given her nothing. His whole analysis, so far as it appeared in disjointed observations, of the other parties to the affair, ran on lines of obvious shrewdness, and was baffled only where they appeared—as in Lucinda’s case—to diverge from the lines thus indicated. Lucinda was a puzzle. Why had she hidden herself from him? She could “have it out” with Valdez, if she wanted to, without doing that!