She suffered him, at any rate, to accompany her to the door of the house, and allowed their debate to prolong itself through the almost monastic quiet of the quarter which led thither. On the way, he succeeded in wresting from her the confession that, if it were possible to ascertain in advance that her husband's family would not oppose her action, she might decide to apply for a divorce. Short of a positive assurance on this point, she made it clear that she would never move in the matter; there must be no scandal, no _retentissement_, nothing which her boy, necessarily brought up in the French tradition of scrupulously preserved appearances, could afterward regard as the faintest blur on his much-quartered escutcheon. But even this partial concession again raised fresh obstacles; for there seemed to be no one to whom she could entrust so delicate an investigation, and to apply directly to the Marquis de Malrive or his relatives appeared, in the light of her past experience, the last way of learning their intentions. "But," Durham objected, beginning to suspect a morbid fixity of idea in her perpetual attitude of distrust--"but surely you have told me that your husband's sister--what is her name? Madame de Treymes?--was the most powerful member of the group, and that she has always been on your side." She hesitated. "Yes, Christiane has been on my side. She dislikes her brother. But it would not do to ask her." "But could no one else ask her? Who are her friends?" "She has a great many; and some, of course, are mine. But in a case like this they would be all hers; they wouldn't hesitate a moment between us." "Why should it be necessary to hesitate between you? Suppose Madame de Treymes sees the reasonableness of what you ask; suppose, at any rate, she sees the hopelessness of opposing you? Why should she make a mystery of your opinion?" "It's not that; it is that, if I went to her friends, I should never get her real opinion from them. At least I should never know if it _was_ her real opinion; and therefore I should be no farther advanced. Don't you see?" Durham struggled between the sentimental impulse to soothe her, and the practical instinct that it was a moment for unmitigated frankness. "I'm not sure that I do; but if you can't find out what Madame de Treymes thinks, I'll see what I can do myself." "Oh--_you_!" broke from her in mingled terror and admiration; and pausing on her doorstep to lay her hand in his before she touched the bell, she added with a half-whimsical flash of regret: "Why didn't this happen to Fanny Frisbee?" III Why had it not happened to Fanny Frisbee?