He had struck the wrong chord. To Marrion, absorbed in the one enthralling question as to whether Marmaduke had known of this survival or whether he had not, the suggestion that she was the sole arbiter came as a shock. "We agreed," she said slowly, "to annul the marriage. He thought--I know he thought--this paper had been burnt; and it doesn't make any difference to our intention that it wasn't. And then we promised, we both promised your father no claim should ever be made. Because Duke is dead is that any reason----" She rose suddenly, walked to the fireplace, and threw the envelope and its contents on the fire. "That is what Duke meant," she muttered to herself helplessly. Peter Muir watched her with a half-cynical, half-admiring smile. "Well, you know best, my dear. And, of course, I personally would never let you come to want." The capable woman looked at him, the incapable man, with wondering tolerance. "Still, I must say I am disappointed. I should like to have seen the governor's face when you sprang it upon him. Remember he is the villain of the piece and, as I said, deserves everything he can get." "That may be," replied Marrion, "but can't you see we were all at fault? And we have to pay for it. We must--you can't get rid of the past." She said the words over and over to herself, and it was not till she reached her lodgings that she realised fully that the past had claimed the future. Yet what else could she have done? If she had only known what Duke would have said! Had he found out the paper, or had he not? Was that the reason why in those short ten days of heaven he had never, never, never alluded to the past? And yet that heavenly present had become the past too, and had stretched out into the future. Had she been taken by surprise? Had she made another mistake? She threw herself on her bed and cried quite foolishly, until perforce, being physically unable to cry any more, her mind reasserted itself and thought came again. One thing seemed clear. She could not possibly tell what Duke knew or did not know; she could not be sure what he would have thought; and she would have no more of trying to impose her views on him.