"Ah, there you are! I was expecting you, for Andrew was round this afternoon and told me you were in town." He did not go up to her or greet her; only smiled content and sank into the easy-chair placed between where she sat and the fire. The big table wheeled cosily into the corner was littered with lace and muslin. He took up a small pinafore and looked at it distastefully. "I wish you wouldn't work so hard," he said suddenly, "and I hate to see you busy over those things; it reminds me----" he broke off. She laid down the little frock she was embroidering on the instant, and went to kneel beside him; for her insight into this man's moods was complete, and she felt what was coming. "And it reminds me too, Duke. That is why I love it. I have told you so often it was nobody's fault; if anybody's, mine." He shook his head. "You can't make me believe that." "But it is true. See here, Duke, I ought never to have allowed you to bind yourself. It put me in a false position. I was too anxious to please, too anxious to pay you back the gift, as it were, so I did what I ought not to have done. I thought of you, not of the child. But what is the use of going over it all again? It is past and done with." He sat with his hands between his knees for a minute, looking at the fire. "Well, I am sorry the poor little chap died." It gave her the opening she needed. "That is what your father said when I told him," she said quietly. He stared at her. "My father!" "Yes, Duke, I have been to see him again. He was quite kind. Sit still and I will tell you everything." And she told him though she saw his face grow stern and angry. "You had no business to do it," he said, when she finished. "Can't you even leave me to manage my own affairs? I didn't interfere with yours when you broke away and set up on your own, did I?" "You have been very good to me, Marmaduke," she replied, with a catch in her voice, "and I've tried to be as good to you." The memory of many a helping hand, of long years in which this woman's companionship had been an anchor to him, came to appease his easy nature. "Well, it is no use being angry," he said at last; "the thing's done. And you really destroyed your lines?" "Your father tore them up. He quite agreed with me that as I had no children, and there was no chance of one--at any rate, of a living one--that I was bound to release you. And I am bound. I refuse to be your wife." "And if I claim you?" he said swiftly, resentment in his voice. She smiled. "I shall still refuse you, then in three years we shall be automatically divorced." "In Scotland only. You are very clever, my dear, but you forget some things." His deft diversion, however, had done its work, the subject was no longer personal. "It is impossible," he continued. "I can't leave you in the lurch." "You don't. Look at it clearly, please. Since we agreed to separate----" "I never agreed," he put in angrily. "I was quite ready to fulfil----"