"I was prompted to come to you," she replied, "by your kindness of last evening, for I knew you had seen and understood, and were still my friend, and also my national representative in a foreign land, to ask your aid for a poor country-woman who is in danger of being deprived of her freedom, if not of her reason." "But surely you are not speaking of yourself!" "Yes, of myself." The young diplomat said nothing for a moment or two, he was arranging his ideas--adjusting them to this new and interesting phase of his experience with Madame Darcy. As a Secretary of Legation is generally the father confessor of his compatriots--he had ceased to be surprised at anything. People may deceive their physician, their lawyer, or the partner of their joys and sorrows; but to their country's representative in a strange land they unburden their hearts. "Tell me," he said finally, breaking the silence, "just what your trouble is." "I need sympathy and help." "The first you have already," he replied with a special reserve in his manner, for he felt somehow that it was hardly fair that she should bring herself to his notice again, when he had almost made up his mind to marry a lady of whom all his friends disapproved. Indeed, in the last few minutes the force of Kingsland's remarks had made themselves felt very strongly, and he especially exerted himself to be brusque, feeling in an odd kind of way that he owed it to Miss Fitzgerald. So putting on his most official tone he added, "to help you, Madame Darcy, I must understand your case clearly." "Don't call me by that name--give me my own--as you once did. My husband's a brute." "Quite so, undoubtedly; but unfortunately that does not change your name." "Would you mind shutting the door?" she replied somewhat irrelevantly. They were, as has been said, in the Secretary's private office, a dreary room, its furniture, three chairs, a desk and a bookcase full of forbidding legal volumes, its walls littered with maps, and its one window looking out on the unloveliness of a London business street. As he returned to his seat, after executing her request, she began abruptly:-- "You're not a South American." "No, my father was a Northerner, but, as you know, he owned large sugar plantations in your country, and if training and sympathy can make me a South American, I am one." "You're a Protestant." "Yes, so are you." "It is my mother's faith, and though I was brought up in a convent at New Orleans, I've not forsaken it. I feel easier in speaking to you on that account." "You may rest assured, my dear, that what you say to me will go no farther. 'Tis my business to keep secrets."