Ten minutes later, Belle and he were alone in the most favourable place in the house for a tête-à-tête, a curious old corner, the two sides of which were converted into a capacious seat to which there was but one approach, screened by a heavy curtain on one side and a suit of armour on the other--safe from all observers. "What a quaint old house this is!" he said. "We might almost suppose we were back in the sixteenth century." "Yes," she replied dreamily. "We're out of place in these surroundings." She was in a strange mood this evening, sad and thoughtful, yet lacking the repose which should have accompanied reverie. It was the only time that the Secretary had ever seen her nervous or _distraite_. "What have you been doing all day?" he asked, hoping to lead the conversation to some more cheerful subject. "Trying to forget myself," she replied. "Surely it would be a pleasure to remember yourself, I should think." "Should you? I fear not." "Your ears must have burned this afternoon," he continued, unheeding her comment. "Pleasant things were being said about you." "Did you say them?" "Of course I said them, I always do; but I was referring to someone else--to Lady Isabelle." "People only patronise me, when they think me unworthy of reproof." "How can you say that!" he exclaimed. "I----" but she silenced him with a gesture. "You've said it. That's why. I've never had one friend with whom there did not come a day, that he or she threw me over and cast my failings in my face. I'd believed it was different with you, I believed you trusted me; that you'd have trusted me through good and evil report--but no, you're like the rest. Society points its finger at me, and you accept its verdict, and you're right. You, secure in your social position, powerful, influential, you shall determine what is right and what is wrong, and I,--I must accept it without a murmur--I'm only a woman without a friend." "No! no! no!" he cried vehemently. "You wrong me, you do not understand. No one can respect a woman more than I respect you. It's of some of your friends that I disapprove." "A man is known by the company he keeps--how much more a woman. I'm like my friends--and you--you"--and for the moment she forgot to be meek and suffering, and her eyes blazed with passion--"you are the Pharisee of the nineteenth century, the hem of whose robe we outcasts are unworthy to touch!"