But Lady Oxford paid no heed to the stammered apology. As Mr. Kelly moved to her she waived him aside with her hands, and, dropping on to a sofa, pressed her weeping face into the cushions. Sobs shook her; she lay abandoned to distress. Mr. Kelly stood apart and listened to the dolorous sound of her weeping. That was true which she had said; he had promised to burn those letters; he had sworn that he had burned them. His fine plan of using them as a weapon against her began to take quite another complexion. There were, no doubt, all manner of pious and respectable arguments to be discovered in favour of the plan, if only he pried about for them. But a saying of Mr. Scrope's was suddenly scrawled out in his recollections: 'AEneas was an army chaplain who invoked his religion when he was tired of the lady, and so sailed away with a clear conscience.' Kelly murmured 'Rose' to himself, and, again, 'Rose,' seeking to fortify himself with the mention of her name. But it had the contrary effect. Even as he heard his lips murmuring it, the struggle was over. George had a number of pretty finical scruples, of which his conduct at this crisis of his fortunes was a particular example. He relates how it seemed to him that at the mention of her name Rose threw out a hand to him and drew him up out of a slough; how he understood that his fine plan was unworthy of any man, and entirely despicable in the man whom she, out of her great condescension, had stooped to love; how he became aware that he owed it to her, since she was a woman, that no woman's fame, whether a Smilinda's or no, should be smirched by any omission of his; how he suddenly felt in his very marrow that it would dishonour Rose to save her even from great misery by a _lachete_ towards another of her sex. His duty was revealed to him in that moment, as clear as it was unexpected. He sets his revulsion of feeling wholly to Rose's account, as a man in love should, but very likely her ladyship's fan had something to do with it. He spoke again to Lady Oxford, and very gently. 'Madam, it is true. I promised to burn your letters. I swore that I had burned them. My honour, I perceive, can only be saved by saving yours.' Lady Oxford raised her head from the cushions and stared at him with wondering eyes. 'Let us play this game _cartes sur table_,' continued Kelly. Her ladyship rose from her sofa and sat herself in a chair at a table, still wondering, still suspicious. George took the chair on the other side of the table, and spoke while Lady Oxford dried the tears upon her face. To help her at all he must know all that she knew. His first business was to remove her ladyship's suspicions. 'I understand that your ladyship, by some means of which I am as yet ignorant, has become aware of a certain Plot, and has carried the knowledge to Mr. Walpole.' Lady Oxford neither agreed nor denied. She admitted the truth of Mr. Kelly's statement in her own way.