Norah laughed. “Because he’s a man who takes a lot of notice of pretty women--and he took so very little notice of me. That’s why I think so, Helena.” The Marchesa made no comment on the reason given. But now--at last and undoubtedly--she looked across at the windows of Scarsmoor. “We shall come to some business arrangement, I suppose--and then it’ll all be over,” she said. All over? The trouble and the enmity--the defiance and the fight--the excitement and the fun? The duel would be stayed, the combatants and their seconds would go their various ways across the diverging tracks of this great dissevering world. All would be over! “Then we shall have time to think of something else!” the Marchesa added. Norah smiled discreetly. Was not that something of an admission? In the library at Scarsmoor Lynborough was inditing the proposal which he intended to submit by his ambassadors on the morrow. CHAPTER XII AN EMBASSAGE The Marchesa’s last words to Lady Norah betrayed the state of her mind. While the question of the path was pending, she had been unable to think of anything else; until it was settled she could think of nobody except of the man in whose hands the settlement lay. Whether Lynborough attracted or repelled, he at least occupied and filled her thoughts. She had come to recognise where she stood and to face the position. Stillford’s steady pessimism left her no hope from an invocation of the law; Lynborough’s dexterity and resource promised her no abiding victory--at best only precarious temporary successes--in a private continuance of the struggle. Worst of all--whilst she chafed or wept, he laughed! Certainly not to her critical friends, hardly even to her proud self, would she confess that she lay in her antagonist’s mercy; but the feeling of that was in her heart. If so, he could humiliate her sorely. Could he spare her? Or would he? Try how she might, it was hard to perceive how he could spare her without abandoning his right. That she was sure he would not do; all she heard of him, every sharp intuition of him which she had, the mere glimpse of his face as he passed by on Sandy Nab, told her that.