The Duke looked at him in silence, then left the room and strode down the stair, leaving the pair together. For the first time he recalled the connection between them. CHAPTER XV WHEN Diana left the playhouse on the Saturday, a heavy rain was falling through the grimy dark, and she muffled her head in her hood and stepped swiftly from the door into the chair, her little feet splashing in the puddled ill-lit gutter, the flambeaux dazzling in the rain. The men lowered the roof instantly and shut the door and set off at a swinging trot, eager no doubt to have done with the dirty night. Her thoughts were strangely intermingled—the songs and laughter of the playhouse still echoed among them, the gay kindness of the good Duchess, the words of my Lady Fanny,—(“’Twas strange she should tell me, of all women, that story of his Grace’s marriage.”)—all these things mixt with a deep content that my Lord Baltimore had been absent this night and indeed many nights lately. ’Twas like a cool lotion to allay a burn—this absence! Sure it might mean he was weary of a pursuit that could bring only rebuffs and contempt, and if so she could deal with others, less to be dreaded. The play had now been playing two months to crowded houses and still there was no slackening in the rage to see it. Money was turned away nightly, and the rows of chairs on the stage were three deep and some of the boxes run into each other to make more room. ’Twas raging like a fever in the provinces also and a whole regiment of pretty Pollys had sprung up to follow her lead, but none, none like the fair original, so swore men and women alike. A triumph to turn any girl’s head, and since the idol was but a girl, when all’s said and done, it might easily turn hers were it not for a stronger passion than vanity that swept over it and submerged it and left it forgotten.