He sprang down the stair, and Diana, slipping back upon the sofa, covered her face with her hands, Baltimore almost as white and stunned as she. CHAPTER XVII IN Queensbury House, the Duchess sat that night in her library to hear the story from Bolton. Diana slept in her own room, worn out and wearied beyond all power of speech or even of thought. In his splendid rooms in the next street my Lord Baltimore lay in solitude, considering the past, not entirely unhopeful for the future, and as the Duchess heard the story of his offer, she sent a kind thought to him, winged above the grimy house-tops that might well help to assuage the sting of his wounded arm. “Good blood doesn’t lie,” says she in her bright sententious manner—“A haberdasher hadn’t acted thus, and especially before a third person. But he made his amend like a gentleman.” “Like a gentleman!” asserts the Duke. “I never liked him so well. But a good woman makes men better, as a bad one drives them to the devil.” “And which am I?” says she with her smile that none other ever matched. “You are Kitty. There’s none like you. Nature broke her mould after she made you, Madam, and so did she also—with another. One other. I thank God I know the two women I love—one as a friend, the other as a lover—incomparable.” She prest his hand softly,—nay, even touched his face,—brushing it like a butterfly’s wing for gentleness. There was a minute’s silence. “I knew long since you loved her,” she said, “And indeed ’tis a fair creature in mind and body, and, as I think, a spotless heart. What shall her future be? Baltimore I dare swear she will never have— She’s so simple that unlike the women of our world she thinks love the only wear! and to be my Lady Baltimore nothing to the purpose. The little sweet fool! How shall it end, Bolton?” He made a gesture of despair, but said nothing. The Duchess continued:— “I shall hear her tale tomorrow, and perhaps decipher her heart in it, but what then? Shall she continue at the playhouse?” “Not if I die on the threshold. I sent a message to Rich on coming here that I would wait on him in an hour. My way is dark before me—I know not how things shall be, yet know certainly that on those boards she shall never set foot again.” “I think you in the right,” says Kitty softly. “Yet—our poor play!”