“Your Grace,” she said gently—“your sympathy is more precious than another’s, for you have suffered. To whom else than to such a gentleman could I have opened myself. I know not how it is, but you are one that women naturally turn to in trouble—full of kind and noble thoughts and a grave sympathy. If I had a brother I could wish him so. Indeed I am in trouble. Tell me, I beseech you, the truth that it may help me like a bitter potion. Is this woman his mistress? But if even she is not, a pursuit so base must for ever dishonour him in my eyes.” His own flashed, but he subdued the rising anger, and confronted her calmly. “Consider me your brother, Madam, and hear a plain truth. She is not his mistress nor any man’s. She is pure as yourself.— Can I say more? for ’tis known what temptation you resisted during a hateful marriage. And his pursuit in one sense is not base in that to love such a woman should ennoble any man. ’Tis base only because he would drag the chaste moon from the heavens into the mud of a vile passion. Were he to share his name with her I could honour him, but as it is——” “Share his great name with a player-woman!” she cried, in horror. “Madness! Impossible! Why—(she made a long pause—then said very low) your Grace yourself loves her. Else you had not said this.” They stared at each other a second—almost in a kind of terror, his dark face paling. There was a dead silence. She then spoke hurriedly. “Forgive me. I have pried too far. I did not know—I could not guess. The world seems reeling about me. We will keep each other’s secret—my brother!” For the Duke—he sat almost stunned. Her words had tore apart a veil in his own heart that covered things strange and undreamt of. Friendship, homage, charm—the pleasure to talk with a creature so simple, so delicate of thought, so ardent in her youth, with a gallant courage to carry her over hindrances, and a pleasant humour to laugh at them. A true and sweet companion for a man. All these things he knew and acknowledged gladly—his sword was at her service. What man could stand by and leave unprotected one so friendless with all her renown? But that there should be more beneath it—Love the conqueror, had not as yet crossed his thoughts. He knew much of women, nothing of love. ’Tis to be remembered that the first knowledge often obscures the last. Its dazzle is as the sun flashed in a mirror that hides the sun itself. But this keen-eyed lady in a swift-darted word revealed him to himself. Love? Should he be my Lord’s competitor? She trusted him, indeed he knew himself agreeable to her. Love? His heart repeated the word in a kind of passion and could grasp nought else for the moment. He rose to his feet.