Rosencrantz the German librarian, or that stale hanger-on of the clubs who made a sort of trade of country houses, was very bitter to Winton. He was not accustomed to be a _super_, and he did not like the post. To tell the truth, in the first half-hour in Billings Castle Winton felt his own hopes and dreams come back upon him with a bitterness and sense of ridicule which drove him almost out of himself. Had he not been a fool to entertain any hopes at all? Was not Lady Germaine ludicrously mistaken when she talked of the Duchess’s pledge? The Duchess, was she not far too great a lady to care what happened to a simple gentleman? He began to think he had been a fool to come, a fool ever to permit himself to shipwreck his heart and life in this way, and doubly a fool, a ridiculous idiot, to go drivelling into decorations and pieces of furniture, as if his little manor-house could ever vie with--All these thoughts were put to flight in a moment by the sudden opening of a closed door which flooded a dark passage to his right with the glory of the sunset sweeping through it. Some one came out and stood for a moment in the midst of that glory: then Winton heard himself called. The servant disappeared by magic, and he suddenly found himself in a small sitting-room with a broad window flooded by the evening light. The Duchess held out both her hands to him, but he scarcely saw them, for behind her, coming in through another door, a little flush upon her soft cheeks, and that liquid golden illumination in her eyes---- it was as if some one had said to him out of the glowing west, “O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?” This meeting, however, was of the briefest--for the house was very full and the dinner-hour approaching. “You must go away directly,” the Duchess said; “but I could not trust you to meet for the first time down-stairs before so many eyes.” “So it was policy?” Winton cried. “Entirely policy--is not every step I take more or less of that description?--but Jane could not have borne it,” she said, “and neither could you, I think. I did not bring you here to ruin you. We must all be on our p’s and q’s.” “P’s and q’s!” cried Winton, “become insupportable. Dear Duchess, you will not be too hard upon me. Now at least I must have it out, and know my fate. How can I bear to hang on--to have everything pushed off in indefinite space?” Lady Jane touched his arm lightly with her hand, stroking it, with a pretty movement of mingled soothing and sympathy. “_Pazienza!_” she said softly; but she liked the impatience. It pleased her delicate sense of what was best. “Would you prefer, Mr Winton, to know the worst?--would you rather have a definite No than an indefinite suspense?” “Don’t call him Mr Winton,” said Lady Jane in her under tone.