Winton obeyed her Grace’s lead, though with reluctance and a troubled mind. He only partially comprehended what she meant. He would have liked for his own part, to hold his love fast--to cry out to her once more, “You will not give me up because your father sends me away?” But he yielded to the Duchess’s look, though with a grudge, feeling that this was moral compulsion almost as absolute as that with which her husband had turned him out. He rose from the sofa on which he had been sitting with Jane, and stood before her, feeling in his hand still the mould of hers which had lain there so long, and which left his, he thought, with reluctance. This proceeding brought her altogether to herself. She looked around her with an almost pitiful surprise. “Am I to be left alone,” she said, with a quiver in her lip, “when I need support most?” and then there was a pause. To Jane and to Winton it seemed as if the very wheels of existence were arrested and the world stood still. No one spoke. He was not capable of it; the Duchess would not. Lady Jane between, with wet eyelashes, and cheeks still pale with tears, and mouth quivering, her hands clasped in her lap as if clinging to each other since there was nothing else to hold by, sat perfectly still for a moment which seemed an hour. When she spoke at last there was a catch in her voice, and the words came with difficulty, and with little pauses between. “What is it I am to decide?” she said. “All was decided--when we found out--in town---- We cannot separate, he and I---- That--can never come into question now. Is it not so?---- I may read it wrong---- It appears--I have already read something wrong----” And then a spasm came over her face once more: but she got it under control. “What you mean is--about details?” said Lady Jane. Winton, who had been in so extreme a state of excitement and suspense that he could bear no more, dropped down upon his knees at the side of the sofa on which she sat, and, clasping them, put down his face upon her hands. Lady Jane freed one to put it lightly upon his bowed head, with something of that soft maternal smile of indulgence of which love has the privilege. “Did he think I was a child?” she said to her mother, with a gentle wonder in her eyes. “Or not honest?” She herself was calm again; steadfast, while the others still trembled, seeing the complications so much less clearly than the fair and open way. She was a little surprised by Winton’s broken ecstasies, by her mother’s tremulous kiss of approval. “Is there anything left for me to decide?” she said.