In the time that he had come to know the Duchess of Breakwater she, on her part, had filled him full of other confidences. Into his young ears she poured the story of her disappointment, her disjointed life, from her worldly girlhood to her disillusion in marriage. She was beautiful when she talked and more lovely when she wept. Dan thought himself in love with the Duchess of Breakwater. His conversations with her had brought him to this conclusion. They had motored from Osdene Park together, and he had been extremely taken with the pleasure of it, and with the fact of their real companionship. Two or three times the words had been on his lips, which were fated not to be spoken then, however, and Dan reached the Gaiety still unfettered, his duchess by his side. And then the orchestra had begun to play _Mandalay_, the curtain had gone up and Letty Lane had come out on the boards. But her apparition did not strike off his chains immediately, nor did he renounce his plan to tell the duchess the very next day that he loved her. When with sparkling eyes Lady Galorey raved about _Mandalay_, Dan listened with eagerness. Everybody seemed to know all about Letty Lane, but he alone knew from what town she had come! They went for supper at the Carlton after the theater. “Letty,” Lady Galorey said, “tells it herself how the impresario heard her sing in some country church—picked her up then and there and brought her over here, and they say she married him.” Dan Blair could have told them how she had sung in that little church that day. Dan was eating his caviare sandwich. “Her name _then_ was Sally Towney,” he murmured. How little he had guessed that she was singing herself right out of that church and into the London Gaiety Theater! Anyway, she had made him “sit up!” It was a far cry from Montana to the London Gaiety. And so she married the greasy Jew who had discovered her! Dan glanced over at the Duchess of Breakwater. She was looking well, exquisitely high bred, and she impressed him. She leaned slightly over to him, laughing. He had hardly dared to meet her eyes that day, fearing that she might read his secret. She had told him that in her own right she was a countess—the Countess of Stainer. Titles didn’t cut any ice with him. At any rate, she would be able to “buy back the old farm”—that is the way Dan put it. She had told him of the beautiful old Stainer Court, mortgaged and hung up with debts, as deep in ruins as the ivy was thick on the walls. As Dan looked over at the duchess he saw the other people staring and looking about at a table near. It was spread a little to their left for four people, a great bouquet of orchids in the center.