"How rude you are!" she said, with her whole interest concentrated upon the slow removal of her glove. Then she smoothed a little, softly, the pretty hand which was thus uncovered, and said, "How red one's hands get in this weather," and then laughed. "You don't mean to tell me, Mr. Tatham," she said, suddenly raising her eyes to his, "that, considering what a very particular person we were discussing, you can't remember what I said?" John was obliged to confess that he remembered more or less the gist of her discourse, and Lady Mariamne nodded her head many times in acceptance of his confession. "Well," she said, "you see what it has come to. An open scandal, a separation, and everything broken up. For one thing, I knew if she did not give him his head a little that's what would happen. I don't believe he cares a brass farthing for that other woman. She makes fun of everybody, and that amused him. And it amused him to put Nell in a state--that as much as anything. Why couldn't she see that and learn to _prendre son parti_ like other people? She was free to say, 'You go your way and I'll go mine:' the most of us do that sooner or later: but to make a vulgar open rupture, and go off--like this." "I fail to see the vulgarity in it," said John. "Oh, of course; everything she does is perfect to you. But just think, if it had been your own case--followed about and bullied by a jealous woman, in a state of health that of itself disgusts a man----" "Lady Mariamne, you must pardon me if I refuse to listen to anything more of this kind," said John, starting to his feet. "Oh, I warn you, you'll be compelled to listen to a great deal more if you're her agent as I hear! Phil will find means of compelling you to hear if you don't like to take your information from me." "I should like to know how Mr. Phil Compton will succeed in compelling me--to anything I don't choose to do." "You think, perhaps, because there's no duelling in this country he can't do anything. But there is, all the same. He would shame you into it--he could say you were--sheltering yourself----" "I am not a man to fight duels," said John, very angry, but smiling, "in any circumstances, even were such a thing not utterly ridiculous; but even a fighting man might feel that to put himself on a level with the dis-Hon----" He stopped himself as he said it. How mean it was--to a woman!--descending to their own methods. But Lady Mariamne was too quick for him. "Oh," she said; "so you've heard of that, a nickname that no gentleman----" then she too paused and looked at him, with a momentary flush. He was going to apologize abjectly, when with a slight laugh she turned the subject aside. "Pretty fools we are, both of us, to talk such nonsense. I didn't come here carrying Phil on my shoulders, to spring at your throat if you expressed your opinion. Look here--tell me, don't let us go beating about the bush, Mr. Tatham--I suppose you have seen Nell?"