My lord pressed his handkerchief to his beautiful mouth. He was silent, gazing with dark eyes on Marius, ignoring his wife. The younger man forced himself into speech again. "There is no one to blame, sir, is there?" He now smiled, and it maddened the Countess. She could have understood anything but that. Her husband had never been remotely within her reach, and now Marius stepped beyond it. That they should smile! "I had an intuition of what had happened when I entered the room," said my lord. "Tragedy on the heels of the ludicrous! Certainly it is no one's fault, Marius." The Countess rose with the fierce intent of dragging their emotions on to a level that she could understand, but for the second time Marius hushed her with a glance and a movement of his hand. "I met my lady when she was Miss Hilton," he said firmly, looking at his brother, "and between us was some folly that might have been everything and was nothing--too small a matter to have been mentioned, my lord, had not--we--I--been surprised by this meeting." The Earl's gaze was grave, but curiously tender too. He leant rather heavily against the mantelshelf, and there was a very faint smile on his lips. "Do not suppose that I do not understand," he said, and his beautiful voice was soft. It seemed to the Countess that they both ignored her, that they spoke a language she could not comprehend; that she stood an alien before them. "_Do_ you understand?" she directly addressed her husband. "Do you understand _my_ position?" She pushed back the dark hair from her face, and her long brown eyes were bright. My lord gave her one glance. "Yes, you are my wife," he said. "Since a month ago"--a painful colour beat in her cheeks--"what of my _feelings_?" Ardently, yet almost unconsciously, she desired to bring things to an issue, to force these two into action, to make a scene, to have a chance of expressing her own inarticulate passion; so had she wished to bring Marius to a pitch of she knew not what emotion when she came down to the library, knowing him there alone and unprepared. "What of me?" she cried again. "I' faith I know not," answered my lord. "What of you? 'Tis in your own hands." She felt he slighted her as a creature of another world, and the quick red deepened beneath her eyes. "Nothing to you, this!" She spoke with raised voice, as if she denounced him. "What do you care where my affections lie? What is it to you the name I hold in my heart?" "My lady!" cried Marius. Then he turned to his brother. "Ye must a little longer listen to me, my lord. It cannot be left to seem that I go to London on the instant because once my lady thought too highly of me." He held his head proudly, though his lips trembled. "The Countess came to tell me how utterly she had forgotten one Miss Hilton once honoured with some slight acquaintance."