"Don't say that. Why should you pluck off all your beautiful feathers to make a nest for his conceit?" "Is he conceited?" Freda said to herself, "After all, she doesn't count. She doesn't know him." Miss Nethersole smiled. "He's a male man, my dear. If you want him to have an even higher idea of your genius than he has already, tell him--tell him you owe it all to him." "Ah," said Freda, "you don't know him." "I have known him," said Miss Nethersole, "for fifteen years. I knew him before he married." She had proved incontestably the superiority of her knowledge. Freda felt as if Miss Nethersole were looking at her to see how she would take it. There was an appreciable moment in which she adjusted her mind to the suddenness of the revelation. Then she told herself that there was nothing in it that she had not reckoned with many times before. It left her relations with Wilton Caldecott where they were. There was nothing in it that could change for her the unique and immaterial tie. She was even relieved by the certainty that it was not Julia Nethersole, then, after all. She had an idea that she would have grudged him to Julia Nethersole. Julia was much too well-bred to show that she had the advantage. She took it for granted that Miss Farrar was also acquainted with the circumstances of Wilton Caldecott's marriage. "That," said she, "is what makes him so extraordinarily interesting." "His marriage"--Freda hesitated. She wondered if Miss Nethersole would really go into it. "Some people's marriages are quite unilluminating. Wilton's, I always think, is the key to his character, sometimes to his conduct." Freda held her breath. She saw that Miss Nethersole was about to go in deep. "He has suffered"--Miss Nethersole went on--"all his life, from an over-developed sense of honor. He could see honor in situations where you wouldn't have said there was the ghost of an obligation. His marriage was not an affair of the heart. It was an affair of honor. The woman--she's dead now--was in love with him." "Did you know her?" "No. She was not the sort of person you do know. She was simply a pretty, underbred little governess. He met her--on the staircase, I imagine--in some house he was staying in, and, as I say, she was in love with him. She was a scheming little wretch, and she and her people made him believe that he had compromised her in some shadowy way. I suppose he _had_ paid her a little ordinary attention--I don't know the details. Anyhow, he was so fantastically honorable that he married her." "Poor thing. It must have been awful for her, to be married in that way--for honor!" "She didn't consider it awful in the least. She didn't mind what she was married _for_, so long as she _was_ married. She was that sort. Do I bore you?" "No. You interest me immensely."