Bulstrode interposed: "Don't at least for a few moments entertain any 'buts' and 'onlys'--they are nearly as bad as those magical travelling trunks that would transport me to the United States. It is so--let me say--neutral in this place, I should think I might remain. I don't know why you are here or with whom, nor for how long, or for how deep, but it is singularly perfect to have found you." His hostess had left her seat behind the table, and taking a chair by the fireside where Bulstrode was sitting, undid the ribbons of her garden hat and let the basket-like object fall on the floor. "You must promise me, first of all, that you will not say you have seen me. Otherwise I shall leave here to-morrow and nobody shall ever again know where I am." However her command might conflict with what was in his mind, he was obliged to give her his word. He had no right not to do so. "And nothing," she said, "must make you break this promise, Mr. Bulstrode. I know how good you are, and how you do all sorts of Quixotic funny things, but in this case please--please----" "Mind my own business?" he nodded. "I will, Duchess, I will." She looked at him steadily a moment and seemed satisfied, for she relaxed the tensity of her manner, which was the first Americanism she had displayed, and in her pretty soft drawl asked him, with less perfunctory interest than her words implied: "You are at Westboro'?" "Yes, since the twenty-fifth." "And you're staying on?" "I seem to be more or less of a fixture--until the holidays, I expect." "Lucky you," she breathed, and at his expression of candid surprise she half laughed. "Oh, I mean as far as the castle goes--isn't it really too delightful?" He was able to say honestly: "Quite the most beautiful house I have ever seen." "Yes, I think so too," she nodded. "It's not so important as many others but it's more perfect, more like a home." Bulstrode sat back in his chair and tried to make her forget him. Between the fire and the shadow he wanted to watch her face from which he now saw that the beauty he remembered had not faded but had been transformed. She was beautiful in another way: the brilliant, blooming girl, fully blown at eighteen, with the dazzling charm of health, no longer existed in the Duchess of Westboro'. She had refined very much indeed. The aggressive bearing of the American princess had been replaced by the colder, more serene hauteur of the English Duchess. She was evidently a very proud woman, the arch of her brows said so, and the line of her lips. All her lines were sharper and finer. Her color, and he could not, as he studied her, quite regret it; her color was quite gone. Her pallor made her more delicate, and her eyes--it was in them that Bulstrode thought he saw the greatest change of all; they were now fixed upon him, there was something melancholy in their profound and deeply circled gray.