The household gods, whose dignity and harmony had not been disturbed during the absence of the master of Westboro', were unable, however, to give him very much comfort on his return. The Duke's motor cut quickly up the long drive and severed--clove, as it were--a way through the frosty air and let him into the park. The poor man had only a sense of wretchedness on coming home--"coming back," he now put it. Huddled down deep in his fur coat, its collar hunched round his ears, his face was as gloomy as that of a man dispossessed of all his goods; doors thrown open into the fragrant and agreeably warmed halls fetched him further home. But the knowledge that the house had been lived in during his absence was not ungrateful. He sniffed the odor of a familiar brand of cigar, and before he had quite plumbed the melancholy of the place to its depths, Jimmy Bulstrode had sunned out of one of the inner rooms, and the grasp of the friendly hand and the sound of the cheerful voice struck a chord in Westboro' that shook him. "I've been like a fiend possessed," he said to Jimmy, in the evening when they found themselves once more before the fire. "I've scarcely known what I've been doing, or why; but I know one thing, and that is that I'm the most wretched man alive." Bulstrode nodded. "You _did_ go to Paris, then!" "Yes," said the Duke, "and what I've found out there has driven me insane." Although ignorant of the variations of his friend's discovery, Bulstrode was pretty certain of one that had not been made. "You may, old chap," he said smoothly, "not have found out all the truth, you know." Westboro' raised his hand. "Come," he said, "no palliations; you can't smooth over the facts. Frances is not in Paris. She has not been in Paris for several months." He paused. "In itself not a tragedy," murmured his friend. "Paris is considered at times a place as well _not_ to be in." But Bulstrode's remark did not distract his friend from his narrative. "She has not been in Paris since I saw her twelve months ago, and she has left no sign or trace of where she has gone. There is no address, no way that I can find her. Not that a discovery is not of course ultimately possible, but what, in the interval, if I should wish to write to her? What if I should need to see her? What if I should die?" "Would you, in any of those cases, send for her?" "I don't know," the Duke admitted. "But," Jimmy asked him, "did you go to Paris this time to see the Duchess?" "Since you ask me frankly," the Duke admitted, "I don't think that I did." "At all events," the other said, "you surely did not go to spy on her, Westboro'?" The Duke was silent, then answered quietly: "I should never ask a question--not if it meant a certain discovery of something that I feared or suspected. I don't think I should ever seek to find out something she didn't want me to know."