"Good heavens! _Jimmy_ carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect such a _liason_ with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more sinless than other men--than himself? He couldn't answer his own question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The Dials was certainly not she. Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed. Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be. And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes. By the time he had reached this point in his reflections the motor had stopped at one of the side doors of the castle. "There is, of course, some perfectly proper explanation--" the Duke decided. It's a harmless flirtation, if any flirtation at all. Perhaps it's a beneficent bit of benevolence; at any rate it's Jimmy's own affair, and after all, he's going to _buy_ the property--perhaps he's going to marry. Why not? Ashamed to have placed his friend, if only momentarily, in an equivocal position, he turned about as they got out of the car and put an affectionate hand on the American's shoulder. "Oh, I expect, old man, that you've got some wonderful scheme up your sleeve! You're going to be married and fetch your bride to The Dials." Poor Bulstrode unfortunately echoed: "_Married_!" with a world of scorn in his tone. "My poor Westboro,' after what I've lately seen and heard here--forgive me if I say that for the time at least I'm not too sharply tempted." "Since," he said as he greeted her, "you appear to be intending to live here forever, you'll welcome me when I come back from London. I'm coming back for Christmas, but if I don't run in before you'll understand, won't you, that it is because I simply haven't dared. Westboro' has already seen me cut across to this place." The Duchess interrupted him. "Oh, in that case, I shall, of course, be obliged to move away." And to her great surprise Bulstrode quickly agreed with her. "I should think it wise--not of course in the least knowing why you originally came." She looked at him rather quizzically. "You mean to say then that you don't really know?"