The Duchess helped him: "That she'll make a charity of it." "Yes, if you like," he laughed. "Or be a sport," he preferred to put it. "Stay on, stand by. It will be perfectly ripping of her, you know." But the Duchess had no sympathy for the other woman. Her eyes fixed themselves on the trees before her, and as a shot rang out in the distance she said abruptly: "Why, that might be Cecil, mightn't it? Does he shoot birds on your premises?" Bulstrode wondered very much for what reason she was habited in street dress and furs, whether she had planned to leave The Dials or had intended going up to see her husband. "Forgive me," he said, "if I seem to be shockingly in a hurry, but I must have a look at the time, for as it happens, even in this far-off place, I have an engagement." Impulsively putting out her hand the Duchess exclaimed: "I can't ever, ever thank you." "Oh, after your divorce----" But she cried out so against his words that he hastened: "You want me to think then that you do not believe...." "Believe!" she ardently repeated, "Oh, I don't know what I believe or think," and he saw that the poor thing spoke the truth. "It's I who am as unstable as the sea, I who am the derelict." He contradicted her gently: "My dear, you're only trying to solve alone a problem which it takes two to answer. When you see Westboro' you will know." She turned on him with the first sparkle of humor he had ever seen her display. "Why don't you marry Mrs. Falconer?" He didn't start; indeed, the idea had such a familiar sound it would have been hard to frighten him with it from any corner. "I thought you didn't believe in divorces?" "Oh, but you'd make a wonderful husband!" He laughed. "No one has ever thought so--_la preuve_....?" With great frankness in her gesture and a great--he was quick to see it--a great affection--she put out her hand to him and said: "Oh, yes, you'd make a wonderful companion, and you've been a wonderful friend. If anything good comes to me now, I shall in great measure owe it to you." He protested: "You owe me nothing, nothing." There were tears in her eyes as she said: "But I want to, I like to, and I do. I don't know," she went on, "that I might not have been reconciled ultimately to my husband, but I feel quite sure it would only have been the basting up of the seam--it would have ripped away again. Did you ever--" she challenged him with still a little sparkle of humor, "hear of a thing called a change of heart?" "Yes, at Methodist meetings." She said gravely: "That's not what I mean. But whatever _has_ happened it's only been since you told me things." Her face was so girlish, her eyes so sweet, her humility so sudden, that her companion found himself embarrassed and could hardly find words to say good-by to her. She went on to say, in a tone so low that he bent a little over the dial to hear her. "You told me you could not advise my husband to come to me."