"Vont came back alone, I believe," her visitor told her, "and he came back second class, too. I heard of him, curiously enough, from an American gentleman who crossed on the same steamer, and who happened to be a guest at my house the other night." Marcia nodded. "The boy left England too young," she remarked, "to miss his country. I suppose he has settled down in America for ever." "I must say that I wish Vont had stayed with him," the Marquis declared. "Yes, go down and see him, by all means, Marcia. I should rather like to hear from you what his state of mind is. I gather that he is obdurate, as he resisted all my efforts to repossess myself of his cottage, but it would be interesting to hear." "Should you mind," she asked, "if I motored down there with my publisher--Mr. James Borden? You have heard me speak of him." "Not in the least," was the ready reply. "Has your friend connections in the locality?" "None," Marcia admitted. "He would come simply for the sake of a day or two's holiday, and to take me." "He is one of your admirers, perhaps?" "He has always been very kind to me." The Marquis was momentarily pensive. "You are a better judge than I, Marcia," he observed, "but is such an expedition as you suggest--usual? I know that things have changed very much since the days when I myself found adventures possible and interesting, but have they really progressed so far as this?" Marcia considered the matter carefully. "On the whole," she decided, "I should say that our proposed expedition was unusual. On the other hand, Mr. Borden has no near relatives, and I myself enjoy a certain amount of liberty." The Marquis smiled at her. "As much liberty as you choose. If I hesitated then for a moment, it was for your own sake. I do not think that I have ever sought to curtail your pleasures, or to interfere in your mode of living." "You have been wonderful," she admitted gratefully. "Perhaps for that very reason, because my fetters have been of silk, I have never realised but always considered them. Do you know that you are the only man who has ever sat down in this flat as my guest, during the whole sixteen years I have lived here?" "I should never have asked you," he said, "but I am not in the least surprised to hear it. Sometimes," he went on, drawing her towards him in a slight but affectionate embrace, "you have perhaps thought me a little cold, a little staid and distant from you, even in our happiest moments. I was brought up, you must remember, in the school which considers any exhibition of feeling as a deplorable lapse. The thing grows on one. Yet, Marcia," he added, drawing her still closer and clasping her hand, "you have been my refuge in all these years. It is here with you that I have spent my happiest hours. You have been my consolation in many weary disappointments. I often wish that I could give you a different position than the one which you occupy."