"Because," she said, eying him penetratively, "there is at present something bottled up in you. I do not know what it is, and if I asked you wouldn't tell me, but you're not quite your natural self, whatever that may be. Is it, I wonder, the result of that twenty years' struggle of yours? Perhaps you have really lost the capacity for generous life, Mr. Thain." "You are a very observant person." "Trust me, then, and tell me your secret sorrow?" she suggested. "I could be a very good friend, Mr. Thain, if friends amuse you." "I have lived under a shadow," he confessed. "I am sorry, but I cannot tell you much about it. But in a sense you are right. Life for me will begin after the accomplishment of a certain purpose." "You have a rival to ruin, eh?" "No, it isn't that," he assured her. "It happens to be something of which I could not give you even the smallest hint." "Well, I don't see how you are going to get on with it down at Broomleys," she observed. "What a horrid person you are to go there at all! You might as well bury yourself. You have the wealth of a Monte Cristo and you take a furnished villa--for that's all it is! Perhaps you are waiting till the mortgages fall in, to buy Mandeleys? Or did my warning come too late and is Letitia the attraction?" He was conscious of her close observation, but he gave no sign. "I have seen nothing of Lady Letitia," he said, "but even if she were content to accept my four millions as a compensation for my other disadvantages, it would make no difference." "Any entanglements on the other side?" she asked airily. "None!" The Duchess finished her lobster and leaned back in her chair. Through her tiny platinum lorgnette she looked around the room for several moments. Then a little abruptly she turned again to him. "Really," she said, "people are doing such mad things, now-a-days, that I am not at all sure that I am right in putting you off Letitia. It would be frightfully useful to have four millions in the family. And yet, do you know," she went on, "it's queer, isn't it, but I don't want you to marry my niece." "Why not?" "How crude!" she sighed. "I really shall have to take a lot of trouble with you, Mr. David Thain. However, if you persist--because Letitia is my niece." "And you don't like me well enough," he asked, "to accept me as a husband for your niece?" She laughed at him very quietly. "Are you very ingenuous," she demanded, "or just a little subtle? Hadn't it occurred to you, for instance, that I might prefer to keep you to myself?" "You must forgive me if I seem stupid," he begged, "or unresponsive. I don't wish to be either. I can understand that in America I might be a person of some interest. Over here--well, the whole thing is different, isn't it? Apart from my money, I know and realise how ignorant I am of your ways, of the things to do here and how to do them. I feel utterly at a disadvantage with every one, unless they happen to want my money."