“Silly or not, she wouldn’t do it if she didn’t care for him. Not Lady Edna Donnithorpe. They meet whenever they can. He comes to me and pours out everything. I ought to have told you. But I couldn’t break my word. They’re lovers——” “Lovers? What do you mean?” he asked, bending his heavy brows. “Not yet. Not in that sense, I’m sure. But they soon will be.” She looked at him anxiously. “I know I’m going to forfeit Godfrey’s affection, and perhaps your respect—but I can’t do otherwise.” She paused, then burst out desperately: “She’s going to run away with him this afternoon.” “The devil she is!” cried Baltazar. He strode about the room and threw up his hands. “Oh, the damned young fool!” He wheeled round on Marcelle. “Why on earth didn’t you stop it?” She pleaded helplessness. How could she? Naturally she had used every argument, moral and worldly. As it was, he had dashed off in a fume, calling her unsympathetic and narrow-minded, regretting that he had ever given her his confidence. He had promised long ago to let her know everything. Now that he had kept his word she turned against him. She had been powerless. “He’s old enough to look after his own morals,” said Baltazar, “and I’m not the silly hypocrite to hold up my hands in horror. But to go and run away with the most notorious society woman in London and play the devil with his career is another matter. Oh, the damned young fool!—That rat Edgar Donnithorpe will get on to it at once. He’s just the man to stick at nothing.—A filthy divorce case.—The boy’ll have to resign, if he doesn’t get chucked—then marry the woman five years older than himself. Where’s the happiness going to be?” He resumed his striding about the room, in his impetuous way, and Marcelle followed him timidly with her eyes. “Oh, damnation!” said he. He had just been lecturing Quong Ho on Godfrey’s steadiness and balance. Why, he himself had never done such a scatter-brained thing. “Where are the precious pair going?” A remote week-end cottage, she said, belonging to a complaisant friend of Lady Edna’s. Five miles from station, post office or shop. A lonely Eden in the wilderness. Whether it was north, east, south or west of London she did not know. An old woman in charge would look after them. “I suppose they’re well on their way by now,” said he. “I don’t know. Possibly not. He said he had to rush about town to order his kit. Besides,” she added hopelessly, “what does it matter when they start?” Baltazar cursed in futile freedom. “There’s nothing I wouldn’t give for it not to have happened,” he exclaimed. “I suppose I was a fool. You warned me. And it was I who, like an ass, encouraged them. I could kick myself!” “It’s like you, John, dear, not to blame me,” she said humbly. “Of course I don’t blame you. You thought it boyish folly. . . . What’s the good of talking about it?” They did talk, however, in a helpless way.