'A nursery rhyme,' repeated the Colonel. '"Will you walk into my parlour, said the spider to the fly."'
Lady Oxford looked at him quite gravely.
'I do not in the least understand,' she said. She had a wonderful knack of burying her head in the sand and believing that no one spied her, as travellers tell of the ostrich. 'But you have a message for me, have you not?'
She put the question frankly now, since coquetry had failed.
'I have a packet to deliver to your ladyship,' replied Montague.
Lady Oxford drew a breath and dropped into a chair. 'Thank you! How shall I thank you?' she cried; and seeing that Montague made no answer whatever, but stood stiff as a ramrod, she became at once all weak woman. 'You are very good to me,' she murmured in a very pathetical voice.
'Your ladyship owes me no thanks,' replied Montague. 'Your ladyship has need of all your gratitude for a gentleman who gave up all that he held dear to save your good name.'
He had it on the tip of his tongue to add, 'which was not worth saving,' and barely refrained from the words.
Lady Oxford was not abashed by the rebuke. She turned upon the Colonel eyes that swam with pity for Mr. Kelly's misfortunes.
'I read that he was taken,' she said sadly. 'Poor gentleman! But he should have burnt my letters long ago. They were letters written, as we women write, with a careless pen and ill-considered words which malice might misconstrue. He should have burnt them, as he swore to do; but he broke his word, and so, alas! pays most dearly for his fault. Indeed, it grieves me to the heart, and all the more because he brought his own sufferings about. So unreasonable we poor women are,' and she shook her head, and smiled with a sort of pity for women's frail readiness to forgive.