"In this little room?"
"No, 'tis in the larger room, but----"
"Nay," she interrupted, "our absence will be enough remarked as it is. Clemence will read me a lecture on the proprieties all the way home."
Consequently we returned to the house, and the Countess took her leave shortly with the rest of the company; but as I conducted her to the door, she said a strange thing to me.
"Mr. Buckler," she said, "you should be angry more often," and so with another laugh she walked away.
That night, as I sat smoking a pipe upon the lawn, I saw something flash and sparkle in the rays of the moon, and I remembered that Elmscott's buckles still lay where they had fallen. Picking them up, I returned to my seat and fell straightway into a very bitter train of thought. 'Twas the recollection of the Countess' indignation that set me on it, for since the mere gift could provoke so stormy and sincere an outburst, how would it have been, I reflected, had she really known who the giver was? The thought pressed in upon me all the more heavily for the reason which she had offered to account for her anger. She set a value upon my esteem, and no small value either; so much she had told me plainly. Now it had been my lot hitherto to meet with a half-contemptuous tolerance rather than esteem; so that this unwonted appreciation shown by the one person from whom I most desired it filled me with a deep gratitude, and obliged me in her service. Yet here was I requiting her with a calculating and continuous deception. 'Twas no longer of any use to argue that Count Lukstein had received no greater punishment than his treachery merited; that but for his last coward thrust he would have escaped even that; that the advantage of the encounter had been on his side from first to last, since I was chilled to the bone with my long vigil upon the terrace parapet. Such excuses were the merest thistledown, and it needed but a breath from her to blow them into air. The solid stalk of my thoughts was: "I was deceiving her." And it was not merely the knowledge of my concealments which tortured me, but an anticipation of the disdain and contempt into which her kindliness would turn, should she ever discover the truth.
For so closely had the idea and notion of her become inwoven in my being that I ever estimated my actions and purposes by imagining the judgment which she would be like to pass on them, and, indeed, saw no true image of myself at all save that which was reflected from the mirror of her thoughts.
I came then to consider what path I should follow. There were three ways open to my choice. I might go on as heretofore, practising my duplicity; or, again, I might pack my trunks and scurry ignominiously back to my estate; or I might take my courage between my two hands and tell the truth of the matter to the Countess, be the consequences what they might.
Doubtless the last was the only honest course, and if I did not bring myself to adopt it--well, I paid dearly enough for the fault. At the time, however, the objections appeared to me insurmountable. In the first place, my natural timidity cried out against this hazard of all my happiness upon a single throw. Then, again, how could I tell her the truth? For it was not merely myself that the story accused, nor indeed in the main, but her husband. His treachery towards me in the actual righting of the duel I might conceal, but not his treachery to Julian, and I shrank from inflicting such shame upon her pride as the disclosure must inevitably bring.
I deem it right to set out here the questions which so troubled me, with a view to the proper understanding of this story. For on the very next day, while I was still debating the matter in great abasement and despondency, an incident occurred which determined me upon a compromise.