"They never draw the line," he said. "Friend and foe, it is all the same. The other day they were tearing you, and I won't stand for having you torn. I said as much then. But they're sure to go on, nevertheless."
Nina smiled at her champion. "What were they tearing me about?"
"They said that they believed this child was yours, and implied that you'd been keeping her in hiding for fourteen years."
"I haven't, of course. But what if she were and I had? Everybody knows now that I was married to Hal. As a matter of fact, our own little girl is buried on the island of Jersey. She died at her birth. If you'd care to go over and look at her grave I'll do my best to direct you."
The Duke of Pemberwell gasped, and nearly choked on his seed-cake.
"Gad!" he exclaimed. "I never knew of that."
"Nor anybody else," said Nina. "I foolishly made a wreck of my life, but I did not think it worth while to show the whitened, worm-bored timbers to the world. Now that I'm past thirty, however, and the only real lover and husband I ever had is dead, I don't care who knows it.
"It hasn't been a pretty story, but if it was ever put into a book it would make an interesting one, and it might point a moral."
"Thirty isn't old," his grace declared. "Why, you're ten years off your prime yet. You've another life to live."
"I feel a hundred sometimes," she replied, "and I know my heart is quite that."