He smiled. "You don't imagine, do you," he said, "that I am so thoroughly modern and romantic as to turn away from an eagle when I find it has not only angel's wings but also claws?"
She laughed. "How did you manage to know so much about me?" she demanded. "Ordinary men know and understand nothing. They would be shocked and horrified, if I spoke to them about my sister as I have spoken to you. How do you know these things?"
"There is much less difference between human beings than one thinks," he replied. "To know one decent man and one decent woman well, is to be intimately acquainted with the rest of the decent world, I can assure you."
"How I dreaded that anybody should know!" she exclaimed, "and yet how simple it all seems to me now that you should know!"
"And now why don't you go and lie down for a bit," he said.
She rose, and without looking back at him, walked towards the house. Her gait was lighter, more assured, more self-confident. It was the gait of one who had ceased to run the gauntlet.
CHAPTER XIV
It wanted an hour and a half to lunch time. Mrs. Delarayne appeared to have left "The Fastness," and Lord Henry was alone in the garden, meditating and maturing his plans.