“I came to say good-bye.”

“O?”

“I am going back to England.”

“Having satisfactorily completed what you came to do here?”

“Yes, in a way. Mademoiselle de Beaurepaire is about to be married.”

I stared down on her in amazement.

“Upon my word!” I said. “This to my face?”

“What,” she answered, a little frigidly, “is the use of keeping up that fiction, since you and your affairs have become public property?”

“None, for you, perhaps, in default of what we will call a natural remorse or shame.”

“I will not have you say that, Felix. Apply it to yourself, rather, remembering the advantage you took of the trust committed to you.”