"I'll say nothing more on the subject while you're in this mood," returned Claremanagh.
"All right, if you think prevarication more honourable than lying straight out," panted Juliet, holding down sobs. "But you won't do her any good with me—or yourself either. You were scared blue when I said the eye of the clasp looked to the right instead of to the left, like the eye on your seal ring. You'd hardly believe it till you had to. Then the whole thing grew clear to you, as it's growing for me now. This copy existed. The clasp was made the wrong way, by mistake or on purpose. As soon as I spoke, you knew what had happened. Your first thought—as soon as you could think—was to save that woman. But you shan't save her! I——"
"Do you intend to make a scandal of this beastly business?" the Duke cut her short with violence. "If you do, you will repent it all your life."
Juliet quivered. "I don't care about my life now," she said. "You've spoilt it. You couldn't punish me any more than you've punished me already—for loving and trusting you. So it doesn't matter what I——"
"It matters immensely," he broke in again. "You are cruel to yourself—to me—to a woman who has never injured you. When I say that you'll repent making a scandal, I don't mean because I'd try to 'punish' you. My God, no! You'll repent because you will be doing a great injustice which can't possibly be repaired. And at heart, when you're true to yourself, you are just."
"It's no use your trying to appeal to my sense of justice," Juliet warned him. "That's the last thing for you to bring up!"
He looked at her very sadly, very strangely, it seemed to his wife, as if anger were dying out, and a great sorrow had taken its place. But that was only his cleverness—his deadly, Irish cleverness, of course!
"What, then, do you intend to do?" he asked.
Once more confusion fogged the girl's brain, a desolate confusion like chaos after ordered beauty; the end of all joy, all loveliness.
"I don't know yet," she said, dully. "I shall have to think."