"Tell me what it is," he said in a low voice, and rather absently, as if the hasty words she had just spoken were still haunting him. "That is, I suppose you sent to consult me about it?"
"Well—yes," said Lady Eleanor more calmly, but with her color coming and going. "I sent to you because you are the only friend I have whom I should care to consult about this—this trouble. Because I feel that you will understand, and, what is more important, not misunderstand me, or—or my motives."
"I will do my best to understand and sympathize, Lady Eleanor," he said, watching her, yet without seeming to do so.
"You remember," she said after a pause, during which she was seeking for some way of beginning the subject as if it were not of much importance after all. "You remember Yorke Auchester, Lord Yorke Auchester?"
He inclined his head, suppressing a look of surprise.
"Certainly," he said. "That is, I remember—I could not fail to do so—that I have purchased his debts, to a very large sum, on your behalf."
"Yes," she said nervously, "and I daresay—I know—that you have wondered why I have done so."
He kept silence, but raised his eyebrows slightly.
"Well," she went on, "it was to save him from trouble. He is a great friend of mine; his cousin, the duke, and I are great friends. But you know all this! And now I want to do something more for—for Lord Auchester."
He looked up. Her face was red one moment and pale the next, but she kept her eyes—the half-proud, half-appealing eyes—upon his.