"Yes, I have—It is a way that frightens one, and makes one more than ever sure that there must be something else. Do you know that there is—you who have lived your life?"
Her face was pale and cool as moonbeams. She seemed to be talking in the abstract, for all the personal question. The Duke found himself quite unaccountably moved, and was just about to answer eagerly, when at that moment the host joined them from the other drawing-room; the rubber was over, and he felt he must do his duty and not make too obvious a point of leaving the pair alone.
"Come and see the miniatures, Mordryn," he said. "We must not forget that it was their lure which brought you here to-night."
His tone Katherine well understood, it contained for all its surface graciousness some bitterness underneath.
There was general movement after this, and no more private confidences could be exchanged, so that Miss d'Estaire and Katherine left, with His Grace's answer to the latter's question still unspoken.
And Gerard Strobridge, as he pressed Katherine's hand in good-nights, whispered:
"Have I done well—and are you satisfied?"
The firm clasp of her cool fingers was his answer.