"I promised your father you would destroy the counterpart. Duke, it is far better done. You will feel free, and you don't, somehow, now, though I hoped you would. And I shall be glad. A woman who loves a man cannot bear to stand in the way of his doing his duty--and this is your duty----"
He turned to her.
"Just what that old harridan said. Curious you two should agree--and you're so different!"
"What old harridan?"
"Lady Broadway. She has been at me, too. Why can't you women leave a man alone? She wants me to marry her niece, Lady Amabel."
Marrion felt a sudden spasm of elemental jealousy. Self-sacrifice was exhilarating in the abstract, in the concrete it was painful.
"Did--did you see her?" she asked.
"Yes--nice little girl. But--but if this is to be, how will you manage about Andrew? You had to tell him, if you remember."
She remembered right well; remembered how even the man's fidelity to his master, his devotion to her, would not stand the strain of what he thought wrong-doing. The difficulty had occurred to her before, but she set it aside now as of small importance in comparison with the destruction of the paper.
"Ill manage Andrew," she replied, "if you will only----"