It struck the Duke that his betrothed was not in her best looks. She was even a little wan, and she seemed to be suffering from some agitation of spirit. She was tastefully attired in a robe of white crape, profusely trimmed with blond lace, and with her hair in full ringlets, but she would have been the better for a touch of rouge. As the door shutbehind Whimple, she looked almost shrinkingly at the Duke, and uttered in a faint voice: “Gilly! My lord!”
He stepped up to her, taking her hand, and kissing it. It trembled in his, and he was aware of her uneven breathing. Ho wondered why Harriet, who had known him all his life, should be so afraid of him. He retained her hand saying: “Harriet, have I startled you? I am a villain to come to you in such a disreputable state!”
“Oh, no!” she murmured. “No, no!”
“Indeed, I beg your pardon!” he said, smiling at her. “But I am in the deuce of a fix, Harriet, and I have come to you to help me out of it!”
Her pallor seemed to grow more marked. She gently withdrew her hand from his. “Yes, Gilly,” she said. “Of course I will help you out of it.”
“You were always the best of good friends, Harriet!” he said. “But it is quite outrageous! I have no business to ask such a thing of you!”
She lifted her hand as though to silence him, and then let it drop again. Averting her face a little, she managed to say with only the smallest tremor in her voice: “You need not tell me, Gilly. You never desired it I—I knew that at the outset. You wish to declare our—our engagement at an end, don’t you?”
“Wish to declare our engagement at an end?” he repeated, quite thunderstruck. “Good God, no! Why, Harriet, what can you be thinking of?”
She began to twist into a tight rope the ends of the gauze scarf which was draped round her shoulders. “Is it not that, Gilly? Pray do not try to spare my feelings! I knew I was wrong. I should not have—But it is not too late! You see, I know! And indeed I do not blame you!”
“Harriet, I have not the remotest guess at what you are talking about!” the Duke said blankly. “What is it that you know.”