CHAPTER XVII
N Queensbury House, the Duchess sat that night in her library to hear the story from Bolton. Diana slept in her own room, worn out and wearied beyond all power of speech or even of thought.
In his splendid rooms in the next street my Lord Baltimore lay in solitude, considering the past, not entirely unhopeful for the future, and as the Duchess heard the story of his offer, she sent a kind thought to him, winged above the grimy house-tops that might well help to assuage the sting of his wounded arm.
“Good blood doesn’t lie,” says she in her bright sententious manner—“A haberdasher hadn’t acted thus, and especially before a third person. But he made his amend like a gentleman.”
“Like a gentleman!” asserts the Duke. “I never liked him so well. But a good woman makes men better, as a bad one drives them to the devil.”
“And which am I?” says she with her smile that none other ever matched.
“You are Kitty. There’s none like you. Nature broke her mould after she made you, Madam, and so did she also—with another. One other. I thank God I know the two women I love—one as a friend, the other as a lover—incomparable.”