“And I,” said he, “if I did not bring her dishonour for my first lover’s gift.”
“I think—” says my Lady deliberately, “that honour and dishonour are words we play with. Honour is a thing of the soul. It resides within and none but ourselves shall judge for us. The world cannot.”
She looked strangely at him, and was gone.
“I have done my part by Kitty, but how about Diana?” says she to herself, watching him reascend the steps.
Being much at his ease in that house he went up again unannounced and Diana, thinking him gone for good, was still in her chair, snipping away patiently at the Duchess’s little figures. She spent much time in catching up with her Grace’s cast needleworks and others, for ’twas Kitty’s way to snatch at a pleasure and forsake it almost instantly for the next, Diana or another following in her wake to gather the fragments.
So he found her, leaning pensive over her paper gods and goddesses.
“I rejoice I find you alone, Madam,” say he, standing very tall and troubled before her—“I would hear how you do. You are still pale—almost as when I saw you in that cursed room. O, ’tis too much to think on what you suffered. But are you indeed well?”
She looked up and would have spoke, but he was instantly at her feet.
“If to have dreamed of you nightly and thought of you the live-long day deserves compassion, grant it to me, and answer me one question—one only!”
Does a woman think in these moments of sweet madness? Not she—how should she, with the one voice in her ears, the one face pleading, quivering before her. In that sudden passion she could not speak nor look. Her hands clasped in her lap, she gazed down on them and all her being was to hear.