The pleasure which his visits had been to her had brought something of an animation and interest to her cold face. Dressed in a dark and simple gown, her fur stole about her neck, she had this afternoon followed him out of the house into the garden and walked slowly along by his side towards the gate.
"Of all the people in the world one would choose you, I think, to be the friend of..." She caught herself up. "I mean to say, can't you forget those stupid little ideas of honor and friendship and all that?" She put it beautifully. "I, of course, will give up seeing you," she renounced, "but it will be a world of comfort just to feel that you are there."
As he did not at once succumb to her blandishments, she asked point blank:
"Promise me to stop on."
"I at least won't go without letting you know of it."
"Without my permission?"
"I won't say that."
"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're such a help."
She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was. Was he aiding her to detective poor Westboro'? Was he adding an air of protection to some feminine treachery?
"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort. But I must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro' should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral than The Dials had proved to be. But Westboro' showed no intention of coming immediately home. Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm hold on Jimmy. Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at a bureau de poste in Paris: