"Oh, you'll find her." It was with the most delightful security and contentment that his friend was able to tell the Duke this. But the cheerful note struck the poor husband the disagreeablest of blows.
"Gad!" he laughed, "what a cold brand of creature a bachelor is! 'Find her!' as one might speak of finding an umbrella that you've left by mistake at your club. Of course she can be found. There are not many mysteries that search can't solve in these days. And Duchesses don't drop off the face of the earth. I could no doubt have found her in twenty-four hours, but I didn't try to. I don't know that I want to find her. It isn't the fact of where she's gone that counts—that she wanted to go—that she has voluntarily made the separation final and complete."
"Then," persisted the bachelor, "you don't really want to find her?"
"Jove!" the Duke turned on him. "You don't know what it is to love a woman! You've got some imagination—try to use it, can't you? Can't you?"
He met the American's handsome eyes. A flush rose under Bulstrode's cheek. Westboro' put his hand on his friend's shoulder. "I beg your pardon, dear old chap."
"Oh, that's all right, old chap," Bulstrode assured cheerfully.
"My dear Duchess, it seems an unconscionable waste of time and life for any one to ignore the inevitable! It's such a prodigal throwing out of the window of riches!"
Bulstrode took her hands, both of them, in his as she stood in the winter sunshine, the open house door behind her, the terrace and its broken stairs of crumbling stone before her.
"Why, my dear lady, if I kept a diary of daily events I couldn't write down one page of good reasons why you should be living here and Westboro' up there, and I a comic go-between, in the secret of both and the confidence of one."
"Oh," she interrupted, "then you're in the confidence...?"