"You, of course, then know how he loves you."
He felt more than knew that she trembled, and he saw an instinctive gesture which he understood meant that he should be silent.
"You and I put it quite clearly, Mr. Bulstrode, the other day." Her voice was serene again. "If only one cares enough—that's the necessary thing for every question."
"Well?"
She half shrugged, made a little motion with her white hands, and this answer said for her: "That is indeed the question, and I haven't solved it."
They stopped at the terraced walk. The low stones, dark and black, were filled in their interstices with fine lines of greenish moss. On the sunny corner the dial's shadow fell across the noon. The Duchess put her hand on the warmed stones.
"It's a heavenly day," she said, "I don't believe that the Riviera is warmer. I never have seen such an English December."
Her eyes, which had been fixed on the woods below the garden, now turned towards the house and rested on one of the upper windows where the sun fell on the little panes. The Duchess remained looking up a few seconds, then she came back to her guest.
"I started, you know, to tell you something," Bulstrode smiled at her. "I once served on a jury in the West, and although the case was a miserably sad one in every way, I suppose, I couldn't take it as seriously as I should have done, for from the first the whole thing seemed so unnecessary, and the crisis could so easily have been avoided."
"I know," she interrupted him, "but you're rather wrong. Not from the first."