"Good God, no!" said Bulstrode, "don't let your man have wind of any such a deal. The place would go up like a rocket in price. If you really yourself care to withdraw as much as possible, that's the most you can do. But for God's sake keep off the place, like a good fellow."
Behind his long moustaches the Duke covered a smile, but he conciliated his agitated friend.
"I'll keep off the grass until the turf is all your own, my dear Bulstrode."
"Thanks!" said the other cordially, and sat back with a sigh of relief. "There," he reflected peacefully, "my presence is explained—it's quite perfect. I shall be a landowner in England. At all events, it's lucky the property is sympathetic. I'm glad I didn't get balled up in this affair in, let us say, New Jersey, and find myself forced to purchase the Hackensack Meadows.
"Did the old house look deserted?" asked the Duke wickedly.
"Oh, rather!" replied the other gentleman.
"Really!" wondered Westboro'. "Why, they tell me that it is let to a Donna Incognita—a foreign lady."
Bulstrode, whether at his own lie or at the shock of his companion's knowledge, blushed, and his friend saw him redden. And the Duke, in whom candor was a charm, stared at his friend, half-opened his mouth, and then sat speechless. The suggestiveness of the whole affair rushed over him so rapidly that he had not time to ask himself whether he credited his suspicions or not.
"Good heavens! Jimmy carrying on a vulgar intrigue in a simple country village!" He looked at the face of the man by his side, but Jimmy, leaning forwards, addressed some remark to the chauffeur, and showed no intention of meeting the Duke's eyes. If it were not a vulgar intrigue, what could it be? How difficult it grew to connect such a liason with his friend. But as he thought on, the Duke began to ask why, after all, should it be so extraordinary! Why should he suppose Jimmy so unlike the rest of his set? More scrupulous, more sinless than other men—than himself? He couldn't answer his own question, but he did so think of Bulstrode, and since his late house party had believed that Jimmy cared for Mrs. Falconer. The lady at The Dials was certainly not she.
Bulstrode, in the shadow of this delinquence, surrounded certainly in the mind of the Duke by an atmosphere of intrigue, became very human, rather consolingly human. In their mutual intercourse the Duke had felt himself living in a clearer atmosphere than he usually breathed. Along by Bulstrode's mode of life, points of view and principles, his own life had seemed more mistaken than he had ever thought it to be. And although Jimmy had never breathed a word of criticism, he had felt himself judged by the man's just, though gentle codes.