"Quite so," she answered; "you are perfectly right."
"It is not every man who can say, with truth, that he has been followed by detectives almost continuously for five-and-forty years," said the Duke with unusual dignity to Lady Drake.
Unable to meet his eyes, she piped in return: "It is not every man who can say anything at all with truth."
"Do you doubt my word?" he asked her, pursuing his train of thought.
She suddenly thought she perceived an opening into which she might insert an explanation of the preceding night's affair.
"I'll believe yours if you'll believe mine!" she cried.
"What!" said the Duke, "then you're followed by detectives, too!"
At this appalling corollary her ladyship collapsed. Evidently nothing on earth would ever convince his Grace that she was sinned against and not a sinner, if he thought her conduct so outrageous that she was habitually shadowed by the police! Although almost starving, she could not eat another morsel.
"Do you think it right to be happy, Mr. Van Adam?" asked the Lady Pearl, in her cooing, thunderous voice, inherited from her mother. "Do you think we are meant to have any joy here? Oh, tell me, tell me!"
"Oh dear no!" Chloe replied, thinking of her hour of triumph—so soon to be over.