“Quite so!” with a nasally derisive laugh.  “And you really need me to point out how prettily those turtles were befooling you?”

“Indeed, no; it was not that.”

He struck the table impatiently with the paper-knife.

“My dear woman, do exert some common sense!  What in the name of wonder could the fellow have to discuss with you at that hour?  Your pardon if, finding no apparent limits to your innocence, I assume it to be illimitable, and point out that he would scarcely break bounds and play Romeo beneath the window of a middle-aged lady for the purpose of discussing water-colours with her, or the exploits of Vespasian.”

The taunt brought red to Dorothea’s cheeks, and stung her into courage.

“He came to see me,” she persisted.  Her voice dropped a little.  “I had come to feel a regard for M. Raoul; and he—­” She could not go on.  Her eyes met her brother’s for a moment, then fell before them.

What she expected she could not tell.  Certainly she did not expect what happened, and his sudden laughter smote her like a whip.  It broke in a shout of high, incontrollable mirth, and he leaned back and shook in his chair until the tears streamed down his cheeks.

“You!” he gasped.  “You!  Oh, oh, oh!”

She stood beneath the scourge, silent.  She felt it curl across and bite the very flesh, and thought it was killing her, Her bosom heaved.

It ceased.  He sat upright again, wiping his eyes.

“But it’s incredible!” he protested; “the scoundrel has fooled you all along.  Yes, of course,” he pondered; “that explains the success of the trick, which otherwise was clumsy beyond belief; in fact, its clumsiness puzzled me.  But how was I to guess?” He pulled himself up on the edge of another guffaw.  “Look here, Dorothea, be sensible.  It’s clear as daylight the fellow was after Polly, and made you his cats-paw.  Face it, my dear; face it, and conquer your illusions.  I understand it must cost you some suffering, but, after all, you must find some blame in yourself—­in your heart, I mean, not in your conduct.  Doubtless your conduct showed weakness, or he would never have dared—­but, there, I can trust my sister.  Face it; the thing’s absurd!  You, a woman of thirty-eight (or is it thirty-nine?), and he, if I may judge from appearances, young enough to be your son!  Polly was his game—­the deceitful little slut!  You must see it for yourself.  And after all, it’s more natural.  Immoral, I’ve no doubt—­”

He paused in the middle of his harangue.  A parliamentary candidate (unsuccessful) for Axcester had once dared to poke fun at Endymion Westcote for having asserted, in a public speech, that indecency was worse than immorality.  For the life of him Endymion could never see where the joke came in; but the fellow had illustrated it with such a wealth of humorous instances, and had kept his ignorant audience for twenty minutes in such fits of laughter, that he never afterwards approached the antithesis but he skirted it with a red face.