Sir Wilfrid surveyed his angry companion and held his peace.

“So you don’t know what Jacob thinks?”

“Why should I want to know?” said Lady Henry, disdainfully.  “A lad whom I sent to Eton and Oxford, when his father couldn’t pay his bills—­what does it matter to me what he thinks?”

“Women are strange folk,” thought Sir Wilfrid.  “A man wouldn’t have said that.”

Then, aloud: 

“I thought you were afraid lest he should want to marry her?”

“Oh, let him cut his throat if he likes!” said Lady Henry, with the inconsistency of fury.  “What does it matter to me?”

“By-the-way, as to that”—­he spoke as though feeling his way—­“have you never had suspicions in quite another direction?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I hear a good deal in various quarters of the trouble Mademoiselle Le Breton is taking—­on behalf of that young soldier who was here just now—­Harry Warkworth.”

Lady Henry laughed impatiently.

“I dare say.  She is always wanting to patronize or influence somebody.  It’s in her nature.  She’s a born intrigante.  If you knew her as well as I do, you wouldn’t think much of that.  Oh no—­make your mind easy.  It’s Jacob she wants—­it’s Jacob she’ll get, very likely.  What can an old, blind creature like me do to stop it?”

“And as Jacob’s wife—­the wife perhaps of the head of the family—­you still mean to quarrel with her?”

“Yes, I do mean to quarrel with her!” and Lady Henry lifted herself in her chair, a pale and quivering image of war—­“Duchess or no Duchess!  Did you see the audacious way in which she behaved this afternoon?—­how she absorbs my guests?—­how she allows and encourages a man like Montresor to forget himself?—­eggs him on to put slights on me in my own drawing-room!”

“No, no!  You are really unjust,” said Sir Wilfrid, laying a kind hand upon her arm.  “That was not her fault.”

“It is her fault that she is what she is!—­that her character is such that she forces comparisons between us—­between her and me!—­that she pushes herself into a prominence that is intolerable, considering who and what she is—­that she makes me appear in an odious light to my old friends.  No, no, Wilfrid, your first instinct was the true one.  I shall have to bring myself to it, whatever it costs.  She must take her departure, or I shall go to pieces, morally and physically.  To be in a temper like this, at my age, shortens one’s life—­you know that.”

“And you can’t subdue the temper?” he asked, with a queer smile.

“No, I can’t!  That’s flat.  She gets on my nerves, and I’m not responsible. C’est fini.”

“Well,” he said, slowly, “I hope you understand what it means?”

“Oh, I know she has plenty of friends!” she said, defiantly.  But her old hands trembled on her knee.

“Unfortunately they were and are yours.  At least,” he entreated, “don’t quarrel with everybody who may sympathize with her.  Let them take what view they please.  Ignore it—­be as magnanimous as you can.”