“Oh, I think you do; and in the hope that I may induce you, in justice to me, to change your conduct, I have come over.”

“I don’t think you should have come,” he observed in a low voice, and threw himself on the couch with averted eyes.

Lady Agnes colored again.  “You are talking nonsense,” she said with some sharpness.  “There is no harm in my coming to see my cousin.”

“We were more than cousins once.”

“Exactly, and unfortunately people know that.  But you needn’t make matters worse by so pointedly keeping away from me.”

Lambert looked up quickly.  “Do you wish me to see you often?” he asked, and there was a new note in his voice which irritated her.

“Personally I don’t, but—­”

“But what?” He rose and stood up, very tall and very straight, looking down on her with a hungry look in his blue eyes.

“People are talking,” murmured the lady, and stared at the floor, because she could not face that same look.

“Let them talk.  What does it matter?”

“Nothing to you, perhaps, but to me a great deal.  I have a husband.”

“As I know to my cost,” he interpolated.

“Then don’t let me know it to my cost,” she said pointedly.  “Sit down and let us talk common sense.”

Lambert did not obey at once.  “I am only a human being, Agnes—­”

“Quite so, and a man at that.  Act like a man, then, and don’t place the burden on a woman’s shoulders.”

“What burden?”

“Oh, Noel, can’t you understand?”

“I daresay I can if you will explain.  I wish you hadn’t come here to-day.  I have enough to bear without that.”

“And have I nothing to bear?” she demanded, a flash of passion ruffling her enforced calm.  “Do you think that anything but the direst need brought me here?”

“I don’t know what brought you here.  I am waiting for an explanation.”

“What is the use of explaining what you already know?”

“I know nothing,” he repeated doggedly.  “Explain.”

“Well,” said Lady Agnes with some bitterness, “it seems to me that an explanation is really necessary, as apparently I am talking to a child instead of a man.  Sit down and listen.”

This time Lambert obeyed, and laughed as he did so.  “Your taunts don’t hurt me in the least,” he observed.  “I love you too much.”

“And I love in return.  No!  Don’t rise again.  I did not come here to revive the embers of our dead passion.”

“Embers!” cried Lambert with bitter scorn.  “Embers, indeed!  And a dead passion; how well you put it.  So far as I am concerned, Agnes, the passion is not dead and never will be.”

“I am aware of that, and so I have come to appeal to that passion.  Love means sacrifice.  I want you to understand that.”

“I do, by experience.  Did I not surrender you for the sake of the family name?  Understand!  I should think I did understand.”