“Or he might have written?”

“At any rate he should not have come there, Harry.  I would not see him, nor, if I can help it, will I see him here.  I will be open with you, Harry.  I think that perhaps it might suit him to make me his wife.  Such an arrangement, however, would not suit me.  I am not going to be frightened into marrying a man, because he has been falsely called my lover.  If I cannot escape the calumny in any other way, I will not escape it in that way.”

“Has he said anything?”

“No; not a word.  I have not seen him since the day after Lord Ongar’s funeral.  But I have seen his sister.”

“And has she proposed such a thing?”

“No, she has not proposed it.  But she talks of it, saying that it would not do.  Then when I tell her that of course it would not do, she shows me all that would make it expedient.  She is so sly and so false, that with all my eyes open I cannot quite understand her, or quite know what she is doing.  I do not feel sure that she wishes it herself.”

“She told me that it would not do.”

“She did, did she?  If she speaks of it again, tell her that she is right, that it will never do.  Had he not come down to Ongar Park, I should not have mentioned this to you.  I should not have thought that he had in truth any such schemes in his head.  He did not tell you that he had been there?”

“He did not mention it.  Indeed, he said very little about you at all.”

“No, he would not.  He is cautious.  He never talks of anybody to anybody.  He speaks only of the outward things of the world.  Now, Harry, what you must do for me is this.”  As she was speaking to him she was leaning again upon the table, with her forehead resting upon her hands.  Her small widow’s cap had become thus thrust back, and was now nearly off her head, so that her rich brown hair was to be seen in its full luxuriance, rich and lovely as it had ever been.  Could it be that she felt—­half thought, half felt, without knowing that she thought it—­that while the signs of her widowhood were about her, telling in their too plain language the tale of what she had been, he could not dare to speak to her of his love?  She was indeed a widow, but not as are other widows.  She had confessed, did hourly confess to herself, the guilt which she had committed in marrying that man; but the very fact of such confessions, of such acknowledgment, absolved her from the necessity of any show of sorrow.  When she declared how she had despised and hated her late lord, she threw off mentally all her weeds.  Mourning, the appearance even of mourning, became impossible to her, and the cap upon her head was declared openly to be a sacrifice to the world’s requirements.  It was now pushed back, but I fancy that nothing like a thought on the matter had made itself plain to her mind.  “What you must do for me is this,” she continued.  “You must see Count Pateroff again, and tell him from me—­as my friend—­that I cannot consent to see him.  Tell him that if he will think of it, he must know the reason why.”