‘He is warm-tempered, but he is a good husband.’

’He speaks roughly to you, and sometimes even threatens to lock you out of doors.’

’Only once, Fred!  On my honour, only once.  The Duke is a fairly good husband, I repeat.  But you deserve punishment for this night’s trick of drawing me out.  What does it mean?’

’Harriet, dearest, is this fair or honest?  Is it not notorious that your life with him is a sad one—­that, in spite of the sweetness of your temper, the sourness of his embitters your days.  I have come to know if I can help you.  You are a Duchess, and I am Fred Ogbourne; but it is not impossible that I may be able to help you . . .  By God! the sweetness of that tongue ought to keep him civil, especially when there is added to it the sweetness of that face!’

‘Captain Ogbourne!’ she exclaimed, with an emphasis of playful fear.  ’How can such a comrade of my youth behave to me as you do?  Don’t speak so, and stare at me so!  Is this really all you have to say?  I see I ought not to have come.  ‘Twas thoughtlessly done.’

Another breeze broke the thread of discourse for a time.

‘Very well.  I perceive you are dead and lost to me,’ he could next be heard to say, ’"Captain Ogbourne” proves that.  As I once loved you I love you now, Harriet, without one jot of abatement; but you are not the woman you were—­you once were honest towards me; and now you conceal your heart in made-up speeches.  Let it be:  I can never see you again.’

’You need not say that in such a tragedy tone, you silly.  You may see me in an ordinary way—­why should you not?  But, of course, not in such a way as this.  I should not have come now, if it had not happened that the Duke is away from home, so that there is nobody to check my erratic impulses.’

‘When does he return?’

‘The day after to-morrow, or the day after that.’

‘Then meet me again to-morrow night.’

‘No, Fred, I cannot.’

’If you cannot to-morrow night, you can the night after; one of the two before he comes please bestow on me.  Now, your hand upon it!  To-morrow or next night you will see me to bid me farewell!’ He seized the Duchess’s hand.

’No, but Fred—­let go my hand!  What do you mean by holding me so?  If it be love to forget all respect to a woman’s present position in thinking of her past, then yours may be so, Frederick.  It is not kind and gentle of you to induce me to come to this place for pity of you, and then to hold me tight here.’

‘But see me once more!  I have come two thousand miles to ask it.’

’O, I must not!  There will be slanders—­Heaven knows what!  I cannot meet you.  For the sake of old times don’t ask it.’

’Then own two things to me; that you did love me once, and that your husband is unkind to you often enough now to make you think of the time when you cared for me.’