f responding, I checked myself, thinking it a pity
to tell you a little when I might tell you all. I scarcely know what
made you ask, inasmuch as I had said nothing to excite your curiosity.
Whatever you suspected, you suspected on your own hook, as they say. You
had simply noticed the pair together that evening at Doubleton. If you
suspected anything in particular, it is a proof that you are rather
sharp, because they are very careful about the way they behave in
public. At least they think they are. The result, perhaps, doesn't
necessarily follow. If I have been in their confidence you may say that
I make a strange use of my privilege in serving them up to feed the
prejudices of an opinionated American. You think English society very
wicked, and my little story will probably not correct the impression.
Though, after all, I don't see why it should minister to it; for what I
said to you (it was all I did say) remains the truth. They are treading
together the path of duty. You would be quite right about its being base
in me to betray them. It is very true that they have ceased to confide
in me; even Joscelind has said nothing to me for more than a year. That
is doubtless a sign that the situation is more serious than before, all
round,--too serious to be talked about. It is also true that you are
remarkably discreet, and that even if you were not it would not make
much difference, inasmuch as if you were to repeat my revelations in
America, no one would know whom you were talking about. But all the
same, I should be base; and, therefore, after I have written out my
reminiscences for your delectation, I shall simply keep them for my own.
You must content yourself with the explanation I have already given you
of Sir Ambrose Tester and Lady Vandeleur: they are following--hand
in hand, as it were--the path of duty. This will not prevent me from
telling everything; on the contrary, don't you see?

I.

His brilliant prospects dated from the death of his brother, who had
no children, had indeed steadily refused to marry. When I say brilliant
prospects, I mean the vision of the baronetcy, one of the oldest in
England, of a charming seventeenth-century house, with its park, in
Dorsetshire, and a property worth some twenty thousand a year. Such a
collection of items is still dazzling to me, even after what you would
call, I suppose, a familiarity with British grandeur. My husband is n't
a baronet (or we probably should n't