nk it has all worked out?"

"You gave me a few hints last night," said Sir Wilfrid, hesitating.

Lady Henry pushed her chair back from the table. Her hands trembled on
her stick.

"Hints!" she said, scornfully. "I'm long past hints. I told you last
night--and I repeat--that woman has stripped me of all my friends! She
has intrigued with them all in turn against me. She has done the same
even with my servants. I can trust none of them where she is concerned.
I am alone in my own house. My blindness makes me her tool, her
plaything. As for my salon, as you call it, it has become hers. I am a
mere courtesy-figurehead--her chaperon, in fact. I provide the house,
the footmen, the champagne; the guests are hers. And she has done this
by constant intrigue and deception--by flattery--by lying!"

The old face had become purple. Lady Henry breathed hard.

"My dear friend," said Sir Wilfrid, quickly, laying a calming hand on
her arm, "don't let this trouble you so. Dismiss her."

"And accept solitary confinement for the rest of my days? I haven't the
courage--yet," said Lady Henry, bitterly. "You don't know how I have
been isolated and betrayed! And I haven't told you the worst of all.
Listen! Do you know whom she has got into her toils?"

She paused, drawing herself rigidly erect. Sir Wilfrid, looking up
sharply, remembered the little scene in the Park, and waited.

"Did you have any opportunity last night," said Lady Henry, slowly, "of
observing her and Jacob Delafield?"

She spoke with passionate intensity, her frowning brows meeting above a
pair of eyes that struggled to see and could not. But the effect she
listened for was not produced. Sir Wilfrid drew back uncertainly.

"Jacob Delafield?" he said. "Jacob Delafield? Are you sure?"

"Sure?" cried Lady Henry, angrily. Then, disdaining to support her
statement, she went on: "He hesitates. But she'll soon make an end of
that. And do you realize what that means--what Jacob's possibilities
are? Kindly recollect that Chudleigh has one boy--one sickly,
tuberculous boy--who might die any day. And Chudleigh himself is a poor
life. Jacob has more than a good chance--ninety chances out of a
hundred"--she ground the words out with emphasis--"of inheriting
the dukedom."

"Good gracious!" said Sir Wilfrid, throwing away his cigarette.

"There!" said Lady Henry, in sombre triumph. "Now you can understand
what I have brought on poor Henry's family."

A low knock was heard at