companion.

"Lady Henry is well aware of it."

"Yes," was the calm reply, "she knows it, but she does not realize it.
You see, if it comes to a rupture she will allow no half-measures. Those
who stick to me will have to quarrel with her. And there will be a great
many who will stick to me."

Sir Wilfrid's little smile was not friendly.

"It is indeed evident," he said, "that you have thought it all out."

Mademoiselle Le Breton did not reply. They walked on a few minutes in
silence, till she said, with a suddenness and in a low tone that
startled her companion:

"If Lady Henry could ever have felt that she _humbled_ me, that I
acknowledged myself at her mercy! But she never could. She knows that I
feel myself as well born as she, that I am _not_ ashamed of my parents,
that my principles give me a free mind about such things."

"Your principles?" murmured Sir Wilfrid.

"You were right," she turned upon him with a perfectly quiet but most
concentrated passion. "I have _had_ to think things out. I know, of
course, that the world goes with Lady Henry. Therefore I must be
nameless and kinless and hold my tongue. If the world knew, it would
expect me to hang my head. I _don't!_ I am as proud of my mother as of
my father. I adore both their memories. Conventionalities of that kind
mean nothing to me."

"My dear lady--"

"Oh, I don't expect you or any one else to feel with me," said the voice
which for all its low pitch was beginning to make him feel as though he
were in the centre of a hail-storm. "You are a man of the world, you
knew my parents, and yet I understand perfectly that for you, too, I am
disgraced. So be it! So be it! I don't quarrel with what any one may
choose to think, but--"

She recaptured herself with difficulty, and there was silence. They were
walking through the purple February dusk towards the Marble Arch. It was
too dark to see her face under its delicate veil, and Sir Wilfrid did
not wish to see it. But before he had collected his thoughts
sufficiently his companion was speaking again, in a wholly
different manner.

"I don't know what made me talk in this way. It was the contact with
some one, I suppose, who had seen us at Gherardtsloo." She raised her
veil, and he thought that she dashed away some tears. "That never
happened to me before in London. Well, now, to return. If there is
a breach--"

"Why should there be a breach?" said Sir Wilfrid. "My dear Miss Le
Breton, listen to me f