strength with you. You are no longer alone. You
will not have any more of these fainting fits."

She still sobbed, and it was heartrending to Lord Henry to watch her.
Unmoved as he was, as a rule, by women's tears, he felt that these,
coming as they did from such a proud spirit, were almost like blood
issuing from a wound.

"And now what will you think of me?" she said at last, lifting her head,
and drying her eyes. "Now that you have heard how unwomanly I am, how
wicked, how criminally wicked! Because, I suppose, morally speaking, to
lie awake and scheme out one's sister's disfigurement is as bad as to
accomplish it."

He smiled. "You don't imagine, do you," he said, "that I am so
thoroughly modern and romantic as to turn away from an eagle when I find
it has not only angel's wings but also claws?"

She laughed. "How did you manage to know so much about me?" she
demanded. "Ordinary men know and understand nothing. They would be
shocked and horrified, if I spoke to them about my sister as I have
spoken to you. How do you know these things?"

"There is much less difference between human beings than one thinks," he
replied. "To know one decent man and one decent woman well, is to be
intimately acquainted with the rest of the decent world, I can assure
you."

"How I dreaded that anybody should know!" she exclaimed, "and yet how
simple it all seems to me now that you should know!"

"And now why don't you go and lie down for a bit," he said.

She rose, and without looking back at him, walked towards the house. Her
gait was lighter, more assured, more self-confident. It was the gait of
one who had ceased to run the gauntlet.

CHAPTER XIV

It wanted an hour and a half to lunch time. Mrs. Delarayne appeared to
have left "The Fastness," and Lord Henry was alone in the garden,
meditating and maturing his plans.

A strange and pleasant titillation of all his nerves, somewhat similar
to that which in the morning convinces a man that he has had a
refreshing and healing sleep, seemed to hint to him that here he was not
the usual neuropathic therapeutist of Ashbury fame, not a mere
specialist spectator, but an acting figure, a participator in this
family affair. Could it be his old and deep-rooted admiration for Mrs.
Delarayne that made him feel this hearty concern about a patient's
condition?

He yawned lazily and stretched himself in the fierce August sunlight.
Cleopatra's empty chair brought back to him her