t letting you know of it."

"Without my permission?"

"I won't say that."

"But I'm sure that you mean it," she nodded happily, "and you're _such_
a help."

She was so affectionate as she bade him good-bye, that only at the
little road did he begin to wonder just what help he was. Was he
aiding her to detective poor Westboro'? Was he adding an air of
protection to some feminine treachery?

"Oh, no," he decided; "she's incapable of any thing of the sort. But I
must clear out;" and he decided that at once, so soon as Westboro'
should be at home, he would take himself to ground still more neutral
than The Dials had proved to be. But Westboro' showed no intention of
coming immediately home. Instead, with a droll egoism, as if the fact
that he had made poor Bulstrode a party to his unhappiness gave him
thereafter a right to the other's time even in absence, he laid a firm
hold on Jimmy. Westboro' finally put pen to paper, and the scrappy
letter touched the deserted visitor; it proved to have been written at
a _bureau de poste_ in Paris:

"Don't, for God's sake, go off, old man. Keep up your end." (His
end!) "Stop on at Westboro'--Use the place as if it were all put up
for your amusement. Just live there so I may feel it's alive. Let me
find a human being at home when I turn up. I'll wire in a day or so."

"So he is in Paris, then." Bulstrode had supposed so, and did not
doubt that the Duke had gone there to find news of his wife, possibly
as well to see Madame de Bassevigne.

Poor fellow, if he were searching for the Duchess! Well, Bulstrode
would keep up his end, he had nothing else for the time being to do but
to mind other people's business. He put it so to himself. Indeed he
could not but believe it was fortunate for more than one person that
something could keep him from minding his own.

An undefined discretion kept him from going to the Moated Grange, as to
himself he styled the retreat the Duchess had made of The Dials. And,
in spite of the absolute freedom now given him to prowl about amongst
the books, in spite of his "evenings out" as he called them, Jimmy
found the time at Westboro' to drag lamentably. His own affairs, which
he so faithlessly denied, came to him in batches of letters whose
questions could not be solved by return mail. He became over his own
thoughts restless, and he sent a telegram to his host: "Better have a
look at things here yourself. Can't possibly stop on long