She was also annoyed to feel an uncommonly pleasant sense of
home-coming. She resented it, but she could not rid herself of it.

She came to dinner very dignified and stern; but the Honourable John
Ruffin saw to it that the meal was unconstrained. He spared no effort
to keep the talk in a light vein; and the duke, after his talk with the
duchess that afternoon, was sufficiently at his ease to second him to
the best of his not very great ability. He won the Honourable John
Ruffin's golden opinions by remembering the other two occasions on
which the duchess had worn the gown she was wearing to-night.

Little by little, against her will, she thawed. The sense of
home-coming grew stronger. The easy, reminiscent talk--reminiscent of
pleasant days--the familiar room, and, perhaps, her favourite brand of
champagne, softened her till her smiles came easily. Moreover it was
delightful to be amused again; and it was borne suddenly in upon her
that the months she had been living in hiding had been tiresome, boring
months, from the point of view of life, utterly wasted months. Again
and again she looked at the duke as if she saw him for the first time.
Plainly she was amending her opinion of him.

She yielded readily to the entreaties of the two men to stop and drink
her coffee and smoke her cigarette with them. The Honourable John
Ruffin talked on; she laughed several times. Then, having finished his
cigarette, and lighted a cigar, he said:

"I have a sonnet to write to the eyebrow of a lady--no, Caroline: you
do not know her--and I must have perfect solitude, by the side of still
water, in the moonlight. So I am going down to the long pool; and I
must on no account be interrupted. So long."

And he went quickly through the long window.

He spoke quickly and went quickly, before the duchess could suggest
that he should wait a while. She felt unequal to a tete-a-tete with
her husband, and nervously she half rose.

"Oh, don't you rush away too," said the duke somewhat plaintively.

She sank back into her chair.

The duke looked at her for a while in silence with eyes full of an
admiration at once gratifying and discomfiting; then he said:

"I say, Caroline, can you remember what it was we first quarrelled
about?"

The duchess knitted her brow in the effort to recall it, and said:

"No, I can't. Oh, yes! You grumbled at the way my hair was done."
Then she added in a tone of triumph, "And I've done it exactl