The Duchess welcomed the little party from Beauleys in person, and with more than ordinary warmth.

“I am glad to see you all, of course,” she said, “but I am really delighted to see you about again, Henry. Do tell me, now. I have heard so many contradictory reports. Did you shoot yourself, or was it one of your guests who did it? I don’t know how it is, but poor Ronald always says that the men one asks to shoot, nowadays, hit everything except the birds.”

“My dear Duchess,” Rochester answered, “I certainly did not shoot myself. I have every confidence in my guests, and so far as we have been able to ascertain, there wasn’t another soul in the neighborhood. Shall we say that I was shot by the act of God? There really doesn’t seem to be any other explanation.”

The Duchess was not altogether satisfied.

“To-night I am going to offer you a great privilege,” she said. “I am going to give you a chance of finding out the answer to your riddle.”

Rochester looked perplexed, and Lady Mary blandly curious. Pauline alone seemed as though by instinct to realize what lay beneath their hostess’s words. Her face seemed suddenly to grow tense. She shrank back—a slight, involuntary movement, but significant enough under the circumstances.

“An answer to my riddle,” Rochester remarked, smiling. “Really, I did not know that I had propounded one.”

“Only a moment ago,” the Duchess reminded him, “you spoke of being shot by the act of God. That, of course, was a form of speech. You meant that you did not know who did it. Perhaps we shall be able to solve that little mystery for you.”

Rochester looked at his hostess as though for a moment he doubted her sanity. Tall and slim in his immaculate clothes, standing before the great wood fire which burned in the open grate, he leaned a little forward upon his stick, with knitted brows. Then his eyes caught Pauline’s, and something which he was about to say seemed to die away upon his lips.

“Of course, you are unbelievers, all of you,” the Duchess said, calmly, “but some day—perhaps even to-night—you may become converts. Did I tell you, Mary,” she continued, turning away from Rochester, “that I met that extraordinary man Naudheim in London? He told me so many interesting things, and since then I have been reading. He introduced me to—to one of his most brilliant pupils—a young man, he assured me, whose insight was more highly developed, even, than his own. Of course, you understand that in these matters, insight and perception take the place almost of brains.”

“My dear Duchess,” Rochester interrupted, “what are you talking about?”

“The new science,” the Duchess answered, with a note of triumph in her tone. “You will learn all about it some day, and you cannot begin too soon. The young man whom Professor Naudheim spoke so highly of is dining here to-night. Curiously enough, I found that he was almost a neighbor of both of ours.”

There was an instant’s silence. Pauline, who was prepared, was now perhaps the calmest of the trio. Rochester’s face was dark with anger.

“You refer, Duchess, I suppose,” he said—

The Duchess left him unceremoniously. She took a step or two forward with outstretched hands. The butler was announcing—

“Mr. Saton!”

The dinner was as successful as the Duchess’s country dinners always were. She herself, a hostess of renown, led the conversation at her end of the table. Like all women with a new craze, she conscientiously did her best to keep it in the background, and completely failed. Before the third course had been removed, she was discussing occultism with the bishop of the diocese. Rochester, from her other side, listened with a thin smile. She turned upon him suddenly.

“Oh, I know that you’re an unbeliever!” she said. “You’re one of those people who go through life doubting everything. You shan’t have him for an ally, Bishop,” she said, “because your points of view are entirely different. Henry here doubts everything, from his own existence to the vintage of my champagne. You, on the other hand,” she added, turning toward her other companion, “are forced to disbelieve, because you feel that any new power or gift that may be granted to us, and which we discover for ourselves, is opposed, of course, to your creed.”

“It depends,” the bishop remarked, “upon the nature of that power.”

“Even in its elementary stages,” the Duchess said, “there is no doubt that it is a power which can do a great deal for us towards solving the mysteries of existence. Personally, I consider it absolutely and entirely inimical to any form of religious belief.”

“Why?” Rochester asked quietly.

“Because,” the Duchess answered, “all the faith that has been lavished upon religion since the making of the world, has been a misapplied force. If it had been applied toward developing this new part of ourselves, there is no doubt that so many thousands of years could never have passed without our entering the last and greatest chamber in the treasure-house of knowledge.”

The bishop, being a privileged guest, and a cousin of his hostess, deliberately turned his back upon her and escaped from the conversation. The Duchess looked past him towards Saton, who was sitting a few places down the table.

“There!” she exclaimed. “I have been braver than even you could have been.”

Saton smiled.

“That sort of courage,” he remarked, “is the prerogative of your sex.”

“You have heard what I said,” she continued. “Don’t you agree with me?”

“Of course,” he answered.

He hesitated for a moment, but the Duchess was looking at him. She evidently expected him to continue the subject.

“We are told,” he said slowly, “that there is no such thing as waste in the physical world—that matter simply changes its form. I suppose that is true enough. And yet a change of form can be for the better or for the worse, according to our caprices. Strictly speaking, it is a waste when matter is changed for the worse. It is very much like this, I think, with regard to the subject which you were just then discussing. Faith, from our point of view, is a very real and psychical force. The faith which has been spent upon religion through all these ages, seems to us very much like the tragedy of an unharnessed Niagara.”

The Duchess looked around her triumphantly. She was chilled a little, however, by Rochester’s curling lip.

“Dear hostess,” he whispered in her ear, “this sort of conversation is scarcely respectful to the bishop, even though he be a relative. You can let your young protÉgÉ expound his marvelous views after dinner.”

The Duchess shrugged her ample shoulders.

“I wonder how it is,” she declared, a little peevishly, “that directly one sets foot in the country, one seems to come face to face with the true Briton. What hypocrites we all are! We are broad enough to discuss any subject under the sun, in town, but we seem to shrink into something between the Philistine and the agricultural pedagogue, as soon as we sniff the air of the ploughed fields.”

She rose a little pettishly, and motioned to Rochester to take her place.

“Five minutes only,” she said. “You will find us all over the place. The cigarettes and cigars are in the hall. You can finish your wine here, and come out.”

“Is there anything particular,” Rochester asked grimly, “that we are permitted to talk about?”

“With this crowd,” she whispered, “if I forbid politics and agriculture, I don’t think you’ll last the five minutes.”