The duchess ran Dan, made plans, set the pace, and they were very much in evidence during the season. The young American, good-natured and generous, the duchess beautiful and knowing, were the observed of London, and those of her friends who would have tolerated Dan on account of his money, ended by sincerely liking him. The wedding-day had not been fixed as yet, and Dan was not so violently carried away that he could not wait to be married. Meanwhile Gordon Galorey thanked God for the delay and hoped for a miracle to break the spell over his friend’s son before it should be too late. In early May the question came up regarding the musicale. The duchess made her list and arranged the Sunday afternoon and her performers to suit her taste, and the week before lounged in her boudoir when Dan and Galorey appeared for a late morning call.

“There, Dan,” she said, holding out a bit of paper, “look at the list and the program, will you?”

“Sounds and reads all right,” commented Dan, handing it on to Galorey.

Besides being an artistic event, she intended that the concert should serve to present Dan to her special set. She now lit a cigarette and gave one to each of her friends, lighting the Englishman’s herself.

“The best names in London,” Lord Galorey said. “You see, Dan, we shall trot you out in a royal way. I hope you fully appreciate how swagger this is to be.”

Glancing at the list Blair remarked:

“But I don’t see Miss Lane’s name?”

“Why should you?” the duchess answered sharply.

“Why, we planned all along that she was to sing,” he returned.

She gave a long puff to her cigarette.

“We did rather speak of it. But we shall do very well as we are. The program is full up and it’s perfectly ripping as it stands.”

“Yes, there’s only just one thing the matter with it,” the boy smiled good-naturedly, “and it’s easy enough to run her in. I guess Miss Lane could be run in most anywhere on any program and not clear the house.”

Lord Galorey, who knew nothing about the subject under discussion, said tactfully: “Why, of course, Letty Lane is perfectly charming, but you couldn’t get her, my dear chap.”

“I think we will let the thing stand as it is,” said the duchess, going back to her desk and stirring her paper about. “It’s really too late now, you know, Dan.”

Unruffled, but with a determination which Lord Galorey and the lady were far from guessing, Blair resumed tranquilly:

“Oh, I guess she’ll come in all right, late as it is. We’ll send word to her and fix it up.”

The duchess turned to him, annoyed: “Oh, don’t be a beastly bore, dear—you are not really serious.”

Dan still smiled at her sweetly. “You bet your life I am, though, Lily.”

She rang a bell at the side of her desk, and when the footman came in gave him the sheet of paper. “See that this is taken at once to the stationer’s.”

“Better wait, Lily”—her fiancÉ extended his hand—“until the program is filled out the way it is going to stand.” And Blair fixed his handsome eyes on his future wife. “Why, we got this shindig up,” he noted irreverently, “just so Miss Lane could sing at it.”

“Nonsense,” she cried, angry and powerless, “you ridiculous creature! Fancy me getting up a musicale for Letty Lane! Do tell Dan to stop bothering and fussing, Gordon. He’s too ridiculous!”

And Lord Galorey said: “What is the row anyway?”

“Why, I want Miss Lane to sing here on Sunday,” Dan explained....

“And I don’t want her,” finished the Duchess of Breakwater, who was evidently unwilling to force a scene before Lord Galorey. She handed the list to her servant, but Dan intercepted it.

“Don’t send out that list, Lily, as it is.”

He gave it back to her, and his tone was so cool, his expression so decided and quiet, that she was disarmed, and dismissed the servant, telling him to return when she should ring again. Coloring with anger, she tapped the envelope against her brilliantly polished nails.

If she had been married to Blair she would have burst into a violent rage; if he had been poorer than he was she would have put him in his place. Lord Galorey understood the contraction of her brows and lips as Dan reminded: “You promised me that you would have her, you know, Lily.”

“Give in, Lily,” Galorey advised, rising from the chair where he was lounging. “Give in gracefully.”

And she turned on Galorey the anger which she dared not show the other man. But Dan interrupted her, explaining simply:

“I knew the girl when she was a kid: she is from my old home, and I want Lily to ask her here to sing for us, and then to see if we can’t do something to get her out of the state she is in.”

Galorey repeated vaguely, “State?”

“Why, she’s all run down, tired out; she’s got no real friends in London.”

The other man flicked the ash from his cigarette and looked at Blair’s boy through his monocle.

“And you thought that Lily might befriend her, old chap?”

“Yes,” nodded Dan, “just give her a lift, you know.”

Galorey nodded back, smiling gently. “I see, I see—a moral, spiritual lift? I see—I see.” He glanced at the woman with his strange smile.

She put her cigarette down and seated herself, clasping her hands around her knees and looked at her fiancÉ.

“It’s none of my business what Letty Lane’s reputation is. I don’t care, but you must understand one thing, Dan, I’m not a reformer, or a charitable institution, and if she comes here it is purely professional.”

He took the subject as settled, and asked for a copy of the program and put it in his pocket. “I’ll get the names of her songs from her and take the thing myself to Harrison’s. And I’d better hustle, I guess; there’s no time to lose between now and Sunday.” And he went out triumphant.

Galorey remained, smoking, and the duchess continued her notes in silence, cooling down at her desk. Her companion knew her too well to speak to her until she had herself in hand, and when finally she took up her pen and turned about, she appeared conscious for the first of his presence.

“Here still!” she exclaimed.

“I thought I might do for a safety valve, Lily. You could let some of your anger out on me.”

The duchess left her desk and came over to him.

“I expect you despise me thoroughly, don’t you, Gordon?”

They had not been alone together since her engagement to Blair, for she had taken pains to avoid every opportunity for a tÊte-À-tÊte.

“Despise you?” he repeated gently. “It’s awfully hard, isn’t it, for a chap like me to despise anybody? We’re none of us used to the best quality of behavior, you know, my dear girl.”

“Don’t talk rot, Gordon,” she murmured.

“You didn’t ask my advice,” he continued, “but I don’t hesitate to tell you that I have done everything I could to save the boy.”

She accepted this philosophically. “Oh, I knew you would; I quite expected it, but—” and in the look she threw at him there was more liking than resentment—“I knew you, too; you couldn’t go very far, my dear fellow.”

“I think Dan Blair is excellent stuff,” Gordon said.

“He is the greenest, youngest, most ridiculous infant,” she exclaimed with irritation, and he laughed.

“His money is old enough to walk, however, isn’t it, Lily?” She made an angry gesture.

“I expected you’d say something loathsome.”

Her companion met her eyes directly. She left her chair and came and sat down beside him on the small sofa. As he did not move, or look at her, but regarded his cigarette with interest, she leaned close to him and whispered: “Gordon, try to be nice and decent. Try to forget yourself. Don’t you see what a wonderful chance it is for me, and that, as far as you and I are concerned, it can’t go on?”

The face of the man by her side grew somber. The charm this woman had for him had never lessened since the day when he told her he loved her, long before his marriage, and they were both too poor.

“We have always been too poor, and Edith is jealous of me every day and hour of her life. Can’t you be generous?”

He rose and stood over her, looking down at her beautiful form and her somewhat softened face, but his eyes were hard and his face very pale.

“You had better go, Gordon,” she said slowly; “you had better go....”

Then, as he obeyed her and went like a flash as far as the door, she followed him and whispered softly: “If you’re really only jealous, I can forgive you.”

He managed to get out: “His father was my friend; he sent the boy to me and I’ve been a bad guardian.” He made a gesture of despair. “Put yourself in my place. Let Dan Blair go, Lily; let him go.”

Her eyelids flickered a little, and she said sharply: “You’re out of your senses, Gordon—and what if I love him?”

With a low exclamation he caught her hand at the wrist so hard that she cried out, and he said between his teeth: “You don’t love him! Take those words back!”

“Of course I do. Let me free!”

“No,” he said passionately, holding her fast. “Not until you take that back.”

His face, his tone, his force, dominated her; the remembrance of their past, a possible future, made her waver under his eyes, and the woman smiled at him as Blair had never seen her smile.

“Very well, then, goose,” she capitulated almost tenderly; “I don’t love that boy, of course. I’m marrying him for his money. Now, will you let me go?”

But he held her still more firmly and kissed her several times before he finally set her free, and went out of the house miserable—bound to her by the strongest chains—bound in his conscience and by honor to his trust to Dan’s father, and yet handicapped by another sense of honor which decrees that man must keep silence to the end.