“My dear Honora,” replied Trixton Brent, gravely, “we wanted your husband for his abilities and the valuable services he can render us.”

She stood looking into his eyes, striving to penetrate to the soul behind, ignorant or heedless that others before her had tried and failed.  He met her gaze unflinchingly, and smiled.

“I want the truth,” she craved.

“I never lie—­to a woman,” he said.

“My life—­my future depends upon it,” she went on.  “I’d rather scrub floors, I’d rather beg—­than to have it so.  You must believe me!”

“I do believe you,” he affirmed.  And he said it with a gentleness and a sincerity that startled her.

“Thank you,” she answered simply.  And speech became very difficult.  “If—­if I haven’t been quite fair with you—­Mr. Brent, I am sorry.  I—­I liked you, and I like you to-day better than ever before.  And I can quite see now how I must have misled you into thinking—­queer things about me.  I didn’t mean to.  I have learned a lesson.”

She took a deep, involuntary breath.  The touch of lightness in his reply served to emphasize the hitherto unsuspected fact that sportsmanship in Trixton Brent was not merely a code, but assumed something of the grandeur of a principle.

“I, too, have learned a lesson,” he replied.  “I have learned the difference between nature and art.  I am something of a connoisseur in art.  I bow to nature, and pay my bets.”

“Your bets?” she asked, with a look.

“My renunciations, forfeits, whatever you choose to call them.  I have been fairly and squarely beaten—­but by nature, not by art.  That is my consolation.”

Laughter struck into her eyes like a shaft of sunlight into a well; her emotions were no longer to be distinguished.  And in that moment she wondered what would have happened if she had loved this man, and why she had not.  And when next he spoke, she started.

“How is my elderly dove-coloured friend this morning?” he asked.  “That dinner with her was one of the great events of my life.  I didn’t suppose such people existed any more.”

“Perhaps you’ll stay to breakfast with her,” suggested Honora, smiling.  “I know she’d like to see you again.”

“No, thanks,” he said, taking her hand, “I’m on my way to the train—­I’d quite forgotten it.  Au revoir!” He reached the end of the porch, turned, and called back, “As a ‘dea ex machina’, she has never been equalled.”

Honora stood for a while looking after him, until she heard a footstep behind her,—­Mrs. Holt’s.

“Who was that, my dear?” she asked, “Howard?”

“Howard has gone, Mrs. Holt,” Honora replied, rousing herself.  “I must make his apologies.  It was Mr. Brent.”

“Mr. Brent!” the good lady repeated, with a slight upward lift of the faint eyebrows.  “Does he often call this early?”

Honora coloured a little, and laughed.

“I asked him to breakfast with you, but he had to catch a train.  He —­wished to be remembered.  He took such a fancy to you.”