“Ah, I hoped you would be pleased with it!” he replied blandly. “And with me for letting you see it.”

“How absurd you are! It is certainly most handsome.”

“Yes, and wickedly dear—as dear as your feathered bonnet, though not, I fear, as becoming. You see how I lay myself open to strong counter-attack!”

“Oh, Giles!”

He laughed, and tickled her cheek. “Foolish little Nell! Is it very shocking?”

She heaved a sigh of relief, smiling shyly at him. “No, indeed it isn’t! Only it—it does chance to be a bill I had forgotten, and I was afraid you would be angry with me.”

“What a disagreeable husband I must be!” he murmured ruefully. “Shall I pay that bill with the rest?”

“No, please! It is a very small one—look!”

She held it out to him, but he did not look at it, only taking her hand in his, the bill crushed between his fingers, and saying: “You mustn’t be afraid of me. I never meant to make you so! I’ll pay this bill, or any other—only don’t conceal any from me!”

“Afraid of you? Oh, no, no!” she exclaimed.

His clasp on her hand tightened; he leaned forward, as though he would have kissed her; but her dresser came into the room just then, and although she quickly withdrew, the moment had passed. Nell had snatched her hand away, vividly blushing, and the Earl did not try to recapture it. He got up, his own complexion rather heightened, feeling all the embarrassment natural to a man discovered, at ten o’clock in the morning, making love to his own wife, and went away to his dressing-room.

Chapter Two

Shortly before four o’clock that afternoon young Lady Cardross’s barouche was driven into Hyde Park by the Stanhope Gate.