"Well, I am very unwilling to believe that Mrs. Sanderson knew what was going on."
"Pray, why not?" He was raked by a goshawk's eye.
"She would have told me."
Somehow those lame, impotent words revealed a man badly hit. Charlotte saw that at once, and forthwith proceeded to turn the fact to pitiless advantage. A gust of coarse laughter swept the room.
"Johnnie, it's the first time I've read you a fool. Simple Simon! Do you think a woman who has learned to play her cards like that is the one to give away her hand?"
This was a second blow planted neatly on the vizor of his Grace. In spite of his armor of cynicism he could be seen to wince a little. And the silence which followed enabled the implacable foe to perceive that he was shaken worse than it seemed reasonable to expect him to be.
"Perhaps you'll now permit her to be sent away. A sordid intriguer. She must go at once."
In the trying moment which followed, the Duke, badly hipped, fought valiantly to pull himself together. But somehow he only just managed to do so.
"You make a mistake, Charlotte," he said, with an effort that clearly hurt him. "She is not that kind of person. You always have made that mistake. She is a superior woman in every way. At least, I have always found her so. I can't imagine such a woman intriguing for anybody."
"Shows how little you know 'em, Johnnie." Another Gargantuan gust swept the room. "Every woman in-
