"I asked you once to come to me if you ever needed a friend. I do not
wait for that. I ask you not to go to your uncle."

"Why?"

He was thinking that, despite social artifice and worldliness, she was
sentimental.

"Because there will be trouble. I can see it. You may trust a woman's
instinct; and I know that man!" He did not reply at once, but presently
said:

"I fancy I must keep my promise."

"What is the book you are reading?" she said, changing the subject, for
Sir William was listening.

He opened it, and smiled musingly.

"It is called Affairs of Some Consequence in the Reign of Charles I.
In reading it I seemed to feel that it was incorrect, and my mind kept
wandering away into patches of things--incidents, scenes, bits of talk
--as I fancied they really were, not apocryphal or 'edited' as here."

"I say," said Cluny, "that's rum, isn't it?"

"For instance," Gaston continued, "this tale of King Charles and
Buckingham." He read it. "Now here is the scene as I picture it." In
quick elliptical phrases he gave the tale from a different stand-point.