Paris had seemed to
him like a great oven. All the time he had been half stifled, and yet he
knew very well that at a word from Spencer he would have returned there
at an hour's notice. He knew, too, that the home which he had loved all
his days could never be quite the same place to him again.
Andrew roused himself from rather a prolonged silence.
"You were a brick to go, George," he said. "It is more than any one else
in the world would have done for me."
Duncombe laughed a little uneasily. He knocked the ashes from his pipe
and refilled it slowly.
"Andrew," he said, "I don't want to seem a fraud. I dare say that I
might have gone for you alone--but I didn't."
His friend smiled faintly.
"Ah!" he remarked. "I had forgotten your little infatuation. It hasn't
worn off yet, then?"
"No, nor any signs of it," Duncombe answered bluntly. "It's an odd
position for a matter-of-fact person like myself, isn't it? I tell you,
Andrew, I've really tried to care for some of the girls about here. The
place wants a mistress, and I'm the tenth baronet in the direct line.
One's got to think about these things, you know. I've tried hard, and
I've never even come near it.
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