Durham had risen too. "Then I go back with you!" he exclaimed
energetically; and as she paused, wavering a little under the shock
of his resolve: "I don't mean into your house--but into your life!"
he said.

She suffered him, at any rate, to accompany her to the door of the
house, and allowed their debate to prolong itself through the almost
monastic quiet of the quarter which led thither. On the way, he
succeeded in wresting from her the confession that, if it were
possible to ascertain in advance that her husband's family would not
oppose her action, she might decide to apply for a divorce. Short of
a positive assurance on this point, she made it clear that she would
never move in the matter; there must be no scandal, no
_retentissement_, nothing which her boy, necessarily brought up in
the French tradition of scrupulously preserved appearances, could
afterward regard as the faintest blur on his much-quartered
escutcheon. But even this partial concession again raised fresh
obstacles; for there seemed to be no one to whom she could entrust
so delicate an investigation, and to apply directly to the Marquis
de Malrive or his relatives appeared, in the light of her past
experience, the last way of learning their intentions.

"But," Durham objected, beginning to suspect a morbid fixity of idea
in her perpetual attitude of distrust--"but surely you have told me
that your husband's sister--what is her name? Madame de
Treymes?--was the most powerful member of the group, and that she
has always been on your side."

She hesitated. "Yes, Christiane has been on my side. She dislikes
her brother. But it would not do to ask her."