"What I came to do. Tell the truth. If it pulls something down, Your Grace, then whatever it pulls down was built on top of my father."
The Duchess rose. She was taller than Honora by a little, and in that moment she seemed to fill the room.
"Everything in this world is built on top of someone," she said. "The only question is whether it stands. Good morning, Miss Lisle. The carriage will take you home."
IV.
He came that afternoon, on foot, without a card.
Mrs. Fairleigh's landlady, who had never had a duke on her front step and was not certain she approved, showed him up to the little first-floor parlour with its faded chintz and its view of the chimney pots, and then lingered on the landing so obviously that Mrs. Fairleigh had to get up, cross the room, and close the door on her.
"I shall sit by the window," the old lady announced, "and be extremely deaf." She did so, taking up a volume of sermons upside down.
The Duke of Hartsmere stood in the middle of the room as though he did not quite know what to do with his hands. In daylight, out of evening dress, in a brown coat with mud on his boots, he looked younger and less certain, and more like the boy who had once lain on his stomach on the footbridge with his sleeve rolled to the shoulder, waiting for a trout.
"My mother tells me you called on her this morning," he said.
"Your mother sent for me."
"She tells me you are a fortune-hunter of a peculiarly ingenious kind, that your father was a dishonest servant, and that you have some papers you mean to sell to the newspapers." He paused. "She did not say it so plainly. She did not need to."
"And you came to see what my price is."
"I came," he said, "because she was frightened. I have seen my mother angry a thousand times. I have seen her frightened once before, on the day my father died. I should like to know what she is afraid of."
Honora looked at him for a long moment. Then she took the brown calf book from the table beside her chair, where it had lain since morning, and held it out to him.
He took it to the window, beside Mrs. Fairleigh, who turned a page of her upside-down sermon. Honora watched him open it. She knew every page; she could have recited it. The neat columns in her father's small upright hand. The dates. The sums. And on page after page, held with a brass pin through the corner, a narrow slip of paper with a few words dashed across it in brown ink—I.O.U. five hundred pounds, Hartsmere; I promise to repay E. Lisle on demand the sum of eight hundred guineas, Hartsmere; Edmund—stand for me with Howard and Gibbs, one thousand, you shall have it at Lady Day, upon my honour—H.
She saw the moment he recognised the hand. He had his father's letters, she supposed; every son did. His shoulders drew together very slightly, as a man's do when he steps into cold water.