But as you commissioned me to deliver the money into no hands but Mr.Somerset's, I adhered strictly to your instructions.' 'But perhaps my instructions were not wise.

Should it in your opinion have been sent by this young man?
Was he commissioned to ask you for it ?' De Stancy murmured that Dare was not commissioned to ask for it; that upon the whole he deemed her instructions wise; and was still of opinion that the best thing had been done.
Although De Stancy was distracted between his desire to preserve Dare from the consequences of folly, and a gentlemanly wish to keep as close to the truth as was compatible with that condition, his answers had not appeared to Paula to be particularly evasive, the conjuncture being one in which a handsome heiress's shrewdness was prone to overleap itself by setting down embarrassment on the part of the man she questioned to a mere lover's difficulty in steering between honour and rivalry.
She put but one other question.

'Did it appear as if he, Mr.Somerset, after telegraphing, had--had--regretted doing so, and evaded the result by not keeping the appointment ?' 'That's just how it appears.' The words, which saved Dare from ignominy, cost De Stancy a good deal.

He was sorry for Somerset, sorry for himself, and very sorry for Paula.

But Dare was to De Stancy what Somerset could never be: and 'for his kin that is near unto him shall a man be defiled.' After that interview Charlotte saw with warring impulses that Somerset slowly diminished in Paula's estimate; slowly as the moon wanes, but as certainly.