“The time he aided you, Mrs. Fanshawe, when was that?”

She flushed.

“That was a few months after we first met him. I was⁠—foolish; my married life was not⁠—very happy, and I was⁠—or, rather, I fancied myself⁠—in love with an Austrian nobleman, who⁠—who⁠—well, sir, suffice it that I consented to dine with him one evening. I found then that he was not the galant homme I had thought him, but something quite different. I do not know what I should have done had not Sir Anthony arrived.”

“He did arrive then?”