"Ah--h!" The duke's grimace and pantomime expressed deprecation with a more elaborately hideous vim than that feeling had probably ever been clothed with before. "Most illustrious lady," he protested, "what would you have? The state of my unworthy heart is well known to you. And the heart excuses everything--everything." The repetition of the last word had a sinister sound in the ears of Gage and Peckover. With its dire comprehensiveness it seemed to include their lives in its sweeping embrace. But Lady Ormstork, with sundry material reasons to influence her judgment, was far from accepting the proposition. "It does not," she objected stoutly. "To force your attentions where they are distasteful is inexcusable." "It is," rejoined the duke, with the light of battle in his eyes, "clearly my duty to render acceptable the homage of my affection." "It is quite hopeless," declared Lady Ormstork curtly. "I believe not," insisted the duke with, under the circumstances, an admirable display of assurance. Lady Ormstork glanced with equal confidence at her _protégée_. "Miss Buffkin will bear me out." "Yes. It's no good, duke," said the young lady with discomfiting promptness. "You are not my sort." The duke accepted the verdict with a shrug, and at once proceeded to misread it. "The Dukes of Salolja," he said with a touch of defiant pomposity, "have never permitted inequality of birth to be a bar in affairs of the heart." Lady Ormstork had also her personal rules of life. And one was never to allow herself to be bluffed out of a possible advantage. "You mistake, duke," she said suavely. "Miss Buffkin wishes delicately to suggest that she does not return your affection, and therefore, the alliance you propose is out of the question." "I can," replied the duke, in no way abashed, "afford to wait for the return of my affection." As he glanced significantly round at the three silent men he seemed a very monument of determination. "But," Lady Ormstork maintained, "we do not wish you to wait. There would be no point in your waiting. Miss Buffkin has made up her mind to contract a quite different alliance." "Ah?" The duke opened his mouth wide and emitted an exclamation in tone and mode of utterance worthy of a surprised hyæna. Then shutting his mouth and opening his eyes whose light the facial contortion had absorbed, he added with, to certain of the party at least, disquieting significance, "Our Spanish proverb says, 'He who buys ground may rest under it before he can repose above it.' May I, without offence, ask the ever gracious Miss Buffkin whether you correctly interpret her sentiments and intentions?" The ever gracious Miss Buffkin looked as defiant as her questioner--and much less polite, as she answered, "That's right enough. I'm going to marry an Englishman, for one thing." "Ah?" Again the zoological grimace. "Has the radiant Miss Buffkin honoured any particular Englishman with her much-to-be coveted preference?"