"Might I ask, Mabel, if you have been kidnapped?" "Kidnapped?" "The word I used was 'kidnapped.' But I will spell it if you like. Or I will get a dictionary, that you may see its meaning." The Duchess looked as if she was beginning to be not quite sure if she was awake or sleeping. She turned to Ivor: "Mr. Dacre, has the accident affected Hereward's brain?" The Duke took the words out of his cousin's mouth: "On that point, my dear, let me ease your mind. I don't know if you are under the impression that I should be the same shape after a Pickford's van had run over me as I was before; but, in any case, I have not been run over by a Pickford's van. So far as I am concerned there has been no accident. Dismiss that delusion from your mind." "Oh!" "You appear surprised. One might even think that you were sorry. But may I now ask what you did when you arrived at Draper's Buildings?" "Did! I looked for you!" "Indeed! And when you had looked in vain, what was the next item in your programme?" The lady shrank still further from him: "Hereward, have you been having a jest at my expense? Can you have been so cruel?" Tears stood in her eyes. Rising, the Duke laid his hand upon her arm: "Mabel, tell me--what did you do when you had looked for me in vain?" "I looked for you upstairs and downstairs, and everywhere. It was quite a large place, it took me ever such a time. I thought that I should go distracted. Nobody seemed to know anything about you, or even that there had been an accident at all--it was all offices. I couldn't make it out in the least, and the people didn't seem to be able to make me out either. So when I couldn't find you anywhere I came straight home again." The Duke was silent for a moment. Then, with funereal gravity, he turned to Mr. Dacre. He put to him this question: "Ivor, what are you laughing at?" Mr. Dacre drew his hand across his mouth with rather a suspicious gesture: "My dear fellow, only a smile!" The Duchess looked from one to the other: "What have you two been doing? What is the joke?" With an air of preternatural solemnity the Duke took two letters from the breast-pocket of his coat. "Mabel, you have already seen your letter. You have already seen the lock of your hair. Just look at this--and that." He gave her the two very singular communications which had arrived in such a mysterious manner, and so quickly one after the other. She read them with wide-open eyes. "Hereward! Wherever did these come from?" The Duke was standing with his legs apart, and his hands in his trousers-pockets. "I would give--I would give another five hundred pounds to know. Shall I tell you, madam, what I have been doing? I have been presenting five hundred golden sovereigns to a perfect stranger, with a top-hat, and a gardenia in his button-hole." "Whatever for?"