“All is here, under your grace’s hand, I think,” he said quietly. “Then you may take yourself off.” Holles bowed submissively. He dared not look at Nan; but he caught the sudden gasp of her breath, and without looking beheld her start, and imagined the renewed horror and wide-eyed scorn in which she regarded this fresh display of cowardice and vileness. He stalked to the door, the Duke’s eyes following him with odd suspicion, puzzled ever by that something here which he perceived, but whose significance eluded him. Holding the edge of the open door in his hand, Holles half-turned again. He was still playing for time in which to decide upon his course of action. “Your grace, I take it, will not require me further to-night?” His grace considered. Beyond the Duke Holles had a glimpse of Nan, standing wide-eyed, livid as death, leaning against the table, her right hand pressed upon her heaving breast as if to control its tumult. “No,” said his grace slowly, at last, “Yet you had best remain at hand with François and the others.” “Very well,” said Holles, and turned to go. The key was, he observed, on the outside of the door. He stooped and withdrew it from the lock. “Your grace would perhaps prefer the key on the inside,” he said, with an odious smirk, and, whilst his grace impatiently shrugged his indifference, Holles made the transference. Having made it, he closed the door swiftly, and he had quietly turned the key in the lock, withdrawn and pocketed it before his grace recovered from his surprise at the eccentricity of his behaviour. “What’s this?” he demanded sharply, taking a step towards the Colonel, and from Nan there came a faint cry--a sob scarcely more than to announce the reaction caused by sudden understanding and the revival of her hopes from the despair into which she had fallen. Holles, his shoulders to the door, showed a face that was now grim and set. He cast from him again the hat and cloak which he had been holding. “It is, your grace, that I desire a word in private with you, safe from the inconvenient intrusion of your lackeys.” The Duke drew himself up, very stiff and stern, not a little intrigued as you conceive by all this; but quite master of himself. Fear, as I think I have said, was an emotion utterly unknown to him. Had he but been capable of the same self-mastery in other directions he might have been the greatest man in England. He made now no outcry, put no idle questions that must derogate from the dignity with which he felt it incumbent to invest himself. “Proceed, sir,” he said coldly. “Let us have the explanation of this insolence, that so we may make an end of it.”