“I vow ... I vow you’re monstrously unjust,” he contrived at last to stammer. “You ever have thought the worst of me. It all comes of that cursed supper party and the behaviour of those drunken fools. Yet I have sworn to you that it was through no fault of mine, that my only satisfaction lay in your prompt departure from a scene with which I would not for all the world have offended you. Yet, though I have sworn it, I doubt if you believe me.” “Does your grace wonder?” she asked him coolly. He looked at her a moment with brooding, wicked eyes. Then he loosed some little of his anger, but loosed it on a pretence. “I would to Heaven I had left you to those knaves that persecuted you.” She laughed outright. “I wonder what turn the comedy would have taken then, had you failed to answer to your cue. Perhaps my persecutors would have been put to the necessity of rescuing me, themselves, lest they should incur your anger. That would have been diverting. Oh, but enough!” She put aside her laughter. “I thank your grace for the entertainment provided; and since it has proved unprofitable I trust your grace will not go to the pains of providing yet another of the same kind. Oh, sir, if you can take shame for anything, take shame for the dullness of your invention.” She turned from him with almost contemptuous abruptness to command the chairman standing at her side. “Take up, Nathaniel. Let us on, and quickly, or I shall be late.” She was obeyed, and thus departed without so much as another glance for the gay Duke of Bucks, who, too crestfallen to attempt to detain her, or to renew his protestations, stood hat in hand, white with anger, gnawing his lip, conscious, above all, that she had plucked from him a mask that left him an object of derision and showed his face to appear the face of a fool. In the background his lackeys sought with pains to preserve a proper stolidity of countenance, whilst a few passersby paused to stare at that splendid bareheaded figure of a courtliness rarely seen on foot in the streets of the City. Conscious of their regard, investing it with a greater penetration than it could possibly possess, his grace conceived them all to be the mocking witnesses of his discomfiture. He ground his heel in a sudden spasm of rage, clapped on his hat, and turned to depart, to regain his waiting coach. But suddenly his right arm was seized in a firm grip, and a voice, in which quivered wonder, and something besides, assailed his ears. “Sir! Sir!” He swung round, and glared into the shaven, aquiline face and wonder-laden eyes of Colonel Holles, who had come up behind the chair whilst the Duke was in conversation with its occupant, and had gradually crept nearer as if drawn by some irresistible attraction. Amazed, the Duke looked him over from head to toe. Conceiving in this shabby stranger another witness of his humiliation, his anger, seeking a vent, flamed out. “What’s this?” he rasped. “Do you presume to touch me, sirrah?”