"Pleased to meet you, duke!" she said. "I guess we may have made a mistake. We thought--well, we thought you were a friend of ours--but I don't quite see how you fell for it. Dicky, turn round and take the gentleman back!" "No, no!" said the duke hastily. "That is, you are going my way, so if you don't mind--my friends will be gone by now!" "Certainly. Keep ahead, Dick!" said Pinto heartily. "Pleased to have a duke along. That's what we came to Europe for, you know--like all vulgar Americans. So we'll drop you any place you say." "That's really frightfully kind, Mr. Pegg," said the duke. "You see, I am expected to visit the Gordons, who have rented a château at Deux Arbres and when you called, Miss Pegg, I thought they had come to meet me. We shall pass there shortly, and if you will just set me down in the village I shall be all right and fearfully grateful." "Why, that's the place where the famous panels by Scarpia are!" I exclaimed. "They were painted at the order of Cardinal Perigino in 1754." The duke looked at me in some surprise. "Right!" said he. "Do you know the Gordons, by any chance?" "No," I replied. "But I know my Burke's History of the Sixteenth Century Italian Painters." "Oh!" said he. "How odd and delightful." And he smiled again that delectable smile of his, which somehow drew us into a delicious intimacy. His smile seemed at once to compliment my erudition and a thousand other lovely things. Then he turned again to Peaches and looking at her spoke to her father. "Where are you bound for, sir?" he asked. "Monte Carlo will be our final camp," said Silas. "It's a town I've always wanted to hit. I understand it's got it all over Hell River or even Dogtown, and I used to get a lot of comfort out of them two places when I was herding hop pickers round the head of the Sacramento Valley. But I understand Monte has them beaten three ways. It ought to, considering the game they named after it!" I am convinced that this statement was as unintelligible to the duke as it was to me, but he laughed politely. "I may be dropping down there a little later," he said. "In point of fact my home is not far from it--lovely old place back in the hills. I was born there!" "That so?" said Mr. Pegg. "Well, you do talk English remarkably well!" "I was educated at Harvard," said the duke. "My mother was an American, the daughter of the consul at San Remo." "I knew you were a regular guy!" said Peaches, and then blushed furiously. The duke laughed. "Thanks!" said he. "But I am an Italian, you know, really, and I love my country--as perhaps few men have!" His eyes grew grave as he spoke. And after a few moments of curious silence that fell upon us unwittingly, he held up his hand as a signal to stop. "We are coming into Deux Arbres now," he said. "There is the inn, and that trap looks as if it would take one to the château! I am a thousand times grateful for the lift!"