Claude was torn two ways. The Towers scheme was no longer his first anxiety. He returned to it by an effort. "They would," he said. "Lady Caroline told me so. They would come like a shot in August. She said so herself." "Would you put me up to things in the meantime? Would you be showing me the ropes?" "The very thing I should like to do, so far as I am able." "Then we'll start to-morrow--I mean to-day. That settles it. And yet----" "Out with it," said Claude, smiling. "Well, I will. I mean no harm, you understand. Who am I to dare to look at her? Only I do feel as if that girl would do me a deal of good down there--you know, in making me more the sort of chap for my billet. But if she's gone and got a sweetheart, he might very easily object; so I just thought I'd like to know." "She hasn't one, to my knowledge," said Claude at length. "Is that a fact?" cried the Duke. "Well, I don't know what all you fellows are thinking of, but I do know that I am jolly glad. Not from any designs of my own, mind you--I haven't as much cheek as all that--but to save trouble. Do you know, Claudy, I've had a beast of a thought off and on all the night?" "No; what was that?" "Why, I half suspected she was your own girl." CHAPTER VI A NEW LEAF "The Duke of St. Osmund's and Mr. Claude Lafont left town yesterday for Maske Towers, the family seat near Devenholme." So ran the announcement in the morning papers of the next day but one. And the Duke was actually exploring his inheritance when it appeared. Overnight the pair had arrived too late to see much more than the lofty, antique hall and the respective rooms in which they were to sup and sleep; but the birds awoke Jack in the early morning, and he was up and out before seven o'clock. As yet he had seen little that attracted him within, and at this hour he felt a childish horror of the dark colossal canvases overhanging the grand staircase and the hall; like the sightless suits of armour standing blind sentinel below, they froze him with the look of lifeless life about the grim, gigantic figures. He was thankful to see one of the great double doors standing open to the sun; it let him out into a portico loftier than the hall; and folding his arms across a stone balustrade, the whilom bushman looked forth between Corinthian columns like the masts of a ship, and was monarch of all he beheld.