"I have done this for you, as I might do any other thing for you which you might ask me, for there's one thing I want more than my life itself. Oh," he cried, and he reached out his arms toward her, "can you love me, Nancy Stair? Do you think you can love me?" There was a pause, during which I could hear the duke's deep breathing, before she answered him. "And that's just the thing I can't tell," she said, "for I don't know myself. You know the understanding that I have with Danvers Carmichael. I am fond of him, perhaps fonder of him than any other; but there is no disguising the fact from myself that at times you attract me more." The duke laughed aloud in spite of the strain of the moment. "You are an honest little soul," he cried, with genuine appreciation. "I try to be," she answered. "Well, well," he went on, temporizing, "a year is a year. We shall see. But in the meantime, my sins are forgiven me?" "Entirely," she answered. "There is usually some token of forgiveness, is there not?" he went on, as he stood, erect, hypnotic, and compelling, looking down at her. She did the thing for which he was least prepared, by putting her hand lightly on his forehead for an instant. "Te absolvo," she said, after the manner of the church. And although one could see that he was disappointed, he smiled at her, and the smile had something in it of pleasure, too, for he of all men was surely the one to believe that "the fruit which could fall without shaking was ever too mellow" for him, and enjoyed, to mix a metaphor, the pleasures of the chase. Although the trouble seemed to pass by in this happy fashion, I had so little faith in his Grace of Borthwicke that, the morning for which I knew the duel had been set, I rose early and rode by the Old Bridge Road to see if anything concerning it were on foot. Finding nothing but the silence of the morning and a few country folk on the way to market, I rode on to the town, where to my astonishment I came into the midst of a party just leaving the Star and Garter with evidences of conviviality plain upon them. The first I saw were Billy Deuceace and Sir Patrick Sullivan, and behind them Danvers, Dr. McMurtrie, Stewart of MacBrides, and his Grace of Borthwicke, all of them seemingly upon the best of terms with each other and themselves, leaving me to ride back to breakfast at Stair with the first appetite I had had for hard upon a week. In the afternoon of that same day I met Billy Deuceace, and after some questioning, which showed the knowledge I had of the matter, he said: "It was a compact between us that the affair should die in silence, but I think I can say to you, Lord Stair, in honor, that his grace behaved most handsomely in the matter--most handsomely," he repeated. [Illustration: Handwriting: