The duke was crouching in a chair and looked fearfully pale and ill, and had an inscrutable expression on his face. Fancy a man so old-looking, and crippled, being even Robert's half-brother. I came forward--he rose with difficulty, and this is the conversation we had. "Please don't get up," I said. "If I may sit down opposite you." "Excuse my want of politeness," he said, pointing to a chair; "but my back is causing me great pain to-day." He looked such a poor, miserable, soured, unhappy creature, I could not help being touched. "Oh, I am so sorry!" I said. "If I had known you were ill I would not have troubled you now." "Justice had better not wait," he replied, with a whimsical, cynical, sour smile. "State your case." Then he suddenly turned on an electric lamp near me, which made a blaze of light in my face. I did not jump, I am glad to say; I have pretty good nerves. "My case is this: To begin with, I love your brother better than anything else in the world." "Possibly--a number of women have done so," he interrupted. "Well?" "And he loves me," I continued, not noticing the interruption. "Agreed. It is a situation that happens every day among young fools. You have known each other about a month, I believe." "Under four weeks," I corrected. He laughed--bitterly. "It cannot be of such vital importance to you, then, in that short time." "It is of vital importance to me, and you know your brother's character; you will be able to judge as well as I if, or not, it is a matter of vital importance to him." He frowned. "Well, your case?" "First, to demand on what grounds you condemned me as a 'devilish beauty'? And why you assume that I should not be faithful to Robert for a year?" "I am a rather good judge of character," he said. "You cannot be, or you would see that whatever accident makes me have this objectionable outside, the me that lives within is an honest person who never breaks her word." "I can only see red hair, and green eyes, and a general look of the devil." "Would you wish people always to judge by appearances, then?" I said; "because, if so, I see before me a prejudiced, narrow-minded, cruel-tempered, cynical man--jealous of youth's joys. But _I_ would not be so unjust as to stamp you with these qualities because of that!" He looked straight at me, startled. "I may be all these things," he said. "You are probably right." "Then, oh, please don't be!" I went on quickly. "I want you to be kind to us. We--oh, we do, do so wish to be happy, and we are both so young, and life will be so utterly blank and worthless for all those years to the end if you part us now." "I did not say I would part you," he said, coldly. "I merely said I refused to give Robert any allowance, and I shall leave everything in my power away from the title. If you like to get married on those terms you are welcome to." Then I told him that I loved Robert far too much to like the thought of spoiling his future.