"You infer that he is telling the truth about me?" cried my lord, fuming, yet covering his rage with a decent appearance since a hundred eyes were on them as they drove slowly round in the glass coach. "Not altogether. There are other things." "What other things?" "The talk there was about your Grace and Middleton at the time of your resignation." My lord groaned. "All the world knows that, it seems," he said. "And should know that I have never denied it." "True." "But this! It is the most absurd, the most ridiculous, the most fantastical story! How could I go out of town for twenty-four hours, and the fact not be known to half London? Let Sir John name the day." "He has," the other Duke answered. "He lays it on the tenth of June." "Well?" "There was a Land Bank meeting of the Council on that day. But your Grace did not attend it." [Illustration: HE SHUT HIMSELF IN WITH HIS TROUBLE] "No? No, I remember I did not. It was the day my mother was taken ill. She sent for me, and I lay at her house that night and the next." His Grace of Devonshire coughed. "That is unfortunate," he said, and leaned forward to bow to the Bishop of London, whose chariot had just entered the Square. "Why?" said my lord, ready to take offence at anything. "Because, though I do not doubt your word, the world will require witnesses. And Lady Shrewsbury's household is suspect. Her Jacobite leanings are known, and her people's evidence would go for little. That that should be the day--but there, there, your Grace must take courage," the Duke continued kindly. "All that the party can do will be done. Within the week Lord Portland will be here bringing his Majesty's commands, and we shall then know what he proposes to do about it. If I know the King, and I think I do----" But the picture which these words suggested to my lord's mind was too much for his equanimity. To know for certain that the King, who had extended indulgence to him once, was in possession of this new accusation, and perhaps believed it, that was bad enough. But to hear that Portland also was in the secret, and grim, faithful Dutchman as he was, might presently, in support of the low opinion of English fidelity which he held, quote him, the first Minister of England, was too much! In a hoarse voice he cut the Duke short, asking to be set down before they quarrelled; and his Grace, hastening with a hurried word of sympathy to comply, my lord stepped out, and looking neither to right nor left, passed into the house, and to the library, where, locking the door, he shut himself in with his trouble. CHAPTER XLII