“Did not Miss Temple Barholm take you to see the regalia in the Tower of London? I am quite shocked,” said the duke. He was, in fact, a trifle disappointed. With the puce dress and undersleeves and little fringes she ought certainly to have rushed with her pupil to that seat of historical instruction on their first morning in London, immediately after breakfasting on toast and bacon and marmalade and eggs. “She meant me to go, but somehow it was put off. She almost cried on our journey home when she suddenly remembered that we'd forgotten it, after all.” “I am sure she said it was a wasted opportunity,” suggested his grace. “Yes, that was what hit her so hard. She'd never been to London before, and you couldn't make her believe she could ever get there again, and she said it was ungrateful to Providence to waste an opportunity. She's always mighty anxious to be grateful to Providence, bless her!” “She regards you as Providence,” remarked the duke, enraptured. With a touch here and there, the touch of a master, he had gathered the whole little story of Miss Alicia, and had found it of a whimsical exquisiteness and humor. “She's a lot too good to me,” answered Tembarom. “I guess women as nice as her are always a lot too good to men. She's a kind of little old angel. What makes me mad is to think of the fellows that didn't get busy and marry her thirty-five years ago.” “Were there--er--many of 'em?” the duke inquired. “Thousands of 'em, though most of 'em never saw her. I suppose you never saw her then. If you had, you might have done it.” The duke, sitting with an elbow on each arm of his chair, put the tips of his fine, gouty fingers together and smiled with a far-reaching inclusion of possibilities. “So I might,” he said; “so I might. My loss entirely--my abominable loss.” They had reached this point of the argument when the carriage from Stone Hover arrived. It was a stately barouche the coachman and footman of which equally with its big horses seemed to have hastened to an extent which suggested almost panting breathlessness. It contained Lady Edith and Lady Celia, both pale, and greatly agitated by the news which had brought them horrified from Stone Hover without a moment's delay. They both ascended in haste and swept in such alarmed anxiety up the terrace steps and through the hall to their father's side that they had barely a polite gasp for Miss Alicia and scarcely saw Tembarom at all. “Dear Papa!” they cried when he revealed himself in his chair in the library intact and smiling. “How wicked of you, dear! How you have frightened us!” “I begged you to be good, dearest,” said Lady Edith, almost in tears. “Where was George? You must dismiss him at once. Really--really--” “He was half a mile away, obeying my orders,” said the duke. “A groom cannot be dismissed for obeying orders. It is the pony who must be dismissed, to my great regret; or else we must overfeed him until he is even fatter than he is and cannot run away.”