His Grace tapped the gaiters with the slight ebony cane he held in his hand. “Is this “--he put it with impartial curiosity--“because the truth might be detrimental to our Mr. Temple Barholm?” “If you please, your Grace,” Pearson made a firm step forward, “what is the truth?” “That is what Messrs. Palford & Grimby seem determined to find out. Probably only our Mr. Temple Barholm can tell them.” “Your Grace, what I'm thinking of is that if I tell the truth it may seem to prove something that's not the truth.” “What kinds of things, Pearson?” still impartially. “I can be plain with your Grace. Things like this: I was with Mr. Temple Barholm and Mr. Strangeways a great deal. They'll ask me about what I heard. They'll ask me if Mr. Strangeways was willing to go away to the doctor; if he had to be persuaded and argued with. Well, he had and he hadn't, your Grace. At first, just the mention of it would upset him so that Mr. Temple Barholm would have to stop talking about it and quiet him down. But when he improved--and he did improve wonderfully, your Grace--he got into the way of sitting and thinking it over and listening quite quiet. But if I'm asked suddenly--” “What you are afraid of is that you may be asked point-blank questions without warning?” his Grace put it with the perspicacity of experience. “That's why I should be grateful for advice. Must I tell the truth, your Grace, when it will make them believe things I'd swear are lies--I'd swear it, your Grace.” “So would I, Pearson.” His serene lightness was of the most baffling, but curiously supporting, order. “This being the case, my advice would be not to go into detail. Let us tell white lies--all of us--without a shadow of hesitancy. Miss Temple Barholm, even you must do your best.” “I will try--indeed, I will try!” And the Duke felt her tremulously ardent assent actually delicious. “There! we'll consider that settled, Pearson,” he said. “Thank you, your Grace. Thank you, Miss,” Pearson's relieved gratitude verged on the devout. He turned to go, and as he did so his attention was arrested by an approach he remarked through a window. “Mr. and Miss Hutchinson are arriving now, Miss,” he announced, hastily. “They are to be brought in here,” said Miss Alicia. The duke quietly left his seat and went to look through the window with frank and unembarrassed interest in the approach. He went, in fact, to look at Little Ann, and as he watched her walk up the avenue, her father lumbering beside her, he evidently found her aspect sufficiently arresting. “Ah!” he exclaimed softly, and paused. “What a lot of very nice red hair,” he said next. And then, “No wonder! No wonder!” “That, I should say,” he remarked as Miss Alicia drew near, “is what I once heard a bad young man call `a deserving case.'” He was conscious that she might have been privately a little shocked by such aged flippancy, but she was at the moment perturbed by something else.