“That was not her point,” remarked the duke. “She wanted you to look at them, and you have looked.” T. Tembarom’s eagerness was inspiring to behold. “I have, haven’t I?” he cried. “That was what I wanted to ask you. I’ve done as she said. I haven’t shirked a thing. I’ve followed them around when I knew they hadn’t any use on earth for me. Some of them have handed me the lemon pretty straight. Why shouldn’t they? But I don’t believe she knew how tough it might be for a fellow sometimes.” “No, she did not,” the duke said. To his hearer Palliser’s story became an amusing thing, read in the light of this most delicious frankness. It was Palliser himself who had played the fool, and not T. Tembarom, who had simply known what he wanted, and had, with businesslike directness, applied himself to finding a method of obtaining it. The young women he gave his time to must be “Ladies” because Miss Hutchinson had required it from him. The female flower of the noble houses had been passed in review before him to practise upon, so to speak. The handsomer they were, the more dangerously charming, the better Miss Hutchinson would be pleased. And he had been regarded as a presumptuous aspirant! It was a situation for a comedy. But the “Ladies” would not enjoy it if they were told. It was also not the Duke of Stone who would tell them. In courts he had learned to wear a composed countenance when he was prompted to smile, and he wore one now. He enjoyed the society of T. Tembarom increasingly every hour. He provided him with every joy. Their drive was a long one, and they talked a good deal. They talked of the Hutchinsons, of the invention, of the business “deals” Tembarom had entered into at the outset, and of their tremendously encouraging result. It was not mere rumor that Hutchinson would end by being a rich man. The girl would be an heiress. How complex her position would be! And being of the elect who unknowingly bear with them the power that “moves the world,” how would she affect Temple Barholm and its surrounding neighborhood? “I wish to God she was here now!” exclaimed Tembarom, suddenly. “There’s times when you want a little thing like that just to talk things over with, just to ask, because you--you’re dead sure she’d never lose her head and give herself away without knowing she was doing it. It’s the keeping your mouth shut that’s so hard for most people, the not saying a darned thing, whatever happens, till just the right time.” “Women cannot often do it,” said the duke. “Very few men can.” “You’re right,” Tembarom answered, and there was a trifle of anxiety in his tone. “There’s women, just the best kind, that you daren’t tell a big thing to. Not that they’d mean to give it away,--perhaps they wouldn’t know when they did it,--but they’d feel so anxious they’d get--they’d get--” “Rattled,” put in the duke, and knew of whom he was thinking. He saw Miss Alicia’s delicate, timid face as he spoke. T. Tembarom laughed.