"By Algeciras or by Cadiz?" queried the Duke. "By Algeciras and Gibraltar," said Alicia. "Good-bye." She held out her hand nervously. The Duke took it, and kissed her. "Oh!" cried Alicia. The Duke looked surprised. "What is the matter?" he asked and stroked his cheek. "I’m shaven?" "How—how dare you?" she said hotly. "Dare?" The Duke was puzzled. "Why, aren’t you engaged to me?" "You know I’m not! You know I’ve returned your hateful ring—you know——" The Duke stopped her with an imperious gesture. "As to that matter," he said graciously, "will you accept my assurance that I have entirely overlooked it? Please never mention it again." He left her with a confused feeling that somehow and in some manner she was under an obligation to him. IV _El Mogreb Alaska_, that enterprising sheet, duly announced the arrival of the Duke’s party. "Unfortunately," said the journal, "one member of the Duke’s entourage, the Rt. Hon. the Lord Tupping, was left behind at Gibraltar through some mistake as to the hour of the sailing of the _Gibel Musa_." From which it may be gathered that Tuppy had fallen from grace. He came on by the next boat—two days later, with a tentative grievance. That is to say, it was a grievance that he was prepared, to withdraw in the absence of any reproach on the part of the Duke. Tuppy had been spending a day with a friend who was Deputy-Adjutant Something or other to the forces. "I didn’t mistake the hour, Monty, old feller," he explained eagerly, "I was down on the dashed pier, with all my traps, gazin’ pensively at the lappin’ waves an’ the sea-gulls circlin’ on rigid pinions an’ all that, waitin’ for you, when it occurred to me that you were a doosid long time comin’. So I drove to your hotel an’ found you’d left the day before." They sat in the big hall of the Continental Hotel. From the narrow street without, came the sing-song intonation of young Islam at its lessons, and the pattering of laden donkeys. Tuppy talked to the Duke but was looking elsewhere. Hank had found some countrywomen of his, and surrounded by all that was best and beautiful in Ohio, was solemnly narrating for their especial benefit a purely fanciful description of a Moorish harem. One face in that circle attracted Tuppy strangely. "Then there’s the laundry wife who does the washin’, an’ the cook wife who does the cooking, an’ the washin’-up wife, an’ the sock wife who darns the socks——" "Oh, Mr. Hankey, you’re jollying us?" "No, sir," said Hank firmly, "when I was American Minister at Fez in ’82...." Tuppy’s explanations, having been satisfactorily exploited, the Duke listened with amusement to the procession of unfounded statements Hank was leading forth for the benefit of the fair Americans.