As he went down-stairs, already too late to keep an engagement made with his fiancée, he stopped in the writing-room to scribble off a note of excuse to the duchess. At the opposite table Dan saw Prince Poniotowsky, writing, as well. The Hungarian did not see Blair, and when he had finished his note he called a page boy and Dan could hear him send his letter up to Miss Lane’s suite. The young Westerner thought with confident exaltation, “Well, he’ll get left all right, and I’m darned if I don’t sit here and see him turned down!” Dan sat on until the page returned and gave Poniotowsky a verbal message. “Will you please come up-stairs, sir?” And Blair saw the Hungarian rise, adjust his eye-glass, and walk toward the lift. CHAPTER XV—GALOREY GIVES ADVICE Lord Galorey had long been used to seeing things go the way they would and should not, and his greatest effort had been attained on the day he gave his languid body the trouble to go in and see Ruggles. “My God,” he muttered as he watched Dan and the duchess on the terrace together—they were nevertheless undeniably a handsome pair—“to think that this is the way I am returning old Blair’s hospitality!” And he was ashamed to recall his western experiences, when in a shack in the mountains he had watched the big stars come out in the heavens and sat late with old Dan Blair, delighted with the simple philosophies and the man’s high ideals. “What the devil does it all mean?” he wondered. “She has simply seduced him, that’s all.” He got Dan finally to himself and without any preparation began, pushing Dan back into a big leather chair, and standing up like a judge over him: “Now, you really must listen to me, my dear chap. I shan’t rest in my grave unless I get a word with you. Your father sent you here to me and I’m damned if I know what for. I’ve been wondering every day about it for two months. He didn’t know what this set was like or how rotten it is.” “What set?” The boy looked appallingly young as Gordon stared down at him. There wasn’t a line or wrinkle on his smooth brow or on his lips and forehead finely cut and well molded—but there were the very seals of what his father would have been glad to see. The boy had the same clear look and unspoiled frankness that had charmed Galorey at the first. He had been a lazy coward to delay so long. “Why, the rottenness of this set right here in my house.” And as the host began to see that he should have to approach a woman’s name in speaking, he stopped short, his mouth wide open, and Dan thought he had been drinking. “You are talking of marrying Lily,” Gordon got out. “I am _going_ to marry her.” “You mustn’t.” Blair got up out of his chair. It didn’t need this attack of Galorey’s to bring to his mind hints that had been dropped that Galorey was in love with the Duchess of Breakwater. It illuminated what Galorey was saying fast and incoherently.