“Ra-ther!” The duchess’ tone was so warm that he asked frankly: “Well, why didn’t you speak to her, Lily?” And the directness caught her unprepared. The insult to the actress by which she had planned to teach him a lesson failed to give her the bravado she found she needed to meet Dan’s question. Her part of the transaction, deliberate, unkind, seemed worse and more serious through his headlong act, when he had driven off, braving her, in the motor of an actress. She didn’t dare to be jealous. “Wasn’t it too dreadful?” she murmured. “Do you think she noticed it too awfully? I was just about to go up and speak to her when the prime minister—” Dan interrupted the duchess. He blushed for her. “Never mind, Lily.” His tone had in it something of benevolence. “If you really didn’t mean to be mean—” She was enchanted by her easy victory. “It was abominable.” “Yes,” he accepted, “it was just that! I was mortified. You wouldn’t treat a beggar so. But she’s got too much sense to care.” Eager to do the duchess justice, even though he was little by little being emancipated, he was all the more determined to be fair to her. “It was too sweet of her not to mind. I dare say her check helped to soothe her feelings,” the woman said. “You don’t know her,” he replied quietly. “She wouldn’t touch a cent.” The duchess exclaimed in horror: “Then she _did_ mind.” And he returned slowly: “She’s eaten and drunk with kings, and if the king hadn’t gone so early you can bet he would have set the fashion differently. Let’s drop the question. She sent you back your check, and I guess you’re quits.” With a sharp note in her voice she said: “I hope it won’t be in the papers that you drove bareheaded back to the hotel with her. Don’t forget that we are dining with the Galoreys, and it’s past seven.” After Dan had left her, the duchess glanced over the dismantled room which the servants were already restoring to order. She was not at case and not at peace, but there was something else besides her tiff with Dan that absorbed her, and that was Galorey. She couldn’t quite shake him off. He was beginning to be imperious in his demands on her; and, in spite of her cupidity and her debts, in spite of the precarious position in which she found herself with Dan, she could not break with Galorey yet. She went up-stairs humming under her breath the ballad Letty Lane had sung in the music-room: “And long will his lady look from the castle wall.” CHAPTER XIX—DAN AWAKES