"Surely, if your injuries turned out, after all, to be slight, that was all the more reason why you should have waited, after sending for me like that." "I sent for you--I?" The duke's tone was grave. "My darling, perhaps you had better come upstairs." "Not until we have had an explanation. You must have known that I should come. Why did you not wait for me after you had sent me that?" The duchess held out something to the duke. He took it. It was a card--his own visiting card. Something was written on the back of it. He read aloud what was written. "Mabel, come to me at once with the bearer. They tell me that they cannot take me home." It looks like my own writing." "Looks like it! It is your writing." "It looks like it--and written with a shaky pen." "My dear child, one's hand would shake at such a moment as that." "Mabel, where did you get this?" "It was brought to me in Cane and Wilson's." "Who brought it?" "Who brought it? Why, the man you sent." "The man I sent!" A light burst upon the duke's brain. He fell back a pace. "It's the decoy!" Her grace echoed the words: "The decoy?" "The scoundrel! To set a trap with such a bait! My poor innocent darling, did you think it came from me? Tell me, Mabel, where did he cut off your hair?" "Cut off my hair?" Her grace put her hand to her head as if to make sure that her hair was there. "Where did he take you to?" "He took me to Draper's Buildings." "Draper's Buildings?" "I have never been in the City before, but he told me it was Draper's Buildings. Isn't that near the Stock Exchange?" "Near the Stock Exchange?" It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnaped victim. The man's audacity! "He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a van knocked you over. He said that he thought it was a Pickford's van--was it a Pickford's van?" "No, it was not a Pickford's van. Mabel, were you in Draper's Buildings when you wrote that letter?" "Wrote what letter?" "Have you forgotten it already? I do not believe that there is a word in it which will not be branded on my brain until I die." "Hereward! What do you mean?" "Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then have forgotten it already?" He handed her the letter which had arrived in the second communication. She glanced at it, askance. Then she took it with a little gasp. "Hereward, if you don't mind, I think I'll take a chair." She took a chair. "Whatever--whatever's this?" As she read the letter the varying expressions which passed across her face were, in themselves, a study in psychology. "Is it possible that you can imagine that, under any conceivable circumstances, I could have written such a letter as this?" "Mabel!" She rose to her feet with emphasis. "Hereward, don't say that you thought this came from me!"