Wallace Edgar
The Duke in the Suburbs

She turned to face Mr. Slewer with his hands raised protestingly above his head, injured innocence in every line of his face, and hanging forward from the inside pocket of his jacket the butt of a Colt's revolver, half drawn.

IV

"Come further into the garden," invited the Duke with his most winning smile, "that's right, Bill. Now just take that gun out of your pocket and drop it into the grass. If the muzzle comes this way poor Mrs. Slewer will be a widow. Thank you. You heard what I said about Mrs. Slewer?" he asked.

Bill, unabashed, made no reply, but looked up at the smiling face of the man he hated, with passionless calm.

The girl, fascinated by the deadly play, watched.

"How long have you been married?" asked the Duke. "Can these things be arranged in State's prison?"

"Say," said the unperturbed Mr. Slewer, "you're fresh ain't ye, – what's the use of gay talk anyways – I'm layin' for you, Jukey."

"And I ran away, did I?" said the other, ignoring Mr. Slewer's speech, and dropping his voice, "scared of Bill Slewer of Four Ways?"

"Seems like it," said the man coolly.

"Are you the only cattle thief I ever jailed?" asked the Duke; then of a sudden he let go the mask of languor and the words came like the passionless click of machinery.

"Get out of England, you Bill!" he breathed, "because I'm going to kill you else! What! you threaten me? Why, man, I'd have given a thousand dollars to know you were shoot-at-able! Do you think we've forgotten Ed. Carter – "

He stopped short looking at the girl. Her eyes had not left his face. Astonishment, interest and fear were written plainly, and these checked the bitter stream of words that sprang to his lips. For her part she marvelled at the intensity of this insolent young man, who could so suddenly drop the pretence of badinage, into whose face had come the pallor of wrath and whose laughing eyes had grown of a sudden so stern and remorseless. He recovered himself quickly and laughed.

"Hey, Bill," he said, "it is no use your coming to Brockley, S.E. with any fool bad-man tricks. You're out of the picture here. Just wait till we're both back again in the land of Freedom and Firearms. Is it a bet?"

"Sure," said Bill and stooped leisurely to pick up his revolver.

He stood for a moment toying with it, looking at the Duke with sidelong glances. The Duke's pistol had disappeared into his pocket.

"Jukey," drawled Bill, polishing the slim barrel of his weapon on the sleeve of his coat, "you'se has lost your dash."

"Think so?"

"Yes, sir," said the confident Bill, "because why? It stands for sense I didn't come all the way from God's country to do cross talk – don't it?"

The Duke nodded and ostentatiously examined his empty hands.

"Say," said Bill, "them's nice pretty hands of your'n, Jukey, you just keep 'em right there where we – all can admire 'em – see? I've gotten a few words to say to you'se, an' there's plenty of time to say 'em."

Alicia saw the snaky glitter in the man's cruel eyes, and took an involuntary step forward. Slewer did not look at her, but his left hand shot out and arrested her progress.

"You'se ain't in this, Cissy," he said gruffly, "it's me and Jukey." He pushed her backward with such force that she nearly fell. When she looked at the Duke again his face was grey and old-looking, but he made no comment.

"I guess I've not been thinkin' of this particular occasion for some years, no, sir!" said Bill carefully, "not been sitting in me stripes, thinkin' out what I'd say to Mr. Jukey when me an' him hit the same lot."

The man on the wall chuckled, but his face was still pale. Bill observed this fact.

"You'se can be the laughin' coon all right," he sneered, "but I guess two inches o' looking glass'd put you wise to yourself."

"Am I pale?" drawled the man on the wall; "it's this fear of you Bill, the fear of you that made me sick. Oh, please don't wag your gun. You don't suppose I'd have trusted you with it, unless I was absolutely sure of you."

Bill scowled suspiciously and thumbed back the hammer of the revolver.

"Sure?" he grated. "By God, Jukey – "

The Duke turned his head never so slightly. Bill followed the direction of his eyes, then he dropped his pistol like a hot coal and threw up his hands. At an upper window of the Duke's house stood the watchful Hank. In the corner of the American's mouth was a cigar, in his hands was a Winchester rifle and its business-like muzzle covered Bill unwaveringly, as it had for the past ten minutes.

V

All this happened in Brockley, S.E. on one bright autumn morning whilst Kymott Crescent (exclusive of numbers 64 and 66) pursued its placid course. Whilst milkmen yelled in the streets and neat butcher's carts stood waiting at servants' entrances, whilst Mrs. Coyter practised most assiduously the pianoforte solo that was against her name in the programme of the evening, and Mr. Roderick Nape paced the concrete floor of his study delivering to an imaginary audience a monologue (specially written by a friend not unconnected with The Lewisham Borough News) entitled "The Murder of Fairleigh Grange."

That rehearsal will ever be remembered by Mr. Roderick Nape, because it was whilst he was in the middle of it that there came to him his First Case.

In this monologue, the character, a detective of supernatural perception, is engaged in hounding down a clever and ruthless criminal. Mr. Roderick Nape had got to the part where an "agony" in the Morning Post had aroused the suspicion of the detective genius. Perhaps it would be best to give the extract.

"Can it be Hubert Wallingford? No, perish the thought! Yet – come let me read the paper again (takes newspaper cutting from his pocket and reads) —

'To whom it may concern: information regarding P.L. is anxiously awaited by H.W.'

Can it be Hubert! (sombrely) – It would seem a voice from the grave that says – "

"The gent from 66 wants to see you, sir."

Mr. Nape stopped short and faced the diminutive maid of all work.

"Is it a case? he asked severely.

"I shouldn't wonder, sir," replied the cheerful little girl.

It was the invariable question and answer, as invariable as Philip of Spain's morning inquiry in relation to Gibraltar – "Is it taken?"

"Show him in."

The greenhouse which an indulgent parent had converted into a study for the scientific investigations of crime, admitted of no extravagant furnishing. A big basket chair in which the detective might meditate, a genuine Persian rug where he might squat and smoke shag (it was birds-eye, really), a short bench littered with test tubes and Bunsen burners, these were the main features of Mr. Nape's laboratory.

Mr. Hal Tanneur was visibly impressed by the test tubes, and accepted the one chair the apartment boasted with the comforting thought that Mr. Nape might not be the silly young fool that people thought him. Happily Mr. Nape was no thought-reader.

VI

"You wish to consult me," suggested the amateur detective wearily. You might have thought Mr. Nape was so weighed with the secret investigations and the detection of crime that he regarded any new case with resentment.

"Ye-es," confessed Hal: he was not overburdened with tact. "You see I wanted a chap to do something for me, and I didn't want to go to one of those rotten detective agencies – their charges are so devilishly high."

Mr. Nape dismissed the assumption of his cheapness with a mystical smile.

"Alicia – that's my cousin ye know – was talking about you the other night, and it struck me you were the very chap for me."

Half the art of detection lies in preserving a discreet silence at the right moment and allow the other man to talk: this much Mr. Nape had learnt.

"Now what I want to know is this: can you find out something about this Duke fellow – the man at 64? I'm pretty sure he's a rotter, and I'm absolutely certain that he has documents in his house that would prove, beyond any doubt, what an out and out rotter he is."

It was a task after the detective's heart: internally he was ecstatically jubilant; outwardly he was seemingly unaffected. He walked to his little desk, and with a great display of keys opened a drawer, taking therefrom a locked book. Again the flourish of keys and the volume was opened.

A fluttering of leaves and —

"Ha! here it is," said the detective gravely, "I have already noted him: George Francisco Louis Duc de Montvillier, Marquis Poissant Lens, Baron (of the Roman Empire) de Piento – "

"Oh, I know all that," interrupted the practical Hal, "you've copied it out of the Almanac de Gotha."

Mr. Nape was disconcerted, but dignified. He tried to think of some crushing rejoinder, but, failing, he contented himself with a slight bow.

"It isn't the question of who he was or who his father was," said Hal testily, "any fool could find that out."

Mr. Nape bowed again.

"What we – I, do want information about is" – Hal hesitated – "well, as a matter of fact, this is how the matter stands. We want to know what he is going to do – that's it!"

Mr. Nape looked thoughtful as this tribute to his prescience was paid.

"For a week or two at any rate we would like him watched, and if he shows any attempt at leaving the country I wish to be immediately informed."

Mr. Nape was relieved that the services required did not verge upon the practice of black magic, for Mr. Nape was a strict churchman.

"We thought," continued Hal, "of employing an ordinary detective but, as I say, their charges are so high, and this duke person would be pretty sure to notice a strange man hanging about, so we have decided to ask you to take on the job. He would never suspect you."

Mr. Roderick Nape was on the point of indignantly refuting this suggestion of his obscurity: it was at the tip of his tongue to inform Mr. Hal Tanneur that his fame was widespread through Brockley, Lewisham, Eltham, Lee, to the utmost limits of Catford, and it was next to impossible for him to walk along the Lewisham High Road without somebody nudging somebody else, and saying audibly, if ungrammatically, "That's him!" But he forbore.

"Here's my address." Hal pulled a handful of letters from his pocket in his search for a card case. "If you see this chap getting ready to bolt, send me a wire, and you had better have some money for expenses."

Mr. Nape closed his eyes pleasantly, and waited for the conventional bag of gold to fall heavily upon the desk, or to hear the thud of a thick roll of notes.

"Here's ten shillings," said Hal generously; "you won't want all that, but I don't want you to stint yourself. Take a cab if you want to, but motor buses go almost everywhere nowadays."

Mr. Nape had had visions of special trains, but no matter.

He picked up the ten shillings with a contemptuous smile, and flicked it carelessly into the air, catching it again with no mean skill.

"You'll remember," said Hal at parting, "I want him watched so that he cannot get out of the country without my knowing."

"It shall be done," said Mr. Nape coldly and professionally. He said "good-bye," to his visitor on the doorstep and walked back to his "laboratory" slowly and importantly.

He found the scattered manuscript of his monologue and mechanically tidied it together. He missed the dummy newspaper "agony" and looked round for it. He saw a cutting on the floor, picked it up and put it away with the manuscript. Then he sat down to plan out his campaign.

He had a number of disguises in his room upstairs…

Two hours later a grimy workman with a heavy moustache and a bag of tools called, at 64 "to examine the gas fittings."

VII

The Duke looked at the workman tinkering awkwardly with a pendant. The "workman" in his inmost soul was fervently praying that this would be the last job. For an hour and a half he had sweated and toiled. The Duke had received him on his arrival, figuratively speaking, with open arms.

"You are just the man we want," he said enthusiastically, and had put him through a short catechism. Did he know anything about plumbing? Yes, said the workman doubtfully; and glazing and fixing water pipes, and gardening? added Hank.

The workman who was not quite sure whether all these accomplishments were comprehended in the profession of gas-fitter, thought however that it would be wisest to be on the safe side, and had answered "Yes."

So the Duke had led him to the little cellar, where he laboured hotly at a refractory electric battery, and Hank had pushed him up through a trap door out of the roof, where he, trembling, fixed a misplaced slate, and the Duke had insisted upon the ground being opened in the garden so that a defective drain-pipe might be repaired. After digging industriously, if unskilfully, for half an hour, it was discovered that the drain-pipe was in another part of the garden altogether.

Then he was taken into the common-room to fix the gas. Between the fear that his excessive exertions and their attendant perspiration, would melt the wax that affixed his noble moustache and the desire for information, Mr. Nape was more than ordinarily embarrassed. For there is little one may learn in a four-foot excavation, and the news whispered abroad on suburban housetops is scarcely worth remembering. Therefore he welcomed the adjournment to the common-room. Whilst he tinkered, the men talked, and at their first words Roderick pricked up his ears.

"Duke," said Hank, "I want to ask you something."

"Wait till the man is out of the room," said the Duke warningly.

Hank shrugged his broad shoulders.

"He's too interested in his work," he said, "and besides – "

He shrugged again.

"Well, what is it you want?"

"Isn't it time," asked Hank with sinister emphasis, "that you and I shared out the swag?"

The Duke rose and agitatedly paced up and down.

"Let us go into the next room," he said.

The front drawing-room, from the back was divided by a pair of light folding doors. Mr. Nape descended from the chair, and crept noiselessly towards the partition.

"Duke," said Hank's voice, "or 'Jim Duke,' to give you your right name – "

"Hush," said the Duke's voice appealingly.

"Jim Duke," continued the other callously, "as you are known in Pentonville and Sing Sing, it's time for a share out."

"How much do you want," sullenly.

"I don't know," said Hank's voice, "it ought to be considerable. There's the Countess of B – 's diamond necklace, the Princess of Saxony's tiara, and the proceeds of the Hoxton Bank robbery."

Mr. Nape could scarcely contain himself.

He heard the Duke's footfall as he strode up and down the room, then he heard him speak,

"I will give you twenty thousand pounds," he said shortly.

Mr. Nape heard a sharp laugh.

"Twenty thousand! why I'll get that for turning King's evidence – about the Lylham Hall affair!"

There was a pause.

"If I killed him, you were an accessory," said the Duke.

"I helped to bury him, if that's what you mean," said Hank coolly, "and that was against my wishes; you will remember that I suggested that he should be chucked into the river."

"True," said the Duke moodily, "it has always been my cursed failing, this burying business – you forget I was intended for the Church."

"You didn't bury the Earl," said Hank significantly, and they both laughed boisterously.

As for Mr. Nape, his blood froze and his teeth started chattering.

He was left in doubt as to the dreadful end of the unfortunate nobleman, for the Duke changed the subject.

"Look here, Hank, will you be content if I hand over the necklace, and the tiara, and a cheque for £5,000?"

"A crossed cheque?" asked the cautious Hank.

"A crossed cheque," said the Duke firmly, "on the London and South Western Bank."

There was another pause whilst Hank considered the proposition.

"Yes," he agreed, "on condition you give me a paper exonerating me from any knowledge of the scuttling of the Prideaux Castle."

"Oh, that," said the Duke carelessly, "that was a private matter entirely between the captain and myself, and I shall be very pleased to give you the paper."

"Very good," said Hank's voice, "when that paper is in my possession duly signed and witnessed and stamped at Somerset House, the partnership is dissolved."

Mr. Nape, almost fainting in his excitement, had time to get back to his chair, when the two men returned.

The Duke glanced at the pendant.

"Finished?" he asked politely.

"Yes, sir," muttered Mr. Nape unsteadily.

"Well, I don't think there is anything else we want done – do we?"

Hank shook his head.

Mr. Nape stole a glance at him and saw the gloomy frown. "It was the face" (I quote Mr. Nape's secret diary) "of a man haunted with the memory of his black past."

With great solemnity the Duke tipped the workman half a crown and led him to the door. When he returned he found Hank doubled up on the divan.

"Ill?" he asked anxiously, "poisoned, by any chance?"

But Hank continued to laugh till he subsided into helpless chuckles.

Curiously enough the Duke, whose sense of humour was of the keenest, did not share in his friend's amusement. He smiled once or twice as he paced the room. Then —

"Hank," he said seriously, "do you think young Sherlock Raffles came here entirely out of curiosity?"

"Sure," said the exhausted Hank.

The Duke shook his head doubtingly.

"There's some little game on that I do not quite fathom. Do you know that the concert has been postponed?"

"No."

"Well, it has – and who do you think is responsible? Sir Harry Tanneur."

Hank jerked his head inquiringly in the direction of 66.

"Yes," said the Duke seriously, "for some unaccountable reason he has prevailed upon the vicar to change the date. I've just had a note from the vicar to tell me this. Tanneur is paying all the expenses incidental to the change, the printing and the advertisements, and that is not like Sir Harry, from what I know of him."

"To-day is Tuesday," meditated, Hank, "and to-morrow is Wednesday."

"You're a devil of a chap for finding things out," said the Duke with amused irritation. "You'd put Jacko out of business in a week."

In their less serious moments, the tenants of 64 invariably referred to Roderick as "Jacko Napes."

"I can see no connexion between Jacko and the concert," said Hank, "can you?"

The Duke shook his head.

"It is an instinct," he said seriously, "a premonition of some sort of danger – the sort of thing that turns you creepy just before cattle stampede."

"Run away and play," said the unimaginative Hank, "go into the garden and lasso worms – you're losing your nerve."

The Duke stood undecided.

"I want something and yet I don't know exactly what I want. I need a moral tonic."

"You'll find the step ladder in the greenhouse," suggested Hank.

VIII

A few moments later the Duke from his accustomed elevation was conducting his erratic courtship.

It was not perhaps so much of a coincidence, that he seldom failed to discover Alicia in the mornings. She was an enthusiastic gardener. It was a hobby she had only recently taken up. It is said by the people of 70 – their back windows overlooked the garden and they were notoriously uncharitable – that the gardening craze, which rightly should come with the spring, did not show in her until after the Duke's arrival; that until then her visits to the garden had been few and far between, and her interest of a perfunctory character.

This morning she was not as self-possessed as usual. Indeed she appeared to be a little nervous, but she made no pretence of avoiding him.

"How is the cat?" he asked.

It was his gambit.

"Poor Tibs is as serviceable as the weather," she smiled.

She saw his eyes shift to the conservatory.

"Don't be afraid," she bantered, "Mr. Slewer is not there; he came in the other day without my knowledge," she hastened to add, "the servant showed him into the drawing-room and he took the unpardonable liberty of walking through into the garden."

"Bill has no drawing-room manners," he said regretfully, "he heard my voice and it lured him: you'd never suspect me of being syrenish, would you?"

She raised her grave eyes to his.

"You frightened me dreadfully," she said. "Were you men in earnest?"

"Not a bit," he lied cheerfully, "we were just rehearsing a little play."

"But you were," she persisted, "you looked dreadful and that wretched man's face was devilish."

"S-sh!" he reproved, "the poor chap was a bit upset, and very naturally. One cannot lose one's wife without – "

"Please don't be horrid," she begged, flushing. "I thought that you were not looking as happy as you are usually," she added with a touch of malice.

"I was in the bluest of funks," he confessed, "especially when he pushed you back. You see Hank was covering him and Hank is a terribly short-tempered man. I was wondering how we could explain away Bill's dead body without creating a scandal."

In spite of his matter-of-fact tone, she knew he was offering a true explanation for his pallor – only she substituted his name for Hank's, and felt she was nearer the truth.

"You're a strange man" – her pretty forehead was wrinkled with perplexity – "suppose all this that happened here yesterday had occurred in – Texas."

"It could not have occurred in Texas," he said instantly. "You would have missed the light flow of talk and the interplay of pleasant compliments. There would be only one thing to do. Down in Texas they recognize that fact. Don't you know the story of the sheriff who tried to arrest Black Ike of Montana? The sheriff pulled a gun on Ike, but Ike got first shot. The sheriff was mightily popular, and the folks were grieved but philosophical. They lynched Black Ike and put a splendid monument over the sheriff. In one line they apostrophized his life, ambition and splendid failure – and the inevitability of it all. It ran —

 
"He did his damndest, angels could do no more."
 

She was shocked but she laughed —

"So in Texas – "

"I should have killed him," he said with confidence.

"Or else – ?" she shivered.

"Or else – exactly," he said cheerfully.

"It's very dreadful," she said with a troubled face. "Thank goodness, that that sort of thing cannot happen here."

"Thank goodness," he repeated without heartiness.

"Do you think it can?" She shot a suspicious glance at him.

"Good heavens, no!" he denied, his vigour a little overdone.

"You do!" she cried, "you believe he will try, please, please tell me."

The eyes of the man were very tender, there was a curious sadness in them when he looked at her; she dropped hers before them.

"You must not think of such things," he said gently, so unlike his usual self that she, for some unfathomable reason, was near to tears, "why, I scarcely deserve your thought. I who have vexed you so, and hurt you so, though God knows I only acted as I did in an impetuosity that was born of a great and an abiding love."

Her heart went racing, like the screw of a liner, and she felt choking. There were other sensations which she had no time to analyse. Her eyes sought the ground and her hands plucked idly at the flowers within her reach.

"Please remember that, Alicia." With an odd thrill she recognized the masterful touch in this calm appropriation of her name. "What may have seemed impertinence, was really sincerity. The world would say that I have not known you long enough, that the hideous formalities and conventional preliminaries were essential, and that to ask a girl to marry you for no other reason than because you had seen her and loved her, without balancing this virtue against that failing, was an outrageous and unprecedented thing."

She raised her eyes up shyly but did not speak.

The old look was coming back into his face. The old mocking was in his voice when he went on.

"Alicia, I was prepared to take you without a character – and do not forget that I am a suburban householder – without even so much as a line from your last place – did you ever have a last place?" he added suspiciously. She shook her head.

"You – you," she faltered, "are the only master I have ever had!"

Then she fled into the house, and Hank, looking through the back drawing-room window, saw the duke turning somersaults on the lawn – and drew his own conclusions.

IX

The postponement of a concert is a very serious matter. There are pretty certain to be amongst the audience, those who could come on Tuesday but find Wednesday impossible, or Wednesday agreeable and Thursday obnoxious. Similarly with artistes, some of whom cannot fix in the altered date, and some, the more amateurish, who have screwed their courage up for Tuesday's ordeal and find it a physical and mental impossibility to sustain the tension for another twenty-four hours. In this latter case we find Mr. Roderick Nape, who, with the added mental burden of his tremendous discovery, found no pleasure in the fictitious trials of the hero of "The Murder at Fairleigh Grange."

It was written in the book of fate that he should be relieved of one half of his care. On the day eventually fixed for the concert the duke was "at home."

I pass over the propriety of a bachelor being "at home." There was no precedent for the function, but then there was no precedent for a duke living in Kymott Crescent. What the response would have been in ordinary circumstances, need not be discussed. As it happened, the grave man-servant was kept busy the whole of the afternoon announcing new arrivals, and the two waiters, hired for the day from Whiteley's, distributed tea, thin bread and butter, and ladylike sandwiches from 4 till 6.30.

The neighbourhood accepted the invitation because it gave the neighbourhood an opportunity of meeting and abusing the vicar for postponing the soirée – and then of course there was the Duke.

"Come?" said Hank answering that gentleman's doubts, "of course they'll come: you're a two headed donkey, an ancient ruin, a cause célèbre and the scene of a tragedy."

"I take you, sir," said the Duke gratefully; "in other words – "

"They will come out of morbid curiosity," said Hank. "They'll come to the concert to-night, but that's different. You'll be removed from most of 'em. Here they can get near you, prod you and guess what your weight is, look at your teeth an' tell your age; they'll come all right!"

Amongst those present, as the junior reporter hath it, was Mr. Roderick Nape in his private clothes, in other words without disguise. Yet in a sense he was there on business. He wanted to see how these men behaved in public.

He pushed his way through the crowded little room, little knowing that he stalked to his professional doom.

"How do you do?" asked the Duke in his most engaging manner, then he gave a dramatic start and stepped back.

He looked at Hank, then again at Mr. Nape.

"Why, Mr. Nape," stammered the Duke, "you quite startled me."

All eyes were riveted on Mr. Nape, and he enjoyed it.

"What have you been doing to your face!" asked the Duke. It was a rude question, but Mr. Nape saw nothing more significant in the query than a hint of smut, and searched for his handkerchief.

"What have you done with your moustache," asked the Duke reprovingly.

Mr. Nape looked his astonishment.

"I have never had a moustache," he said haughtily, for he had heard a little titter.

"Strange," mused the Duke, "and yet I could have sworn that the last time we met – forgive me, I must have been mistaken."

"By the way, Mr. Nape," drawled the tired voice of Hank, "that electric battery you repaired don't work worth a cent."

The great and appalling truth came to Mr. Nape slowly. In a dazed way he managed to reached the outskirts of the throng about his host and sank into a chair.

His moustache! the electric battery! he groaned in spirit.

"Say, Mr. Nape," – Hank was by his side – "you'll keep the matter dark – you know. What you heard this morning – we'll split the tiara or I'll toss you for the diamond necklace."

Roderick rose with dignity.

"Mr. Hankey, you are an American and you cannot understand my feelings, but I consider I have been treated most – "

"Mrs. and Miss Terrill," announced the grave man-servant, and Hank lost all interest in Mr. Roderick Nape.

He gave a quick glance at the Duke and grinned, for the scarlet-faced young man for the first and last time in his life lost his head and grew incoherent.

"Oh, yes, America is a lovely country – close to New York you know, beautiful sunsets every night at 10. I mean fireworks in Madison Square Gardens. Yes, I knew President Lincoln intimately. How do you do, Miss Terrill? this is very pluc – kind of you."

Mrs. Terrill has been treated with scant courtesy in these pages, but the part she played in this story is analogous to the part she played in life. She was one of those women who live in the everlasting background – none the worse for that, but no better. The Duke had looked forward to the meeting with a vague dread. When he saw her he experienced a great relief, when she spoke he was grateful. He found an opportunity to speak with her alone.

"My daughter has told me," she said simply. "I'm afraid I ought to be more prejudiced against you than I am, and I'm sure you were not looking forward with any eagerness to meet me."

His smiling denial she waved aside. She was a pretty woman of fifty. She looked no less, yet she was pretty. For beauty is not of any age, any more than it is of any colour. The Duke with his quick sympathies saw behind the laughter in her eyes the shadow of suffering. He had lived too near to sorrow to mistake its evidence. Secretly, he wondered why this woman with her ready wit and her unquestionable charm had played no greater part in life – for unerringly and instinctively he had estimated her place in the world.

She had an embarrassing way of reading one's thoughts.

"You are wondering why I am the Shadowy Lady," she asked with a glint of amusement in her eyes, "yet you must remember a time – did I not overhear you claiming acquaintance with Lincoln? – when it was woman's prerogative to retire: when her virtues were concomitant with her obscurity. Some women rebelled and reached fame by way of the law courts, some women rebelled and died, some acquiesced, waiting for the fashion to change. I was one of those, and when the fashion changed I was satisfied with the old order and remained behind the curtain, peaceably."