My Lord Duke. Hornung Ernest William
since my day. And you'd have done so much better in the House – by which, of course, I mean the House we all thought you were bound for. Has he – has he turned up yet?"
"Oh yes; he's in England," replied Claude, with discretion.
Sir Joseph pricked his ears, but curbed his tongue. Of all the questions that gathered on his lips, only one was admissible, even in so old a friend as himself.
"A family man?"
"No; a bachelor."
"Capital! We shall see some fun, eh?" chuckled Sir Joseph, gobbling the last of his last slice. "What a quarry – what a prize! I was reminded of him only this morning, Claude. I had an Australian up before me – a most astounding fellow! An escaped bush-ranger, I should call him; looked as if he'd been cut straight out of a penny dreadful; never saw such a man in my life. However – "
Claude was not listening; his preoccupation was this time palpable. The mouth of him was open, and his eyes were fixed; the police magistrate followed their lead, with double eye-glasses in thick gold frames; and then his mouth opened too.
Her guests were making way for Lady Caroline Sellwood, who was leading towards the tea-table, by his horny hand, none other than the ninth Duke of St. Osmund's himself. Her Ladyship's face was radiant with smiles; yet the Duke was just as he had been the day before, as unkempt, as undressed (his Crimean shirt had a flannel collar, but no tie), as round-shouldered; with his nose and ears still flayed by the sun; and the notorious wideawake tucked under his arm.
"He has come straight from the bush," her Ladyship informed everybody (as though she meant some shrub in the Square garden), "and just as he is. I call it so sweet of him! You know you'll never look so picturesque again, my dear Duke!"
Olivia followed with the best expression her frank face could muster. Claude took his cousin's hand in a sudden hush.
"Where in the world have you been?" broke from him before them all.
"Been? I've been run in," replied the Duke, with a smack of his bearded grinning lips.
"Tea or coffee, Duke?" said Lady Caroline, all smiling tolerance. "Tea? A cup of tea for the Duke of St. Osmund's. And where do you say you have been?"
"Locked up!" said his Grace. "In choky, if you like it better!"
Lady Caroline herself led the laugh. The situation was indeed worthy of her finely tempered steel, her consummate tact, her instinctive dexterity. Many a grander dame would have essayed to quell that incriminating tongue. Not so Lady Caroline Sellwood. She took her Australian wild bull very boldly by the horns.
"I do believe," she cried, "that you are what we have all of us been looking for – in real life – all our days. I do believe you are the shocking Duke of those dreadful melodramas in the flesh at last! What was your crime? Ah! I've no doubt you cannot tell us!"
"Can I not?" cried the Duke, as Claude stopped him, unobserved, from pouring his tea into the saucer. "I'll tell you all about it, and perhaps you'll show me where the crime comes in, for I'm bothered if I see it yet. All I did was to have a gallop along one of your streets; I don't even know which street it was; but there's a round clearing at one end, then a curve, and then another clearing at the far end."
"Regent Street," murmured Claude.
"That's the name. Well, it was quite early, there was hardly anybody about, so I thought surely to goodness there could be no harm in a gallop; and I had one from clearing to clearing. Blowed if they didn't run me in for that! They kept me locked up all the morning. Then they took me before a fat old joker who did nothing much but wink. That old joker, though, he let me off, so I've nothing agen' him. He's a white man, he is. So here I am at last, having got your invitation to lunch, ma'am, just half-an-hour ago."
Sir Joseph Todd had been making fruitless efforts to rise, unaided, from his chair; he now caught Claude's arm, and simultaneously, the eye of the Duke.
"Jumping Moses!" roared Jack; "why, there he is! I beg your pardon, mister; but who'd have thought of finding you here?"
"This is pleasing," muttered Edmund Stubbs, in the background, to his friend the Impressionist. "I've seen the lion and the lamb lie down here together before to-day. But nothing like this!"
The Impressionist whipped out a pencil and bared a shirt-cuff. No one saw him. All eyes were upon the Duke and the magistrate, who were shaking hands.
"You have paid me a valuable compliment," croaked Sir Joseph gayly. "Of course I winked! Hadn't I my Lord Duke's little peccadillo to wink at?"
And he bowed himself away under cover of his joke, which also helped Lady Caroline enormously. The Duke mentioned the name by which he would go down to posterity on a metropolitan charge-sheet. Most people resumed their conversation. A few still laughed. And the less seriously the whole matter was taken, the better, of course, for all concerned, particularly the Duke. Olivia had him in hand now. And her mother found time to exchange a few words with Claude Lafont.
"A dear fellow, is he not? So natural! Such an example in that way to us all! How many of us would carry ourselves as well in – in our bush garments?" speculated her Ladyship, for the benefit of more ears than Claude's. Then her voice sank and trembled. "Take him away, Claude," she gasped below her breath. "Take him away!"
"I intend to," he whispered, nodding, "when I get the chance."
"But not only from here – from town as well. Carry him off to the Towers! And when you get him there, for heaven's sake keep him there, and take him in hand, and we will all come down in August to see what you have done."
"I'm quite agreeable, of course; but what if he isn't?"
"He will be. You can do what you like with him. I have discovered that already; he asked at once if you were here, and said how he liked you. Claude, you are so clever and so good! If any one can make him presentable, it is you!" She was wringing her white hands whiter yet.
"I'll do my best, for all our sakes. I must say I like my material."
"Oh, he's a dear fellow!" cried Lady Caroline, dropping her hands and uplifting her voice once more. "So original – in nothing more than in his moral courage – his superiority to mere conventional appearances! That is a lesson – "
Lady Caroline stopped with a little scream. In common with others, she had heard the high, shrill mewing of a kitten; but cats were a special aversion of her Ladyship's.
"What was that?" she cried, tugging instinctively at her skirts.
"Meow!" went the shrill small voice again; and all eyes fastened upon the Duke of St. Osmund's, whose ready-made coat-tails were moving like a bag of ferrets.
The Duke burst into a hearty laugh, and diving in his coat-tail pocket, produced the offending kitten in his great fist. Lady Caroline Sellwood took a step backward; and because she did not lead it, there was no laugh this time from her guests; and because there was no laugh but his own, the Duke looked consciously awkward for the first time. In fact, it was the worst moment yet; the next, however, Olivia's pink palms were stretched out for the kitten, and Olivia's laughing voice was making the sweetest music that ever had gladdened the heart of the Duke.
"The little darling!" cried the girl with genuine delight. "Let me have it, do!"
He gave it to her without a word, but with eyes that clung as fast to her face as the tiny claws did to her dress. Olivia's attention was all for the kitten; she was serenely unconscious of that devouring gaze; but Claude saw it, and winced. And Lady Caroline saw it too.
"Poor mite!" pursued Olivia, stroking the bunch of black fur with a cheek as soft. "What a shame to keep it smothered up in a stuffy pocket! Are you fond of cats?" she asked the Duke.
"Am I not! They were my only mates up the bush. I brought over three besides the kitten."
"You brought them from the bush?"
"I did so!"
Olivia looked at him; his eyes had never left her; she dropped hers, and caressed the kitten.
"I put that one in my pocket," continued the Duke, "because I learned Livingstone