Front matter (continued 5)

"I have known you for a long time, Mrs. Verulam," she began; "I remember you as a toddler."

"Thank you!"

"Not everyone can say as much."

"I daresay not. No."

"Those were innocent days," continued the Duchess, with an attempt at pathos that resembled the efforts of a partially imaginative elephant to become a fairy.

"Yes, toddlers are generally innocent, I suppose."

"Innocent and open-hearted."

"Yes. They wear their hearts on their frills, don't they?"

"In after-life it is different."

"What a pity!"

"The respectability of childhood becomes impaired."

"Does it?"

"Does it not?"

And here the Duchess stared hard, first at Mrs. Verulam, then at Chloe, and then again at Mrs. Verulam who sweetly smiled.

"I don't know."

"I should have thought you did," said the Duchess beginning to bring up her heavy artillery.

"Why?"

The orchestrion was preparing for the "Intermezzo." The Duchess was preparing for conflict, rendered reckless by the self-conscious gardeners, the cutlet and the swoon. If she was to be wrongly suspected of levity, she would at least take it out of this wicked little person whom she had known as a toddler.

"Let me give you a piece of advice," she began, with sonorous subtlety.

"With pleasure."

"Get rid of Mr. Van Adam. I speak as a true friend."

And her Grace, purple with true friendship as the furniture on which she sat, made a really successful double chin, and paused for a reply.

"Why should I get rid of him?" asked Mrs. Verulam, making an angel's face at the double chin.

"There are many reasons," said the Duchess, with growing fury.

"I know of none. Poor boy! He needs me in his loneliness." And she shot a tender glance at Chloe.

"Good gracious!" exclaimed the Duchess. "Gracious heavens!"

"We ought to be kind to those whom the world has treated cruelly," Mrs. Verulam continued, with high morality and a rather episcopal demeanour. "Poor dear Mr. Van Adam! Poor dear fellow!" And she breathed an effective, though quite gentle sigh.

To say that this sigh extracted a snort from the Duchess would be ridiculous. She expressed her feeling in a blast, suddenly heaved herself out of her chair, announced like a thunder-clap afflicted with the vibrato: "I'm very ill! I'm much upset!" and marched out of the purple drawing-room with all the gestures appropriate to an enormous soul in the accesses of acute affliction.

"Shock to the system," observed Miss Bindler. "I had an Arab once, from the Crabbet Park stud; it was like the Duchess—behaved just like that in sudden cold. Give her mustard." And she returned to the "Pink Un."

"An application of aspic on the left shoulder must be trying," piped Lady Drake.

The Duke said nothing; but as he looked towards Mr. Bush he appeared to be stripped of the tinsel. The pantaloon was merged in the husband. His expression was like the third act of a melodrama.

CHAPTER XV.

CUP DAY.

"I do so want to tell you something!" Chloe whispered distractedly to Mrs. Verulam as the house-party separated for the night. "Have you read the World?"

"No; but I have something to——Oh, good night, Mr. Rodney; I hope your rheumatic fever will be better in the morning."

"You are very good to say so," Mr. Rodney said, looking at Chloe as Othello used to look at Iago on bad days; "but I am thoroughly prepared for the worst."

And he remained obstinately between them, as if he meant to grow there for a century or two. Chloe clenched her little fists and longed to box with him.

"Good night, Mr. Bush," said Mrs. Verulam to the paragon.

"Night," he muttered, with a heavy nod.

She hesitated at the foot of the staircase.

"I must tell you——" she began, and paused.

"Eh?"

"I must tell you what an impression your conduct at dinner made upon me."

The paragon, whose wits were slightly sharpened by cowardice, immediately walked to the conclusion that Mrs. Verulam had observed his ostentatious secrecy with the Duchess. He therefore replied:

"Go along with yer! Rubbish! She's a deal too old!"

Mrs. Verulam, under the impression that her hero was alluding to his gallant conduct with the cutlet, answered softly:

"Yes, indeed! Had you not acted so promptly, who can tell what the result might have been? I honour you for it. Good night, Mr. Bush;" and she pressed his mighty hand with hers.

"I hope you believe me, Duke?" Lady Drake piped anxiously. "I do assure you that you have been labouring under a totally wrong impression. Mr. Bush is nothing to me."

The Duke bowed, and shot a terrible glance at the paragon.

"Mr. Bush is the devil in human form," he muttered.

"Oh dear!" cried Lady Drake. "Oh! but then, why did Mrs. Verulam invite him for the race-week?"

"Hush!" said the Duke, frowning at her like a tragic actor accustomed to provincial audiences.

She rustled upstairs in great agitation.

Chloe, according to her timid custom, vanished to bed when the women went to their rooms. She feared smoking-room stories. And so the paragon, the Duke, Mr. Rodney, and Mr. Ingerstall sat alone in the amber smoking-room, which adjoined Winter Garden No. 2, in which Mrs. Lite's favourites soundly slept. Mr. Rodney sat for about two minutes looking like a habitually nervous man, who is suddenly confronted with the last day. Then he hastily swallowed about a pint of brandy.

"Hullo, Rodney!" said the Duke. "Turning teetotaler?"

"I beg your pardon?" said Mr. Rodney, with a distracted demeanour.

"Giving up the drink, I see," continued the Duke, with a dismal attempt at his usual jocose air. "Sousing yourself in water from the crystal spring."

"I beg your pardon, Duke," said Mr. Rodney, looking deeply hurt and almost on the verge of tears; "the outrage committed upon me this afternoon is scarcely matter for jest. I—I——" He drank another pint of brandy, and muttering something about the "necessity for expelling cold from the system," and the "terrible results following on rheumatic fever," hurried from the room, affecting the gait of an old hedger and ditcher, crippled with that roadside complaint to which he had so feelingly alluded.

The Duke glared at Mr. Bush, and, lighting a cigar, remarked to Mr. Ingerstall that Rodney would have D.T. on the course to-morrow if he didn't take care. Then he seized the Times, and buried himself in the advertisement sheets, through which he took stock of the paragon, making a hole with his finger in "Wanted, a quiet home for a clergyman afflicted with homicidal mania, who is subject to fits, but is High Church, studious, and of a happy disposition."

"Damn it, there's no absinthe!" cried Mr. Ingerstall. "In Paris one is not deprived of necessities as one is in England. Why don't I live in Paris?"

He struck a bell. Mr. Bliggins appeared.

"Where the devil's the absinthe?" cried the artist in his piercing voice.

"Beg pardon, sir," replied Bliggins, ostentatiously indicating to the Duke that he had his eye on Mr. Bush, and was earning his night-duty money.

"Ra-ta-ta! Dieu de Dieu, where is the absinthe, man? Haven't I told you night after night that I don't drink these Scotch and Irish abominations?"

"Certainly not, sir," said Bliggins impudently—"certainly not!"

He had nothing to expect from Mr. Ingerstall; and, besides, he found politeness as difficult an assumption as the pretence of being a retired major-general, or a Hungarian count out for a holiday. The astounded caricaturist snatched off his spectacles, wiped them like a conjuring trick, replaced them with a dab, and examined the detective with preternatural scrutiny.

"It's a gardener!" he shrieked, after a busy pause.

Mr. Bush shuffled in his elbow chair. Mr. Bliggins looked foolish and the Duke angry.

"A gardener, Ingerstall!" he said hastily. "What nonsense!"

"It is; I observed him this afternoon. I remember his nose like a teapot, his eyes like marbles, his retreating chin and protruding forehead, perfectly. His arms are too long for his body, and his legs too short for his height. He would make an admirable picture—admirable! I remember thinking so."

Overwhelmed with this uncompromising eulogy, Mr. Bliggins went off night-duty at the rate of twelve miles an hour, and forgot to shut the door behind him.

"You're a beautiful subject," Mr. Ingerstall cried out after him—"beautiful!"

The Duke began to look vicious.

"You've frightened the fellow," he said. "Why didn't you leave him alone?"

"Leave a monstrosity alone! Leave a human grotesque in ignorance of his superb infirmity!" cried the artist. "I'll draw him this moment."

He followed Bliggins as a bullet follows a bird, caught him in a pantry, caricatured him in seventeen seconds, and was up in the lemon bedroom enlarging the original to life size before three minutes had fallen into the lap of the past. Meanwhile the Duke and the paragon were left alone among the soda-water bottles. At first they did not speak. The paragon smoked an immense pipe, whose bowl presented a carved effigy of the features of Peter Jackson, the pugilist. The Duke observed him doing so through the homicidal clergyman who wanted a quiet home; but presently his Grace's intent secrecy caused an accident. Endeavouring slightly to enlarge his peep-hole with a cautious finger, he tore a gap through which a circus-rider might have jumped. The paragon gave him a surly glance, which was rewarded with an elaborate smile, for the Duke was resolved to know more before he showed his hand or revealed his suspicions. He laid down the paper and lit a cigar.

"Nice and quiet here," he said conversationally.

Mr. Bush nodded, without removing Peter Jackson from his mouth.

"Nobody about," continued the Duke, with a jocular demeanour.

Mr. Bush shuffled rather uneasily.

"What if there isn't?" he growled.

"I beg your pardon."

"I says, What if there isn't nobody about?"

"Oh, nothing—nothing! I was only thinking what games might be carried on in a big house like this, half empty, at night, without anybody being aware of them."

Mr. Bush goggled his large auburn eyes at the Duke in a manner suggestive of apprehension partially masked by bumpkin impudence.

"Was you?" he replied, in his usual nervous English.

"Midnight revels, eh? What? what? That big hall's the place for them. Don't you think so?"

The paragon began to sulk, as was his custom when alarmed or bemuddled. He did not yet grasp the fact that the Duke was hinting at the Lady Drake episode, but he dimly felt that something was going on which he did not understand. So he relaxed his body, wrapped his left hand in his beard, and began to assume the appearance of a potman preparing for heavy slumber. But the Duke did not intend to be baffled by sleep. So he dug the paragon very sharply in the ribs with assumed geniality, and remarked: "You're a dog!"

"Give over! I ain't a dog!" mumbled the paragon slightly reassured.

"Yes you are. I know you! I know all about it!"

Mr. Bush rolled in his seat.

"Lady Drake's a fine woman," continued the Duke in a rollicking manner—"a damned fine woman!"

He wished to convince himself that the paragon was a rural Don Juan, to which shrewd suspicion Lady Drake had been giving him the lie. Mr. Bush, hearing the name of her ladyship, felt relieved. He had fancied that the Duchess was secretly in question. Now he forced a guffaw and, under the impression that he was being mighty clever, vociferated:

"Lady Drake, she's all right—go along with yer! She knows a thing or two! She's as downy as a goat in autumn, she is."

This remarkable comparison convinced the Duke that Lady Drake had perjured herself when she explained away the episode of the previous night. His suspicions of Mr. Bush increased tenfold.

"You like 'em downy, eh?" he said. "You like a crafty one? What?"

"Rather!" said the paragon, nodding his heavy head and rejoicing in his shrewdness. "Rather!"

"Because you're a downy one yourself? I know you!"

And his Grace forced a cackling laugh and trembled with fury. The paragon was delighted with the apparent success of his subtle ruse, and resolved to trick his Grace still further. He therefore endeavoured to look very sly, and rejoined:

"Look after Lady Drake, and she'll look after you."

"And you did look after her in the hall at three o'clock in the morning, Mr. Bush. Ha! ha! ha!" cried the Duke, with a passionate burst of angry laughter. "I saw you both! I saw you! I know all about it!" Under his breath he added bitterly, "I knew she was lying to me! I knew the fellow was a regular demon!"

The paragon was considerably taken aback at first by this revelation. He had no notion that the sugar-plum affair was common property. However, when he at length realised that the Duke must have been on the watch the previous night, he rejoiced still more. Lady Drake had no husband to take vengeance on any man, so Mrs. Verulam's hero gave her away with the most cheerful alacrity. He laid one enormous hand on the Duke's arm and remarked impressively:

"She's a rascal!"

"Lady Drake?"

The paragon nodded.

"She's a rascal! Set the gardeners on to her! She wants a-watchin'!" And he sank back into his chair, thoroughly convinced that he had most adroitly rescued the Duchess and himself from the unjust suspicions of his Grace.

The Duke took the matter very differently, however. He was now certain that Mr. Bush was a most consummate and polished scoundrel, up to every move on the board, but hiding his address beneath a magnificent impersonation of glum stupidity and heavy lethargy. For instance, how brilliantly this apparent bumpkin was now endeavouring to concentrate suspicion on Lady Drake, doubtless in order that his proceedings with the Duchess might pass unnoticed and unrevenged. But the Duke was determined to be equal with him. He could play the game, too, against the devil himself. So he smiled, as if in a harlequinade, and said genially:

"You're right. The gardeners should direct their attention to her. Shall I give them a hint to that effect?"

"Aye!" said Mr. Bush. "Aye! set them on to her. She wants a-watchin'!"

And he shook his sides with rumbling chuckles which took him like an earthquake. The Duke got up, trying not to glare at this consummate and exquisitely adroit villain, this monument of evil cleverness.

"I'll take your advice," he said. "I'll set them on to her. Night!" And he was gone, leaving Mr. Bush to his raptures.

In the hall his Grace encountered Bliggins in a condition of apparent prostration.

"Watch that red-bearded scoundrel!" the Duke ejaculated. "Watch him! Never let him from under your eyes, and I'll give you half my for—half a sovereign!"

"But it's the black gent with the specs as is the dangerous one, sir," began Bliggins. "He chased me in the pantry as if I was a rat, and——"

"The red-bearded villain—he's the man! He's the fiend, I tell you! Stalk him! Dog his footsteps! Creep after him! Run him down! You sha'n't repent it. Hush! not a word."

The Duke retired up the staircase with the steps of a bandit in old-fashioned grand opera, while Mr. Bush went on gaily chuckling to himself in the amber smoking-room.

Cup Day, dawning in an ethereal mist, found Mr. Bliggins wrapped in a pallid slumber in the hall, and Mr. Harrison setting forth to the fishing-cottage to confer with the Emperor. The groom of the chambers roused the sleeping detective with a hasty shake.

"Mr. Bliggins, you was hired to watch; oh, indeed!" he said in stern rebuke.

"I was watching, Mr. Harrison, sir," replied the creature, confusing Mr. Harrison's orders with the Duke's. "'The red-bearded man—he's the fiend! Stalk him! Dog his feet! Creep after him!' you says to me. I was doing of it."

"Mr. Bliggins," replied Mr. Harrison, with scathing dignity, "them was no words of mine—oh dear no, on no account whatever! My words to you was, 'Watch the lot;' oh, most certainly! Go, Mr. Bliggins, plant yourself in the garden, and don't let yourself be knowst, according to Mr. Lite's strict orders; oh, indeed!"

The weary detective departed to carry out this horticultural command, and Mr. Harrison proceeded to lay his grim report of the employment of the sacred instrument, etc., before the agitated Emperor, whose passions steadily increased with the lapse of time and the prolongation of exile.

By the post that morning Chloe received a communication from one of the private enquiry agents whom she had directed to give her information as to the proceedings of her ex-husband, if that personage were actually within the British Isles.

"I beg to inform you," it ran, "that a Mr. Huskinson Van Adam did arrive at Liverpool by the Arethusa, but I have not yet been able to discover where he went upon disembarking. I have no doubt, however, that I shall be successful in tracing him within a day or two. Awaiting your further esteemed orders, I am," etc., etc.

Chloe laid this letter down with an unsteady hand. It filled her with a cataract of mingled emotions, one of which surprised her by its happy violence and covered her cheeks with blushes. In the midst of these blushes she caught sight of her trousers, and the vision helped her to pull herself together. She was no longer a woman; she was a man—at any rate for a day or two more. After that the Deluge! After that no more society! No more Duchesses! No more Lady Pearls! Did this knowledge horrify her? Did she feel in it the end of pleasure, the coming of doom? or did she hear faintly the glories of the dream which she had desired, which she had by a wild stroke of audacity achieved, rustling down and away into the darkness like the damp golden leaves of autumn—and hear their rustlings with an abrupt and strange indifference, child of some hidden, furtive, and scarcely acknowledged emotion? Chloe herself, perhaps, scarcely knew. In either case she pulled up her trousers, assumed a jaunty air, and talked hard all through breakfast—chiefly to the Lady Pearl, of whose presence, however, she was in truth scarcely aware, being so full of her own situation, which was half-absurd and surely half-tragic. After breakfast she tried with all her might to speak a word alone with Daisy. But both the Duchess of Southborough and Mr. Rodney were on the watch to prevent any such nefarious attempt from succeeding. Her Grace, despite her own trouble with the Duke, whose disgraceful suspicions—although they remained unexpressed in words—she was increasingly conscious of, was determined to fight her hostess to the death on behalf of the Lady Pearl. Until Mr. Van Adam was actually ravished away to Paris, the Duchess would not confess herself beaten, would not lose all hope. Strung up by unmerited misfortune to the highest pitch of nervous tension and agitated obstinacy, her eyes prominent with mental strain, her large and respectable face rigid with anxiety and outrage, she inflexibly kept at Mrs. Verulam's side. And the more she observed Chloe's obvious manœuvres to be alone with Mrs. Verulam, the more was the Duchess determined to frustrate them. In all her exertions she was backed up by the excellent owner of Mitching Dean.

When a normally peaceful and conventional man is roused, by the hammering blows of Fate, into acute distress and warfare, he is apt to become far more terrific, far more unconventional, than any swashbuckler or man of deeds whatever. So it was with Mr. Rodney. Circumstance was gradually working him up into a state of mind compared with which Gehenna is typically joyous and calm. His imaginary rheumatic fever was, on this lovely morning, nowise abated. His anxiety as to the procedure of the Countess of Sage moment by moment increased. His suspicions of Chloe were advancing rapidly, and his enmity against the man from Bungay had attained almost to fury. Also he had had a sleepless night, and Harry, his man, had abrased his skin while shaving him. If his pulse mounted to 102, is it to be wondered at? If he resolved not to leave Mrs. Verulam's side for one single instant during the entire day, shall he be blamed? In vain did Mrs. Verulam endeavour to get rid of him for a second or two. In vain did she try to invent some pretext, to design some chivalrous duty which must urge his steps from her. He was too sharp to go. And the more ardently she tried, the more ardently did he deny her, opposing his rheumatism to her every suggestion.

"Would you mind fetching my fan, Mr. Rodney? I believe I left it lying on the table in the magenta boudoir."

"Forgive me if I send Harry for it. I can scarcely walk this morning, and the fever seems increasing upon me."

"Dear! dear! Then you must not dream of going to the races."

"The fresh air will do me good."

"I fear not. I am sure you ought to be lapped at once in cotton-wool, and stay in a darkened room with the temperature kept up to at least 80."

"Possibly, but I understand that the supply of cotton-wool which Mr. Lite keeps in his patent machines has given out. Besides, I consider it my duty not to spoil your week by—by——" Here his voice shook with emotion—"giving way to illness, perhaps even to—to death."

"Quite right, Mr. Rodney," exclaimed the Duchess. "In this world duty comes first."

And she endeavoured to convey information to him by signs, without being seen by Mrs. Verulam. Mr. Rodney, never having learnt any dumb alphabet, was unable to comprehend her Grace, and was indeed considerably startled by her fleeting grimaces and tortured movements of the hands and fingers. Politeness, however, compelled him to respond, which he did by alternately nodding and shaking his head in a miserable and despairing manner, such as could scarcely reassure the Duchess or give her comfort.

While this game of cross-purposes was proceeding behind her back, Mrs. Verulam was inventing a new pretext to get rid of Mr. Rodney, in whose absence she hoped to be able to disentangle herself from the Duchess and consult with Chloe.

"Mr. Rodney," she said, with apparent bland solicitude, "I have been thinking that a cooling draught would probably do wonders for you."

"It is most good of you, but I am perfectly cool, I assure you, already. And I have always understood that nothing is more dangerous to the rheumatic than a thorough draught."

"It would be fatal," said the Duchess sonorously, beckoning and frowning at Mr. Rodney with intense animation, "simply fatal. It would carry him off in the twinkling of an eye."

"I meant a drink, Duchess, not a breeze. Marriner could mix it for you, Mr. Rodney."

"You are too kind, but I never take medicine. I prefer to put my trust in Providence and hope for the best."

And he again shook and nodded his head in vague negative and affirmative to the Duchess. Mrs. Verulam was in despair. She shot a last bolt feebly.

"I think even the bishops and clergy would say that we Christians ought to assist the operations of Providence with—with appropriate medicine," she said.

"I always understood that an operation took the place of physic," growled the Duchess, distressed by Mr. Rodney's entire lack of pantomimic talent and comprehension.

Mrs. Verulam did not say more. She saw that she was in prison, and recognised that it was futile at present to attempt to break out.

"I must dress for the races now," she said.

"I'll come up with you," said the Duchess, taking Mrs. Verulam's arm as if in gentle amity, while at the same time she screwed her face at Mr. Rodney, and endeavoured to force his dull comprehension to grasp the simple fact that a frown, one corner of the mouth turned down, a wrinkled nose and a left hand flapping like a seal must obviously mean, "I'll look after her, but I depend upon you to keep an eye on Mr. Van Adam."

Evidently he was nowhere near it, for his long face looked blank as a white sheet of note-paper as prisoner and gaoler left the room.

All through that weary Cup Day Mr. Rodney was for ever in Mrs. Verulam's pocket, emotionally sticking to her in a manner that irritated her till she could have burst into tears. His eyes, usually so indefinite, now blazed with the fires either of rheumatic fever, jealousy, or protection. His voice, usually mellifluous as the twilight murmur of a tideless sea, now rose in harsh intonations, and was set a-trembling by a vibrato that might have belonged to a fourth-rate Italian tenor. His wonted soothing demeanour and reassuring Mayfair gait were exchanged for an animation that savoured of delirious sick-beds, and a strut of suspicion on the qui vive that might have become a scout compelled to follow his profession on a pavement composed of red-hot needles. The Royal Pen gaped at him, and heard his passionate volubility with unutterable amazement. Again, as on the preceding Tuesday, he was feverishly intent on dodging, and inducing Mrs. Verulam to dodge, the venerable Countess of Sage, who, crowned with a gimp helmet, clothed in chain mail of shining bugles, and bedizened with ornaments of black bog-oak, grown on the family estate at Ballybrogganbroth, Ireland, pervaded the enclosure on the arm of a Commander-in-Chief, with a Field-Marshal on her further side. But Fate, which was leading him in such slippery places, chose to frustrate his chivalrous purpose. Soon after the second race, while busily engaged in manœuvring Mrs. Verulam away from the neighbourhood of Chloe, who was shooting at her despairing glances demanding an interview, Mr. Rodney ran her and himself into the very arms of Lady Sage, who was energetically airing her views on the recent Crimean campaign, and pointing out certain mistakes in tactics committed by those who were in charge of the British army in the Crimea. They were, in fact, practically impaled upon her bog-oak brooches and necklets before they observed her. Lady Sage paused on the words "If I had been Lord Raglan, I should certainly have——" stared Mrs. Verulam and the owner of Mitching Dean full in the face for a minute or more, then remarked in a piercing voice to the Field-Marshal, "What extraordinary people manage to get into the Enclosure!" and waddled away, rattling her armour in a most aggressive manner, and tossing the gimp helmet until it positively scintillated in the sunshine.

Mr. Rodney's knees knocked together, and he shut his eyes. The worst had happened. The heavens had fallen. The flood had come again upon the earth, and there was no ark of refuge. His brain was full of buzzings, and he felt as if he was being pricked all over. When at last he opened his eyes and looked at Mrs. Verulam, he perceived that she was rather pale, and that her expression was slightly more set than usual. Yet she seemed calm and cool, while he was hot as fire. Glancing away from her, he beheld the expressive faces of a serried mass of his oldest and most valued friends, whose lips seemed curling with derision, while their family and ancestral noses were surely tip-tilted with contempt. He clasped his hands together mechanically, and, with a hunted demeanour, turned as if to flee. Vague thoughts of leaving the country, of endeavouring to make a home and get into a fresh set in Buenos Ayres, or of retiring to a hermitage in Iceland, ran through his collapsing mind. There is no saying whether he would not have usurped the place of the Ascot dog, and run yelping down the cleared course to the golden gates, if Mrs. Verulam had not murmured to him in her voix d'or:

"Shall we go for a little stroll in the paddock?"

He assented with a bow that was scarcely worthy of a yokel, and led her among the parading horses, getting so entangled with the four legs of the favourite that it seemed as if his one ambition was to become a centaur before evening. After being rescued by a swearing trainer, who addressed him in a long and highly ornate speech, he seemed desirous of immersing Mrs. Verulam in the jockeys' dressing-rooms, or of having her incontinently weighed, but she resisted, and at last said:

"Mr. Rodney, your fever makes you act very strangely. I think, perhaps, we had better be going."

"Going—gone!" he muttered, like a second-rate auctioneer.

"Oh, please do try to compose yourself! All the jockeys are looking at you."

"Let them look!" replied Mr. Rodney distractedly. "Let all the jockeys in Christendom look! What does it matter now?"

And he stared wildly about, as if searching for sackcloth and ashes.

Mrs. Verulam flushed.

"Mr. Rodney," she said, and her voice, too, began to tremble, "I must beg you to find the carriage for me at once."

"But it will not be here until half-past four."

"Very well, then, I shall walk home."

"Walk!" he cried, in as much amazement as if she had suggested going home in a balloon.

"Yes, and you must please accompany me."

"Certainly! anything! anywhere! What can it matter now?"

In after years that walk often rose before the owner of Mitching Dean in a vision of dust and anguish. As they went, stumbling among the vulgar crowd, treading on nuts, elbowing donkeys and negro minstrels aside, it seemed to Mr. Rodney that he and Mrs. Verulam were as a modern Adam and Eve, being expelled by a Master of the Buckhounds with a flaming hunting crop from that garden of the social paradise, the Royal Enclosure. They did not speak as they surged forward in quest of the far-off palace of the Bun Emperor. What could they say? Criminals do not chatter merrily as they wend their way towards the hulks. So Mr. Rodney put it to himself, although he had not the slightest idea what the hulks were. Only when, after long wandering in dreadful lanes between hedges totally unknown in society, they reached Ribton Marches, footsore, travel-stained, and broken in spirit, did he find a tongue, and, turning towards his wretched companion, make this cheery remark: "All is over!"

"Please don't talk nonsense, Mr. Rodney," said Mrs. Verulam sharply, as she sank into a garden-chair.

"I repeat," he answered, with thrilling emphasis and in a voice that was exceedingly hoarse, "all is over!"

Mrs. Verulam bit her lips, and looked very much as if she wanted to burst out crying.

"There is no hope," he went on. "There is no light anywhere. All is darkness."

The sun was pouring down its golden beams, but no matter.

"It is strange," Mr. Rodney pursued, staring very hard at nothing with glazed eyes. "It is strange to think that two lives, at one time happy, peaceful, even honoured, can be broken up in an instant, and turned to dust and ashes in the twinkling of an eye!"

"My life is not turned to dust and ashes in the twinkling of——Oh, do please say something more cheerful!"

"Cheerful!" cried the owner of Mitching Dean in hollow tones—"cheerful!"

And he gave vent to several very distressing groans. Mrs. Verulam leaned back and shut her eyes. Fatigue and excessive heat, combined with unexpected groans, may well break even the proudest spirit. Had Mr. Bush been at hand to inspire confidence, and to impersonate the true, grand life, Mrs. Verulam might possibly have plucked up courage. As it was, she felt very miserable, and was devoured with a longing to give the Countess of Sage into the hands of Chinese torturers, whom she had read of in a book of travels as exquisitely expert in their trade. After a quarter of an hour's pause, partially filled in by Mr. Rodney's exclamations of unutterable despair, she made a great effort to compose herself, and remarked bravely:

"This is what I have wished for."

Mr. Rodney punctuated the sentence with a piteous outcry.

"This," continued Mrs. Verulam, "has been my dream. For this I have worked and striven, toiled and——" she had nearly said "moiled," but at the last minute substituted "prayed," which certainly raised the speech onto a higher plane of oratory. "I ought, therefore, to be thankful," she resumed, the corners of her pretty mouth turning downward, "and I am."

Mr. Rodney looked at her mournfully.

"It is terrible to see the approach of madness," he remarked, gazing upon her eventually with a weird and flickering curiosity.

"I am not going mad," said Mrs. Verulam.

"I beg your pardon," he rejoined—"I beg your pardon. You may not—in fact, you evidently do not know it; but, indeed, you are."

"Really, Mr. Rodney, I think I may be allowed to know my own condition."

"They never do. It is one of the regular symptoms. You will find it in all the medical books."

And once more he observed her with agonised curiosity.

Mrs. Verulam, perhaps not unnaturally, began to grow very angry.

"Medical books," she said, in a heated tone, "are not only disgusting, but deceptive. I must really request you to believe me."

"I am sorry, I am very sorry, that I cannot. We must all learn to look madness bravely in the face," he replied, staring perfectly straight at her.

Mrs. Verulam made a sudden movement as though to slap him, restrained herself, puckered her face, drummed her little feet violently in mid-air, and was about to burst into a flood of wrathful tears when the powdered Frederick was seen approaching across the lawn, bearing a gold salver which twinkled and glinted in the sun.

"A telegram for you, ma'am," he said.

Mrs. Verulam took it from him hysterically, tore it open, and read: "Huskinson Van Adam is somewhere in Berkshire just discovered Yillick."

"I hope it is no bad news," said Mr. Rodney, as if he felt certain that it announced either plague or strangling.

"It is to say that they have discovered Yillick," answered Mrs. Verulam in an unemotional voice.

"I beg your pardon?"

"I say they have discovered Yillick," she cried irritably.

"Indeed! What is that?"

"I don't know. One can't know everything."

"True, true!"

She glanced again at the telegram, recovering herself enough to begin to wonder what it really meant, and why they hurried to inform her of this, the newest discovery of modern times. Happening to see the envelope, she now perceived that it was addressed to "Van Adam, Esq." Evidently the wire was for Chloe. But then why did——? At this instant voices became audible, and the house-party trooped with determination across the lawn.

CHAPTER XVI.

CUP NIGHT.

Mrs. Verulam immediately held out the telegram to Chloe.

"They have discovered Yillick," she murmured abstractedly.

"What?" said the Duchess, who was very red in the face. "Yillick, do you say?"

Chloe took the telegram eagerly, and turned exceedingly pale.

"Is a Yillick an animal?" said the Lady Pearl softly to her.

"No, no; only a—a friend; at least, a sort of acquaintance of mine," Chloe stammered.

As a matter of fact, Yillick was the surname of the Private Enquiry Agent who was looking out for Huskinson.

"You left very early, Mrs. Verulam," said the Duchess sternly.

"I was tired. The heat was so great."

"I did not think so. And I am very susceptible to heat. How did you get home?"

"I walked."

"Good gracious! What made you do that?"

"I like exercise."

"When you are tired? When you feel the heat so much? How very strange!"

And her Grace, who knew all about the Martha Sage affair, which had been much cackled of in the Enclosure, glowered heavily at her hostess, whom she, too, intended to cut at the end of the week, when the fate of the Lady Pearl had been finally decided for good or evil.

"Did you meet Lady Sage?" she pursued mercilessly, while Mr. Rodney endeavoured to look at ease, and succeeded in looking like a constitutionally timid person being led out to the stake.

"Oh yes," answered Mrs. Verulam, with an effort after indifference.

"Well?" remarked the Duchess, after a short and solemn pause.

"Well!" retorted Mrs. Verulam.

"Did you like her gown?" said the Duchess, getting a little confused, and becoming inept.

"I daresay it was all right, but personally I am not particularly fond of gimp and bugles, nor do I care specially for oak ornaments in the day-time," returned Mrs. Verulam, with veiled, but bitter, sarcasm.

"Oh! Still, in these hard times, it is a great saving of expense to be able to grow one's jewellery on one's own land," said the Duchess, turning away, and feeling that she was beginning to get the worst of it. She met the stare of her husband and blenched, suddenly remembering that she, too, though always so firmly innocent, had her troubles and was born to suffering. But she little knew what a terrible course those troubles were about to take, into what a maelstrom of unmerited misfortune she was about to plunge.

"Daisy, I simply must speak to——Oh, certainly, Lady Pearl, I shall be delighted to show you the orchid house," cried the distracted Chloe after tea.

It seemed that she was never to be allowed to unburden her overcharged heart to her friend, who was now clawed by her Grace and the despairing Mr. Rodney, while Chloe was obliged to escort the languishing gout-patient through endless avenues of plants.

Night fell, and with it the weather changed. A small, fine rain began to rustle among the shrubs around the palace, the moon was obscured by ragged and slowly floating clouds, and an uncomfortable and under-sized wind, indefinite of purpose, sluggishly moved about the garden, fingering the trees and flowers as if uncertain whether to be violent or go away altogether. Of course, curtains were drawn within the palace, the electric moons gleamed, the parrots were softly illuminated, and nobody was supposed to know what the night was about. Nevertheless, the subtle influence of weather was apparent among the house-party. Everybody seemed to be superlatively glum. Miss Bindler had lost forty pounds over Bound to Win, and was considering whether she would have to put down her bike at the end of the week. Mr. Ingerstall, having taken her tip, was also a loser, and was consequently speechless and black with irritated despair. Chloe was in a strange condition of mingled apprehension and excitement, and as she could find no opportunity of unburdening herself to Mrs. Verulam, and could not fix her mind on ordinary matters, she did not talk at all, and made no response to the murmurings of the Lady Pearl. The Lady Pearl, therefore, plunged into abysses of despair, and the Duchess, observant of her daughter's header, and greatly exercised about the Duke and the detectives—who were again waiting at table—became plethoric and mum.

Mr. Rodney was in a state of absolute collapse. He ate nothing, said nothing, and looked like a man who might do anything, from throwing himself out of a window to murdering all those within his reach. The Sage affair had totally disorganised him. He was no longer himself; he was no longer a really responsible being.

The Duke divided his time between glowering at the Duchess and the paragon and carrying on a secret pantomime with Mr. Bliggins, who returned affirmative gestures to every face that was made at him, nodding "Yes" with a lobster salad, implying that the red-bearded scoundrel was under his observation with a dozen of oysters, or hinting at an increase of his night-duty salary with a rum-omelette.

Lady Drake ate enormously, and looked grievous.

As to Mr. Bush—although he was reassured about the Duke, who had doubtless been fed into calm by receiving Lady Drake's reputation to gnaw—he was sulky, not from any special reason, but because he nearly always was.

There remained Mrs. Verulam. What of her? She should have been happy, for her plot had been successful. Chloe's transformation from woman to man had opened the cage-door to the squirrel. Society, which had for so long defied the lovely widow's attempts to get out of it, would now doubtless follow the lead of Lady Sage and bid her go. She was compromised, and yet retained completely her own secret self-respect—her knowledge that she had done no wrong. Why, then, should she feel guilty? Why should she tingle with something that was surely shame? Why should she grow red under the angry eye of the Duchess? Probably because she was more sensitive than she had imagined; because she had that trying sort of soul which inevitably feels ashamed if it is believed to be shameful. All through dinner Mrs. Verulam sat deep in distressed thought, immersed in consideration of the present and solicitude for the future. If only she could have a good talk with Chloe, she felt that her burden would be lightened. They must meet somehow; they must draw up some plan of campaign. Mrs. Verulam had not yet seen the World, and Mr. Rodney, buffeted and afflicted sore by Providence, had forgotten to tell her of the Van Adam paragraph. She did not know of the real Huskinson's probable presence in Berkshire at this very moment, for she had not grasped the meaning of the Yillick communication. But she had heard Lord Bernard Roche's news, and supposed the orange-grower to be on his way. Chloe would have to disappear; her work was done; she had been successful, it seemed, in ruining Mrs. Verulam's reputation. Thinking this, Mrs. Verulam strove to rejoice, and wanted to cry. To nerve herself, she gazed upon the paragon's enormous bulk and calm and gluttonous lethargy. She lost herself in his streaming auburn mane, seeking comfort and sustaining power. The cage-door was open; the squirrel could leave its prison. Where should it go? Surely to Bungay Marshes, Lisborough. There must be other cottages there besides the Farm—other abodes of peace round which the bees hummed and the sheep bleated in tender tunefulness. Thither must she go, like some white dove seeking an ark of refuge. Thither must she flee, and be at rest. But she and Chloe must first hold a long consultation, concert proper measures for the eternal concealment from society of the audacious manner in which it had been tricked and imposed upon. How to do that? How to get rid of the Duchess and the now frantic and unconventional owner of Mitching Dean? Marriner—that faithful wretch! She must convey a missive to Chloe; a meeting must be arranged in the dead of night, when all the house-party slept. In the darkness the finale of this history must be devised. It must be settled when Chloe should disappear, how and where. Mrs. Verulam's future must be discussed. To-night—Marriner—Chloe—Fate.

Dinner was over. As in a dream, Mrs. Verulam accompanied the ladies to the purple drawing-room. All things seemed to her vague and unreal, except the hideous vision of the Countess of Sage, stiff with gimp and fury, insulting the pet of the gay world, ringing the knell of her butterfly life of pleasure. She sat down on a sofa, and began vehemently to think of the pale perfection of a Bungay existence superintended by her idea of Agag.

The Duchess watched her from a distance. Being in a condition of acute suspicion, her Grace gravely distrusted the concentrated abstraction of her hostess. No doubt Mrs. Verulam was laying some fresh and horrible plot against the happiness of the Lady Pearl. It must be frustrated, whatever it was.

"Mother," said the Lady Pearl at this moment.

"My darling! my only child!" replied the Duchess in her deepest bass.

"I think Mr. Van Adam has something on his mind."

The Duchess started, and surveyed her daughter with protruding eyes.

"What makes you think so, my beautiful Pearl?" she queried.

"He never spoke to me all through dinner, and he kept on looking towards Mrs. Verulam. I think the world is full of misery."

"Gout, my beloved one, gout! Carlsbad would make you think very differently," replied the Duchess according to her rule. But she spoke without conviction; and the Lady Pearl did not think it necessary to protest, as usual, that her mental condition was governed by the soul rather than by the body.

Heavily the rainy evening wore on. The statement of the Lady Pearl had added to the Duchess's conviction that some deep-laid plot was brewing between Mrs. Verulam and Chloe. Her Grace's knowledge of the world taught her that Mrs. Verulam must in all probability be a desperate woman to-night. For had she not been whipped by the Countess of Sage in the eyes of the whole world? And let a woman be reckless and wicked as Messalina, her first public scourging does not leave her unmoved; but, on the other hand, it probably does leave her defiant, careless of consequences, ready for any fierce and wild adventure. Was not, perhaps, some fierce and wild adventure afoot to-night? The Duchess felt like a regiment of sentries as she sat brooding by the silent orchestrion, her eyes fixed so furiously on Mrs. Verulam that that wicked little baggage seemed set in mist—seemed blurred as the shining disc is blurred to the subject being hypnotised.

Only when the men came in from the dining-room, and she met again the furtive eyes of her husband, did the Duchess feel painfully that over the watch-dog paradoxically a watch was set.

That night the women went to their rooms early. As good nights were being exchanged, Chloe and Mrs. Verulam made one last agonised attempt to take part in a quiet whisper. But the Duchess pounced on Mrs. Verulam, Mr. Rodney leapt to Chloe's side, and the whisper died almost ere it was born. Mrs. Verulam ascended the staircase in a somewhat despairing manner, throwing an occasional glance down into the hall, in which Mr. Bliggins and other detectives were arranging various silver spirit-bottles, gold cigar-boxes, malachite ash-trays, and other male paraphernalia. For Mr. Rodney, now in a nervous fever which rendered him entirely reckless of conventionalities and consequences, had suddenly informed Mr. Harrison that the baronial hall must accommodate the smokers that night, his object being to occupy a post of vantage in the very centre of the palace, so that he might be on the spot to prevent any surreptitious conduct on Mrs. Verulam's part. He regarded her now very strangely as a socially ruined lunatic, whom yet he adored in a frenzied and unutterable manner, and he was becoming madly, feverishly jealous. Mrs. Verulam's apparent indifference to the appalling incident which had taken place that afternoon in the Enclosure convinced him that she was off her head, but his throbbing heart forced him to the terrible conclusion that it was a crazy passion for the supposed orange-grower which had made her so. For his sake she defied the world; for love of him she lay down in public at a race-meeting and let the old Countess of Sage go trampling over her. Van Adam had bewitched her; but he should not escape his surveillance to-night. On that Mr. Rodney was passionately determined. When, therefore, Chloe endeavoured as usual to slip away in the wake of the ladies, Mr. Rodney bounded up with the activity of a panther and placed himself before her in a jungle attitude.

"You are not going already, Van Adam!" he cried—"so early! Why, it is only about nine o'clock."

It was really a quarter to eleven.

Chloe yawned.

"I'm dead-beat," she began.

"Then a smoke will do you good. You must have a cigar—you must——"

And he laid hold of her arm with a pretended cordiality, which his twisted and wrinkled face belied. Chloe stood still and looked at him. She wanted terribly to get away and, by some stratagem, obtain an interview with Mrs. Verulam; at the same time, she did not wish to rouse any suspicion of her desire. She perceived that the owner of Mitching Dean was painfully excited: the veins stood out on his narrow forehead, his thin hands fluttered like a bird's wings, his moustache seemed to bristle with suspicion, and he stared at her like all Scotland Yard at a malefactor. This convulsed effigy made such an impression upon her that she took her foot from the staircase reluctantly and came back with him to the spirit-bottles, where the Duke was mixing himself a drink, while Mr. Ingerstall fumed in an armchair over a cigarette sent from a Parisian tobacconist, and Mr. Bush poured volumes of smoke out of Peter Jackson.

"A drink, my dear Van Adam," cried Mr. Rodney in a very theatrical manner—"a long drink, a strong drink, and a drink all together."

He was trying to be hilarious, without knowing the way to do it. The Duke turned round.

"Hullo!" he said. "Van Adam sitting up! Bravo! Have a weed?"

He extended a mighty cigar-case. Chloe meekly rifled it, wondering what would happen next.

"Have a light?" said his Grace, striking one on his trousers like Chirgwin, the White-eyed Kaffir.

"Thanks," said Chloe.

"Not that end, my son."

"Oh, I wasn't thinking!"

"You haven't pinched the end off. That's better. What? Won't it draw?"

"No; I don't think it will. I'll—I think I'll have a cigarette, thanks."

"That's a damned good cigar."

"Splendid! Still, I think after all I will have a cigarette."

"A pipe's the thing," rumbled the paragon—"a pipe and a fistful of Bristol Bird's-eye."

"Oh no, thanks; not a pipe!" cried Chloe, hastily seizing a cigarette, which she understood the management of. "That's all right."

"Come and sit here," said the Duke, beckoning her to a divan.

He intended to use her as a stalking-horse, and to lull to sleep any suspicions which the paragon might have that he was being watched.

Chloe came to the divan puffing at her cigarette. Mr. Rodney frantically followed, and placed himself erect on a very small upright cane-chair. He was smoking an unlighted cigar, which he occasionally removed from his white lips, in order that he might blow rings of imaginary smoke into the air. The Duke strove to seem larky and at ease.

"Now the women are gone we can say what we like, eh?" he began.

"Yes," faltered Chloe; "we can say what we like now."

"A very good cigar this," cried Mr. Rodney with a jaunty air, that sat as naturally upon him as a matinée hat on the head of a major-general.

"I daresay it is—when it's lighted," said the Duke, with a prolonged snigger.

Mr. Rodney got violently red, and lit eight or ten matches all at the same time.

"Well done, Rodney! Set the place on fire!" cried the Duke. "What the deuce is that?"

It was merely the noise made by Mr. Harrison as he raced to the telephone to acquaint the Bun Emperor that Mr. Rodney was at present engaged in igniting the palace. Concealed among the pedals of the organ, the groom of the chambers had been doing detective duty.

"It sounded like athletic sports on an oil-cloth," continued the Duke, while Mr. Rodney held his cigar in the match flames till it glowed like a furnace. "Well, as I was saying, now we can say what we like. Tell us a good story, Rodney—one of your rorty ones."

Mr. Rodney shrivelled.

"I fear," he murmured—"I fear I am scarcely in the—the—er—rorty vein to-night. To-morrow—the next day—perhaps——"

"Well, then, you tip us one, Van Adam. Give us some of your Florida experiences among the orange-girls. What? Go ahead!"

Thus adjured, Chloe said:

"Some of the girls in Florida do such lovely needlework, you have no idea."

The Duke raised one eyebrow to a level with his side parting.

"Lovely needlework! That's a funny beginning for a Pink un. Well?"

"Yes; but they do indeed. They sit all day in the sun and——"

"Damned silly girls! Spoil their complexions! They should go into the shade, eh! What—what?"

"I knew a grisette once who lived on a fourth floor in the Rue des Martyres," began Mr. Ingerstall in the distance; but nobody heeded him, and he relapsed passionately into his former moody silence.

"They sit in the sun and work hard for their living," continued Chloe, trying to look rakish without losing self-respect.

"Deuced tiresome to keep on working hard for one's living in the sun, eh, Rodney?" cried his Grace.

"I confess I should prefer to be under the trees, Duke—I confess that frankly," said the owner of Mitching Dean with unnecessary earnestness.

"Well, go on, Van Adam," said the Duke, expectant of some spicy development in this apparently unpromising plot—"they work for their living in the sun. Well?"

"Well—er—well, that's all," said Chloe, rather crestfallen.

The Duke's jaw fell several inches.

"All! Oh, come, I say, hang it, you're pulling all our legs!"

"Pulling all your—oh, indeed, I'm not! Why should I do such a thing? I do assure you, Duke——"

"But, hang it, your story'd do for a school treat or a grandmothers' meeting. That's not the sort of thing Rodney cares for—eh, Rodney?" and his Grace was good enough to dig the owner of Mitching Dean in his eminently respectable ribs. Mr. Rodney started, and broke the frail back of the small chair on which he was sitting. "Smashing up the furniture now, after trying to set the whole place on fire," cried the Duke, just as Mr. Harrison was in course of stealing back cautiously to his lair among the organ-pedals.

The groom of the chambers heard the sentence with bristling horror, and immediately made off once more to the telephone, through which he proceeded to deliver the following remarks to the fishing-cottage:

"After setting fire to the 'ouse—oh, most decidedly, sir!—Mr. Rodney is now smashing up of Mrs. Lite's own particular chairs—oh, indeed! And the Duke, ma'am, is splitting his sides with laughture while he done it. I am keeping an eye on him according to your instructions, sir, and to my latest breath will do so, though what will become of us all, ma'am, is more than anyone can say—oh, indeed, I do assure you on every account whatever!"

On hearing this peaceful catalogue of facts, the Emperor and Empress engaged Mr. Harrison in animated conversation for the space of perhaps an hour and a half, during which time events were moving forward in the palace with some rapidity. In answer to the Duke, Mr. Rodney forced a ghastly smile, and answered hoarsely:

"An accident! merely an unlucky accident, Duke! I shall make it good to Mr. Lite."

"If you don't he'll probably skin you," said his Grace. "He's so tetchy."

"Oh, really," rejoined Mr. Rodney, looking much upset—"really, I should not submit for a moment to any indignity of that nature."

"Well, I daresay even a moment of being flayed would inconvenience a chap. But come, give us a Limerick. Cheer us up now! Give us a good Limerick. You must know thousands."

"I assure you I do not. I have never been in Ireland."

The Duke burst out into a mirthless laugh.

"Well, upon my—what's Ireland got to do with it?"

"Everything, I should suppose," returned Mr. Rodney, trembling with nervous exhaustion, but trying to look dignified. "Where are you going, Van Adam?"

"Bed," said Chloe, endeavouring to vanish.

"Bed be damned!" remarked the Duke. "I never saw such fellows for a carouse. Bed at ten!"

"It is past eleven," said Chloe uncomfortably, while Mr. Rodney looked eaten up with suspicion.

"Well, what if it is?" exclaimed the Duke. "Does America go to bed at seven?"

"Oh, I don't say that——"

"I should imagine not. Anyone would think we were a lot of damned old women. Here, pour some whisky down your throat and look jolly."

Chloe obeyed the first command but not the second. Mr. Ingerstall, at this point in the carouse, bounced up from his chair, muttered some French oaths, and suddenly tore upstairs.

"There's another cheery soul!" said the Duke after him. "We might all as well be Sunday-school teachers at a Methodist funeral at once."

He was proceeding to various other comparisons of a like innocent and respectable nature, when the air was rent by an exceeding loud uproar. Mr. Rodney caught hold of the sides of his chair and cried, "What's that?"

The Duke looked hastily at the organ and Chloe apprehensively at the ceiling. The uproar was repeated, and then they became aware that it came from the nose of the paragon, and signified that he was resting.

"Oh, it's only Mr.—it's only Bush asleep," said Chloe.

"Asleep!" said the Duke, with a bitter sneer.

He felt convinced that the paragon's snores were merely a blind to deceive a doting husband. The demon in human form was doubtless wide awake, perhaps conceiving some diabolical plot beneath this theatrical travesty of the gentle music of slumber.

"He sleeps very loud," said Mr. Rodney—"for decent society."

"He does sleep very loud," said the Duke. Then, lowering his voice, he hummed into Mr. Rodney's ear: "Does anything occur to you, Rodney?"

"I beg your pardon, Duke?" said Mr. Rodney.

"I say, does anything occur to you with regard to it?"

"With regard to what?"

"This damned uproarious sleep?"

"No," said Mr. Rodney. "Nothing at all. Why, what should occur to me?"

"Oh, Lord! I don't know," said the Duke, with keen irritation and contempt. "I don't know."

He released the owner of Mitching Dean, and, looking round, exclaimed: "Why, where the deuce is Van Adam?"

Mr. Rodney gazed wildly in every conceivable direction.

"He's gone!" he cried on a piercing note. "He's——"

In his turn he bent down to the Duke and whispered excitedly, "Does anything occur to you, Duke?"

"Eh?"

"I say, does anything occur to you?"

And Mr. Rodney crouched over him, looking far more surreptitious and knowing than Guy Fawkes.

"What about?"

"About Van Adam's sudden going to bed in this strange manner?" whispered Mr. Rodney.

"No, except that he's like some damned old woman. What should occur?"

"Oh dear, nothing, nothing at all!" cried Mr. Rodney petulantly. "I—I——Good night!"

And he suddenly hastened upstairs four steps at a time, displaying the activity of a wild-cat and the excitement of a van-load of monkeys.

"Well, of all the snivelling, psalm-singing, nonconformist, Salvation Army sets of fellows that ever I met in my life," said the Duke irrelevantly, "this one takes the——"

He paused, and sat for a moment listening to the wild symphony of the paragon, who was sunk deep in his armchair with his huge head plunged upon his chest.

"That fellow's as broad awake as I am," muttered the Duke to himself, "and broader! But I'll be even with him, crafty as he is!"

He got up softly, went to the swing-door that led to the detectives' quarters, put his head through it and hissed, "Bliggins!"

Bliggins appeared, wiping curry, trifle and champagne from his startled features. The Duke beckoned to him and jerked his chin upwards.

Bliggins approached, assuming his hungry look.

"D'you hear that?" the Duke whispered.

"Which, sir?"

"Which! I told you to be dumb, not deaf! Which! That!"

The paragon snored.

"Yes, sir. Which of 'em is playing the organ, sir?"

"The organ, you fool! It's the red-bearded villain pretending to be asleep."

"He pretends awful noisy, sir!"

"Yes; he over-does it. He's no artist, deep as he is. Now listen to me. Go and turn out the lights. Then come back here and watch. If he stops snoring, crawl up the backstairs to the chocolate room, and let me know immediately. You understand?"

"I do, sir."

"Very well, not a word."

The Duke retreated up the main staircase on tiptoe, while Mr. Bliggins proceeded to turn out the lights and leave the paragon in total darkness.

Although night is the time for sleep, and is usually, in country places, dedicated to that delightful occupation, circumstances induced a good many people to sit up in the palace during the hours of darkness, to listen with a strained attention for any nocturnal sound. Mr. Harrison, as we know, was busy at the telephone, explaining to his Emperor that the palace was being set on fire and the furniture reduced to matchwood by the owner of Mitching Dean. Mr. Bliggins crouched like a tiger behind the swing-door, solacing himself with a parcel of curry which he had hastily ravished from the detectives' supper-table and wrapped in a sheet of brown paper convenient for the pocket. The Duke sat with his ear to the keyhole of the chocolate bedroom. The Duchess, who was located in the grey bedroom, was on the alert in a majestic early Victorian dressing-gown with her hair in curl-papers, to which she still faithfully adhered, despite the changing fashions of an age of tongs and pins. Her Grace was determined Mrs. Verulam should make no expedition, hold no colloquy with the orange-grower unobserved, uninterrupted. Mrs. Verulam was frantically writing a note to Chloe, while the faithful Marriner stood by ready to convey it with all speed and caution to that deception's apartment. As to Mr. Rodney, he had turned out all the lights in his room, set the door ajar and removed his pumps, and now sat in his slippered feet and dense darkness waiting for he knew not what. Only he was confident that something was up, that Mrs. Verulam and Chloe were desirous of communicating with each other, and that they would probably endeavour to do so under cover of night.

Upon the cupolas of the palace meanwhile the rain dripped steadily, and in the mighty hall below the paragon snored on, as the Duke supposed, in violently pretended slumber. Soon after Chloe had gained her room, Mr. Rodney heard a gentle rustle near his door.

"Who's there?" he called, in a trembling voice.

He was answered by a slight soprano scream and a sudden violent scrambling, as the faithful Marriner on terror-stricken feet gained Chloe's room, into which she cast a note before fleeing in a frenzied manner to her virgin chamber in an upper storey. The note hit Chloe, who was at the writing-table, in the eye. She uttered an ejaculation of surprise, then controlled herself, and tore it open.

"We must meet to-night," it ran. "Wait till all is quiet, then steal down in the dark to the hall, and meet me there. Do not light a candle, as I think the Duchess is probably on the look-out, full of horrible suspicions. I have extraordinary news to communicate.

"Daisy."

"When all is quiet," murmured Chloe to herself. "And I, too, have extraordinary news to communicate."

She sat waiting in a smoking-coat and a pair of Moorish slippers till the psychological moment should arrive. The minutes wore on in their usual weary manner on such occasions. The wind sighed against the casement, announcing the fact that it was an inclement night. Several times the Duke had crawled to the balustrade of the staircase, and heard that the paragon was still pretending to be asleep. Several times Mr. Rodney had said, "Who's there?" without result. Several times had the Duchess torn her curl-papers in a fury of anger against Mrs. Verulam, and folded the early Victorian dressing-gown more firmly round her ample form, anticipating the time of action. But nothing happened. Both Mrs. Verulam and Chloe, overwhelmed with prudence, prolonged their vigil, dreading to come forth before the inmates of the palace were duly plunged in sleep. At length the Duke dropped into a nap with his ear to the keyhole. Mr. Rodney's slippered feet grew cold, and he lay down for an instant between the blankets just to get them warm and keep his rheumatic fever a little quiet. Mr. Bliggins, having finished the whole of his parcel of curry, retired for a second from his post to put some trifle up in paper and lay hold of a magnum of champagne. And the Duchess nodded her head at nothing, and endeavoured to contend with the trooping dreams that thronged about her weary brain. Then Mrs. Verulam stole forth upon the landing, holding in one hand an unlighted bedroom candle, and keeping her draperies quiet with the other. Feeling her way, and suffering many things from walls and balusters, she softly descended the staircase to the hall in which Mr. Bush still sat, although, attacked by a nightmare that paralysed all his faculties, he had for the moment ceased to snore. Reaching the hall, she paused and listened. She heard no noise except a patter of the rain on some distant cupola. But suddenly a cold hand grasped her.

"Oh!" she cried.

"Be quiet, Daisy!" said Chloe's voice. "It's only me. They're all asleep. Don't wake them."

"I thought it was a ghost!" gasped Mrs. Verulam convulsively. "Oh dear, I should like to cry!"

"There isn't time. I've got dreadful things to whisper. Can't we sit down?"

She felt cautiously for a seat.

"Here's a—no, it's an umbrella-stand, we can't sit on that."

"There's something comfortable here," whispered Mrs. Verulam, and she sank down gently on a large cactus in a porcelain tub.

Her resurrection was instant, and was accompanied by a strangled wail that reached the ears of the nodding Duchess. Her Grace started, grasped the curl-papers in a frenzied manner, and tried to recall who she was and what she was doing. This took time, and meanwhile Mrs. Verulam and Chloe had at last found a large armchair, in which they both gingerly ensconced themselves.

"Now," whispered Mrs. Verulam, "I must tell you——"

"And I you, that——"

"Mr. Rodney has heard from Lord Bernard Roche. Don't pinch me. Oh! oh!"

"Lord Bernard! What does he say? Tell me, tell me quickly!"

"That Husk—that your husband is on his way to England to——"

"I know; only he's not on his way—he's here."

"Here! what do you mean?"

"What I say. Yillick wired it. You saw the telegram. He came by the Arethusa, and he's here."

"Not at Ribton Marches? Mercy! Let us go back to our rooms! Oh, why——"

"No, no, but in Berkshire. He may come to Ascot at any moment. What must I do?"

"Do you want to marry him again?"

"Marry! Daisy! What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, he wants to marry you. That's why he has come. If you pinch me, I must and will shriek out!"

And she struggled vehemently between Chloe's suddenly clutching hands.

"What do you mean? You shall tell me! I will tear it out of you!"

"Help! help!"

"Be quiet! You'll wake the whole house!"

"I don't care if I do! I won't be murdered without a——"

"There, then! Now be quiet. Marry me again! Huskinson marry me again!"

"Lord Bernard said in his letter to Mr. Rodney that he sailed for England on purpose to do it. He's discovered that you never—Bream, you know. The Crackers have acknowledged they perjured themselves. What are you doing, Chloe? What——"

She listened to a curious little emotional sound that stirred the blackness in Chloe's direction. It was of a gurgling nature, not exactly laughter, not precisely weeping, yet partaking of the nature of both; intense excitement, it seemed, expressing itself in an inarticulate, but irresistible, music. It went on for about two minutes, and then Chloe pinched Mrs. Verulam again with all her might and main in silence. Mrs. Verulam's whispered reply to this fresh assault was: "I always thought so, Chloe. You could not deceive me."

"Nonsense! It isn't true!"

"But you can't re-marry him in trousers!"

"Oh, don't—don't! I shall take them off! Of course—of course I shall take them off!"

"Yes. But if you do that, what is to happen to me?"

"You!"

"Yes. Remember I exist."

A kiss from Chloe was the ecstatic reply to this protest—a kiss vehement, genuine, and rather loud. It was heard by an early Victorian dressing-gown, which spent the next few minutes in trying to locate it.

"Dear! I'm so glad—for you. But—but it's all very complicated, Chloe."

"Well, but I've done my work. I've saved you from society. Lady Sage has cut you publicly, and all your friends will follow suit. So you're all right now, dear."

"Yes, I'm all right now," said Mrs. Verulam in a most dreary and doleful whisper; "I'm all right now."

"Then I must disappear—to some place where I can change my trousers quietly, some place remote, deserted. Oh, Daisy, how I shall always love that place!"

"And give up society?"

"I don't care now. I feel as you do."

"As I do?"

"Yes, that it is hollow, meretricious, morbid, vulgar, empty, futile, lying, slanderous, loveless, greedy, vain, hid——"

"Oh, stop! It sounds like 'How the water comes down at Lodore.' I never said all that."

"You said most of it, and you were right. I would rather take off these trousers and—and—well, you know—Huskinson, than consort with archduchesses for the rest of my natural life."

"Oh, archduchesses—yes," said Mrs. Verulam, rather doubtfully. "Viennese society is so very stiff and conventional."

"Love is the only thing," continued Chloe, once more passionately pinching her friend. "You are right."

"Did I say so?"

"Daisy! Why, about Bungay and Mr. Bush! Why, when you first saw him in his meat-safe, you——"

"Yes, yes, I remember. But I daresay it wasn't really a meat-safe, though it was very like one." She started, as if struck by a sudden idea. "Bungay!" she cried, in an excited whisper. "Bungay! your trousers. The very place!"

"Bungay, my trousers! What do you mean? Surely it would spoil them!"

"Listen! You want to change them, don't you?"

"Yes, yes, as soon as possible."

"In a quiet, sweet place, full of roses, the hum of bees, the——"

"I don't know that the hum of bees is actually necessary. I might manage without that."

"And I—I am weary of it all. I am sick of being cut and cold-shouldered."

"Already? I thought you enjoyed it."

"Yes, just at first. But now I want to get out of it all. I can't go to the races to-morrow."

"Nor can I. Huskinson may be there. And if he saw me in—well, I should just expire!"

"And the Duchess is going to cut me, too, as soon as the week is over. I have no social duty towards her now. I have no social duty to anyone. Chloe, let us go! Let us creep away!"

"Creep! Where to?"

"To Bungay. There must be cots there; we will take one."

"A cot? What's that?"

"A thing that is smaller than a cottage. We will bury ourselves——"

"Creep away and bury ourselves—it sounds rather earthy."

"You shall change your trousers. I will dream, work, learn the true life; he shall teach me."

"James Bush?"

"Yes. Let us go."

"When?"

"Now."

"Is there a train at one o'clock in the morning?"

"It is not far, I think; only some miles."

"Some—yes; but how many? Two or twenty?"

"It is in this county somewhere. We will find it."

"I hope so."

"I shall leave a note, saying—er——"

"What lie?"

"That I am called to the sick-bed of a dear mother."

"But Lady Sophia's quite well."

"Of a dying sis—no; I haven't got one—a dying relative. Everybody has a dying relative, so that will do. Oh, to be away in the free air!"

"The free air's very cold on a wet night."

"Are you a coward, Chloe?"

"I! No!" cried Chloe in a violent whisper. "I'll go now—this instant. A coward—never!"

"Then away—away!"

"Yes—yes; away!"

At the third "away" Mr. Bush emerged from his nightmare and renewed his vociferous snoring. Mrs. Verulam and Chloe started and trembled.

"What's that?" said Mrs. Verulam. "Oh! is it a ghost?"

"It sounds like something horrible! Oh, and there's a light flickering! Daisy—Daisy, let us run!"

And they ran, just as the Duchess, with bristling curl-papers and a night-light shrouded in a fragment of the Times newspaper, appeared cautiously at the head of the stairs, the early Victorian dressing-gown streaming out behind her in a majestic and terror-striking manner. Her Grace had heard the impact of Chloe's kiss, followed by the sound of excited whisperings, which she had finally located as emanating from the baronial hall. Listening with a strained attention, and eyes becoming far more prominent than those of the average lobster, she had presently arrived at the awful certainty that the whispering voices belonged to her hostess and the orange-grower. She therefore fell into a paroxysm of respectable fury, and, catching up the night-light, proceeded forth to confront wickedness in its very lair, and force it to acknowledge itself and to receive a terrible castigation. Unluckily, the premature snores of the paragon had served as a warning of her approach by distracting the attention of Mrs. Verulam and Chloe from their own engrossing concerns; and consequently, before the Duchess had time to miss her footing, and, stumbling in the labyrinth of the early Victorian dressing-gown, to fall, and, bounding from step to step of the Emperor's expensive staircase, to roll, night-light in hand, into the baronial hall, they were well away among the winter gardens, out of hearing and almost beyond the reach of pursuit.

The noise of her Grace's close intercourse with the Emperor's oak and Parian marble not only disturbed the rest of the paragon—which was perfectly genuine, despite the suspicions of the Duke—but attracted the painful attention of the owner of Mitching Dean in the green, and of his Grace in the chocolate, bedroom. Mr. Rodney trembled in a nervous paroxysm, and the perspiration, as was its custom, stood in beads upon his narrow brow. The Duke, who had been napping, sprang up, lit a candle after about eight-and-twenty attempts, seized the nearest weapon at hand—a cat's-eye breast-pin, with diamond strawberry leaves, and the Southborough crest, a sheep's head rouge in the cup of a tulip noir—and made forth upon the landing like one distraught, exactly as his Duchess rolled to the very feet of the paragon, covered with bruises and abrasions, the night-light extinguished in her fist. Feeling in agony for something to stay her barrel-like progress, her Grace grasped Mr. Bush in the dark, and he, suddenly waked from sleep, and perhaps under some such impression as that he was beset by stranglers or attended by phantoms, grappled her in return, greatly to her terror. She screamed; he grappled all the more. And the Duke, staring wildly over the balustrade, beheld a picture that might well shake the faith of the most trusting husband in Christendom—at any rate, it shook his to its foundations. He protruded the candle over the balustrade, and roared in a voice of thunder:

"I've caught you at last, have I?"

The question rang through the hall. The paragon heard it, and perceived the fierce and frenzied countenance of his Grace, then, gazing downwards, beheld the Duchess in a dressing-gown kneeling at his feet. This was enough. Under the notion that he must have made an impression on her Grace, and that the Duke was about to take vengeance on the guiltless as well as on the guilty party, he cast the Duchess off and fled he knew not whither.

"You shall not escape me!" shrieked the Duke. "Your blood—I'll have it!"

And leaping down the remaining stairs, he jumped the Duchess cleverly, and tore after the paragon with the fixed intention of taking it there and then. The Duchess fled in an opposite direction just as Miss Bindler, who had been waked by all this noise and movement, opened her bedroom door and, suspecting cracksmen, emptied six chambers of her pocket-revolver over the landing into the hall, at the same time remarking:

"This sort of thing won't do; it's time someone taught these fellows a lesson."

Although the Bun Emperor's palace was exceedingly large, it now contained so many people in full flight that there was some slight danger of their knocking up against one another. Mrs. Verulam and Chloe, Mr. James Bush, the Duke and the Duchess, were all stretching away at full speed in various directions, and to their number were shortly added Mr. Harrison, Mr. Bliggins, and the owner of Mitching Dean. The groom of the chambers was disturbed in his operations at the telephone by being knocked down just as he was saying to the Emperor:

"Oh, most certainly, sir; you may rely on me, and Mrs. Lite, to my latest breath—oh, indeed! I know I am, sir—I know I am responsible; and if so much as the house is set afire, or the furniture is broke to pieces, I shall——"

At this point in his discourse the paragon ran against him like a charging elephant, and laid him low; and while he was engaged in endeavouring to get up, the Duke fell over him, and the noise of Miss Bindler's six shots rang through the palace. Mr. Harrison sat up, and the Duke began to strangle him, while Mr. Rodney, terrified by Miss Bindler's behaviour, tore out of the green bedroom, and rushed to the detectives' quarters, crying in a piercing voice:

"Save yourselves! All is over! Save yourselves!"

Four of the detectives were so fast asleep that they took no manner of notice of this kindly warning; but Mr. Bliggins, dropping his paper of trifle and tipsy-cake, and letting his magnum fall with a crash, took to his heels, and, after making the entire circuit of the palace about eighty-five times at the top of his speed, plunged head-foremost through a plate-glass window, emerged into the domain, and never stopped till he reached London, where he at once took up another profession.

Mr. Harrison was not of a temper to be strangled, even by a Duke, without making some show of opposition; and on this occasion he exerted himself to such good purpose that, after about ten minutes of acute struggling, during which the fortunes of war sometimes inclined to one side and sometimes to the other, he succeeded in extricating his throat from his Grace's claws, when, wailing at the top of his voice, he flapped off into the darkness, and was no more seen. This misadventure had given the paragon such a start that he gained his bedroom in safety, turned the key eight or nine times in the lock, and then began tying the bed-sheets together with a view to instantly escaping to Bungay by the window. The sheets were, however, too short, and he was forced to desist from this attempt. Meanwhile the Duke, believing that he had very nearly killed Mr. Bush, who had probably only escaped for the moment to die a lingering death in some distant corner of the palace, got up and hurried away to Mr. Rodney's room, which he reached just as the owner of Mitching Dean darted back into it, and was preparing to shut the door on imaginary murderers.

"Don't dare to enter!" cried Mr. Rodney, struggling to bang the door on the Duke. "I shall certainly kill the first man who enters!"

He meant that the first man who entered would certainly kill him, but that was his way of putting it.

"Rodney! Rodney!" cried his Grace. "Let me in, Rodney—let me in!"

"If I sell my life, I'll sell it dearly!" replied Mr. Rodney. "I will not be slain without a struggle."

And he elongated himself against the swaying door, while Miss Bindler, with rapid precision, reloaded her revolver in the adjoining bedroom, and the Duchess tore through Winter Garden No. 3.

"Rodney, don't be a fool! Don't be an ass, Rodney!"

"I will! Nothing shall prevent me—nothing on earth! I will! I will!" replied the owner of Mitching Dean, with an attempt at manly decision of manner.

But the Duke was desperate, and was also very much stronger physically than Mr. Rodney. He therefore burst in the door, and added:

"Rodney, you must act for me in this affair—I insist upon it; I require it of you. Rodney, you must act for me in this affair."

The owner of Mitching Dean, who was busily engaged in trying to get under the bed before his visitor had time to slay him, made no reply to this demand, unless the putting of his head and nearly half his trunk into hiding could be called so. But the Duke had laid aside all sense of his great position, and now pointed his remarks, and endeavoured to convey a sense of their real urgency, by seizing fast hold of Mr. Rodney's left leg, and trying with might and main to eject him from the position which he had taken up.

"I will die here! I will not be killed in the open! I will die here!" cried Mr. Rodney in a suffocated voice, passionately endeavouring to force some more of his person beneath the tester.

"You'll die where I choose!" retorted his Grace, losing his temper and commencing to handle the unfortunate gentleman rather roughly. "Come out of it!"

"No, no; I will not come out! I will die here!" shrieked Mr. Rodney, while Miss Bindler emerged once more upon the landing, and again started firing about the palace.

"Come out you shall!" shouted the Duke, and he acted with such vigour that in something less than ten minutes he had forced Mr. Rodney from his cover and dragged him, smothered with dust and pale with terror, into the open.

"Do it mercifully! For Heaven's sake, kill me without hurting me!" began the owner of Mitching Dean, looking at his Grace with eyes that had retreated far into his head. "What—you, Duke! I thought you were one of my oldest and most valued—you to fly at me like——"

"Rodney, you're an ass! You're a fool, Rodney! But, all the same, you must act for me in this affair."

Mr. Rodney, beginning to gather that his slaughter was not so imminent as he had previously supposed, now endeavoured to assume an air of dignity.

"Duke, this is strange language," he began stiffly.

"Damned strange! and so's it strange your getting under the bed directly I try to speak to you. Sit down."

And the Duke thrust the owner of Mitching Dean into a sitting posture upon the bed, closed the door, turned the key in the lock, returned to Mr. Rodney—who had meanwhile again gone very pale, suspecting treachery—and remarked:

"Rodney, I've just been trying to strangle that fellow Bush!"

This was scarcely reassuring, but Mr. Rodney forced a tortured smile, and stammered, with white lips:

"Did you—did you succeed—in doing so, Duke?"

"Only partially, Rodney—only partially, I fear," returned his Grace. "He managed to get away from me."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, just as I was on the point of choking the life out of him."

"What—what a pity!" gasped Mr. Rodney in a humouring tone.

The Duke grasped his trembling hand.

"You're a good fellow, Rodney!" he exclaimed. "I knew I could rely on you."

"Oh, certainly, Duke, certainly. Rely on me, pray!"

"I will. Then you will act for me in this affair?"

"Yes, yes, with the greatest pleasure!" cried Mr. Rodney, feebly temporising.

"Thank you! You're a man, after all! We'll kill him yet, between us!"

Mr. Rodney gasped. Still, he preferred the rôle of murderer to the rôle of dead body, on the whole. He therefore thought it best to reply:

"I hope so—I sincerely hope so."

"My belief is this," continued the Duke, knitting his brows ferociously, "that the fellow is already more than half dead."

"Dear me!"

"Although he had sufficient strength left to crawl away and hide himself—Heaven knows where."

"Oh!"

"Either he'll die in some attic or basement, under a pump, or in a sink or somewhere, like the rat he is, or he'll break out of the place and make a bee-line for Bungay. In that event, we shall follow him directly it's dawn."

"Quite so, Duke—quite so!"

"Force a duel on him then and there, and shoot him like a dog in his own damned cabbage-garden!"

"An excellent plan—excellent!" cried Mr. Rodney, trembling in the absolute conviction that the Duke was raving mad. "How—how clever of you to think of it!"

"This sort of business makes a man think," said the Duke moodily.

"It does—it does, indeed!" murmured Mr. Rodney, who had, perhaps, thought more during the last fifteen minutes than in the whole course of his previous life.

"Very well, then," said the Duke; "then that's settled?"

"Quite—absolutely!"

"Don't you play me false!"

"Oh, Duke! Could you suppose such a thing possible?" cried Mr. Rodney, assuming an injured air.

"I shall search for the fellow first. If I find him still here, I'll finish killing him now. If not, you and I start for Bungay as soon as it's dawn. That's the bargain?"

"That is the bargain."

"Wait here, then, till I come back."

And his Grace left the room, carrying the door-key with him in an absent-minded manner. Mr. Rodney remained sitting on the bed in a convulsed attitude, staring at nothing. He had, of course, intended to lock and double-lock the door after the Duke's exit. Precluded from taking this simple measure of precaution, he was reduced to a jelly, and, as such, was naturally incapable of movement. He therefore remained where he was, and when his Grace, after a considerable interval, returned to the room, he found the gentleman who was to act for him in this affair still crouched in a heap upon the mattress, and looking far more dead than most ordinary living people can manage.

"Rodney," said the Duke, "he's gone! He's got away!"

Mr. Rodney nodded. He was incapable of speech.

"We shall follow him as soon as it's dawn. Get your coat and hat."

"I—I beg your pardon?"

"Get your coat and hat."

Mr. Rodney began to look for those articles in the tooth-brush dish. Not finding them there, he again collapsed, perhaps from surprise. The Duke, seeing his condition, rummaged in the wardrobe, produced his Ascot silk hat and a travelling ulster, handed them to him, and then remarked:

"Now follow me. We shall spend the rest of the night in my room considering the best course to take—pistols or swords—and directly it's light we'll break into the stables, saddle a couple of horses with our own hands, and ride across country to Bungay. I've got a map of the district. We shall go as the crow flies."

"As the crow flies!" murmured Mr. Rodney, imbecile in the presence of this delightful programme: a few hours with a maniac, succeeded by horse-stealing, and continuing with twenty or thirty miles across a difficult country in a top-hat, the whole to conclude with a cold-blooded murder in a marsh. However, he followed the Duke with tottering steps, and a tongue which clave to the roof of his mouth.

Meanwhile the paragon had indeed escaped from the palace. After finding that it was impossible to swarm down the sheets, Mr. Bush took counsel with himself and resolved to dare all in the effort to reach a place of safety beyond the vengeance of the Duke. He therefore, choosing a moment when Miss Bindler was engaged in reloading her burglar-destroyer for the third time, stole forth from his bedroom and gained the baronial hall unobserved. Once there, he, with cautious hand, proceeded to unbar the mighty front door, and found himself presently facing a wild night. The wind was getting up. The rain was coming down. The darkness was intense. He hesitated. But death was behind him, and he resolved to go. Only for one instant did he stay to catch up from the hall-table a bottle of whisky and a box of cigars, provender for the journey. In justice to him, it must here be stated that he had no time to notice that the whisky bottle was of silver, engraved with the Emperor's crest, a bun couchant on a plate d'or, and that the cigar-box happened by some oversight to be made of gold set with turquoises, and surrounded by a legend setting forth that it was presented to Mr. Lite by the Bun-makers' Company as a mark of their "affection and regard." Laden thus, the paragon disappeared into the darkness, made his way to the stables, by a fortunate chance ran across a shed in which the head coachman—a venerable and a very heavy man—stabled his own private tricycle, and by the time the Duke was searching for him in the sink, was tricycling at a good round pace along the highroad that led to Bungay. He flattered himself that his exit had been unnoticed. It had, however, been observed by two people, the Duchess, who was at that moment fleeing through an adjoining boudoir, and Mr. Harrison, who was running away in a contiguous winter garden. Now, the groom of the chambers had a stern sense of duty, which did not entirely desert him even when he was trying to escape from being strangled. He therefore stayed his flight to inform the Emperor that the paragon had just made off, loaded with gold and silver, presentation caskets, and other costly treasure, and then continued running away until his strength was totally exhausted.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE TRUE LIFE.

As the first pale streak of dawn rose over the peaceful marshes of Bungay, and touched with palest rose the thatched eaves of the Farm, Mr. Jacob Minnidick, as was his custom, arose cursing and swearing from his truckle bed. Mr. Minnidick possessed a temperament which displayed itself chiefly in personal abuse, and he was quite as ready to direct this abuse against Nature as against man. Indeed, he was accustomed to treat the weather as his deliberate enemy, the sun or rain as full of a spite against him, the very earth itself as emphatically hostile to him, emphatically set on "getting at him" so far as Providence permitted.

"Darn it!" remarked Mr. Minnidick, putting on a stocking with a hole in it. "Darn it all, I say!"

And he proceeded to make a sketchy toilet of a rather corduroy nature, after which he walked to the narrow window and looked forth across the marshes. The grass was saturated with rain. Mr. Minnidick viewed it with sour disfavour.

"A deal of good it'll do us," he muttered. "Didn't I 'ave to drain the water off only yesterday, and the three-feet-sixer choked up, as I allers knew 'twould be? Darn the rain, I say!"

He shook a gnarled old fist at it out of the window, and heavily descended the narrow stairs.

Some threescore and ten summers had passed over Mr. Minnidick's head, and been darned by him, since he was born, yet still he laboured on as Mr. Bush's assistant in the grand, true life aimed at by Mrs. Verulam. His small and thin form was duly bent with years. His legs were bowed. His scanty grey hair fell adown his stooping shoulders, and his nut-cracker mouth, fallen in, moved incessantly as if he were trying to masticate invisible food. In fact, he lived up to his name and calling most thoroughly, and would have looked quite realistic in an Adelphi hay-field or Drury Lane cabbage scene. Emerging now into the garden, he glanced angrily around from under his shaggy eyebrows. He beheld a flat plot of ground bounded by tough hedges, in one of which stood a wicket-gate. There were beds of flowers, small paths, a thicket of trees, and a vegetable domain adorned with melon and cucumber frames against a moss-grown wall. Cherries were being forced in pots; beehives stood about; an old-fashioned brick flue had been turned into accommodation for some mysterious fruit; a small brick house, about as big as a loose-box with a roof to it, and devoid of windows, sheltered a pit in which mushroom-spawn was germinating in dense darkness and dull heat. Elsewhere stood two or three rather ramshackle outhouses. The Farm itself was a small and plain building, with narrow windows almost blinded with creepers, a door in the middle, and protruding eaves like Mr. Minnidick's eyebrows. Flattish land stretched away to the horizon on every side, steaming now in the gathering light of the morning. Mr. Minnidick surveyed this prospect and continued:

"Darn it all, I say!"

This sentence had been his morning hymn of praise for more than half a century, and it was quite certain that he would only cease to uplift it with the coming of death. His matins completed, Mr. Minnidick took his way to one of the outhouses, making a slight detour on the journey to glance at some marl and a pet manure tank, and, selecting from various implements a favourite hoe, and an enormous spade, returned to the kitchen-garden, prepared his hands for labour in the usual manner, and began performing various mysterious rites among the cabbages, peas, potatoes and other vegetables with which Mr. Bush's estate was liberally endowed. Now and then he desisted from labour for a moment, and on these occasions he invariably looked towards the wicket-gate and muttered, "He's a beauty—darn 'im!" a statement which seemed to bring with it great satisfaction, and to cause a certain amount of exultation in Mr. Minnidick's earnest and retiring soul. Towards seven o'clock, as Mr. Minnidick was looking towards the gate for the twentieth or so time, and was in the very act of opening his purse-like mouth in his age-honoured and terse remark, there appeared before him a vision that seemed to fill him with amazement. For he dropped the favourite hoe among some sprouts, set his hands over his eyes, let fall his lower jaw, and stared as one that sees a ghost.

"Darn it all!" he murmured. "If it ain't 'im aback a'ready! Darn it all, I say!"

"'Im" signified the paragon, who had indeed at that very instant ridden up to the gate on the Emperor's head coachman's tricycle, and who now dismounted therefrom with much groaning, and walked unsteadily into the garden, the pockets of his coat bulging with the silver whisky-bottle and the gold presentation cigar-box. He approached the sprouts among which his retainer was standing, and gave the latter a sulky nod of the head, to which Mr. Minnidick returned a nod that was, if possible, sulkier.

"How's the vegs?" mumbled Mr. Bush.

"Mortial spoilt by rain—darn 'em!" replied Mr. Minnidick. "Mortial spoilt."

And he stared harder than ever at Mr. Bush, whose saturated evening costume was now beginning to steam in the sun.

"What's brought ye back s' soon?" he enquired.

The paragon shuffled his feet.

"What's that to yer?" he replied. "Why don't yer get to hoein'?"

Mr. Minnidick munched and swallowed nothing with considerable vehemence for some minutes, and then he said with excruciating bitterness:

"Why don't ye git to them as drew ye from hoein'?"

"Shut yer head, I've done with 'em," said the paragon.

"Oh, I dessay," returned Mr. Minnidick, with aggravated grievousness, "I dessay, but where's the garding been while ye was with 'em? Who's seen arter the mushrims? Who's a-cared for them there mellings? Who's been a-watchin' of the cowcumbers? Lawks-a-mussy! Darn it all, I say!"

Mr. Bush deigned no reply to these passionate questions, but proceeded heavily into the house, from which he presently emerged, clad in more suitable raiment, still loaded with the Emperor's gold and silver, and in the act of swallowing a mighty hunch of home-made bread. Without making any further remark, he laid hold of a spade and began to dig in gloomy silence, while Mr. Minnidick went on hoeing and muttering angrily to himself. How long these pastoral occupations would have continued in ordinary circumstances, it is impossible to say. They might, perhaps, have been protracted till full noontide, had not a sound of horses galloping in the adjacent lane suddenly attracted the attention of the paragon, who rested upon his spade, scratched his huge head, and began to look rather uneasy.