Chapter VIII

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

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

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

"How is the cat?" he asked.

It was his gambit.

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

She saw his eyes shift to the conservatory.

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

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

She raised her grave eyes to his.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She was shocked but she laughed--

"So in Texas----"

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

"Or else----?" she shivered.

"Or else--exactly," he said cheerfully.

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

"Thank goodness," he repeated without heartiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She raised her eyes up shyly but did not speak.

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

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

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

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