The Essential Maurice Leblanc Collection. Морис Леблан

said Sonia.

      "Not a bit of it. They bowed as if each of them had swallowed a poker."

      "Why--then--then--" said Sonia, starting up with a frightened air; and her voice stuck in her throat.

      "Then what?" said Germaine, a little startled by her panic-stricken face.

      "The duel! Monsieur de Relzieres' duel!" cried Sonia.

      "What? You don't think it was with Jacques?"

      "I don't know--but this quarrel--the Duke's manner this morning--the Du Buits' drive--" said Sonia.

      "Of course--of course! It's quite possible--in fact it's certain!" cried Germaine.

      "It's horrible!" gasped Sonia. "Consider--just consider! Suppose something happened to him. Suppose the Duke--"

      "It's me the Duke's fighting about!" cried Germaine proudly, with a little skipping jump of triumphant joy.

      Sonia stared through her without seeing her. Her face was a dead white--fear had chilled the lustre from her skin; her breath panted through her parted lips; and her dilated eyes seemed to look on some dreadful picture.

      Germaine pirouetted about the hall at the very height of triumph. To have a Duke fighting a duel about her was far beyond the wildest dreams of snobbishness. She chuckled again and again, and once she clapped her hands and laughed aloud.

      "He's fighting a swordsman of the first class--an invincible swordsman--you said so yourself," Sonia muttered in a tone of anguish. "And there's nothing to be done--nothing."

      She pressed her hands to her eyes as if to shut out a hideous vision.

      Germaine did not hear her; she was staring at herself in a mirror, and bridling to her own image.

      Sonia tottered to the window and stared down at the road along which must come the tidings of weal or irremediable woe. She kept passing her hand over her eyes as if to clear their vision.

      Suddenly she started, and bent forward, rigid, all her being concentrated in the effort to see.

      Then she cried: "Mademoiselle Germaine! Look! Look!"

      "What is it?" said Germaine, coming to her side.

      "A horseman! Look! There!" said Sonia, waving a hand towards the road.

      "Yes; and isn't he galloping!" said Germaine.

      "It's he! It's the Duke!" cried Sonia.

      "Do you think so?" said Germaine doubtfully.

      "I'm sure of it--sure!"

      "Well, he gets here just in time for tea," said Germaine in a tone of extreme satisfaction. "He knows that I hate to be kept waiting. He said to me, 'I shall be back by five at the latest.' And here he is."

      "It's impossible," said Sonia. "He has to go all the way round the park. There's no direct road; the brook is between us."

      "All the same, he's coming in a straight line," said Germaine.

      It was true. The horseman had left the road and was galloping across the meadows straight for the brook. In twenty seconds he reached its treacherous bank, and as he set his horse at it, Sonia covered her eyes.

      "He's over!" said Germaine. "My father gave three hundred guineas for that horse."

      CHAPTER III

      LUPIN'S WAY

      Sonia, in a sudden revulsion of feeling, in a reaction from her fears, slipped back and sat down at the tea-table, panting quickly, struggling to keep back the tears of relief. She did not see the Duke gallop up the slope, dismount, and hand over his horse to the groom who came running to him. There was still a mist in her eyes to blur his figure as he came through the window.

      "If it's for me, plenty of tea, very little cream, and three lumps of sugar," he cried in a gay, ringing voice, and pulled out his watch. "Five to the minute--that's all right." And he bent down, took Germaine's hand, and kissed it with an air of gallant devotion.

      If he had indeed just fought a duel, there were no signs of it in his bearing. His air, his voice, were entirely careless. He was a man whose whole thought at the moment was fixed on his tea and his punctuality.

      He drew a chair near the tea-table for Germaine; sat down himself; and Sonia handed him a cup of tea with so shaky a hand that the spoon clinked in the saucer.

      "You've been fighting a duel?" said Germaine.

      "What! You've heard already?" said the Duke in some surprise.

      "I've heard," said Germaine. "Why did you fight it?"

      "You're not wounded, your Grace?" said Sonia anxiously.

      "Not a scratch," said the Duke, smiling at her.

      "Will you be so good as to get on with those wedding-cards, Sonia," said Germaine sharply; and Sonia went back to the writing-table.

      Turning to the Duke, Germaine said, "Did you fight on my account?"

      "Would you be pleased to know that I had fought on your account?" said the Duke; and there was a faint mocking light in his eyes, far too faint for the self-satisfied Germaine to perceive.

      "Yes. But it isn't true. You've been fighting about some woman," said Germaine petulantly.

      "If I had been fighting about a woman, it could only be you," said the Duke.

      "Yes, that is so. Of course. It could hardly be about Sonia, or my maid," said Germaine. "But what was the reason of the duel?"

      "Oh, the reason of it was entirely childish," said the Duke. "I was in a bad temper; and De Relzieres said something that annoyed me."

      "Then it wasn't about me; and if it wasn't about me, it wasn't really worth while fighting," said Germaine in a tone of acute disappointment.

      The mocking light deepened a little in the Duke's eyes.

      "Yes. But if I had been killed, everybody would have said, 'The Duke of Charmerace has been killed in a duel about Mademoiselle Gournay-Martin.' That would have sounded very fine indeed," said the Duke; and a touch of mockery had crept into his voice.

      "Now, don't begin trying to annoy me again," said Germaine pettishly.

      "The last thing I should dream of, my dear girl," said the Duke, smiling.

      "And De Relzieres? Is he wounded?" said Germaine.

      "Poor dear De Relzieres: he won't be out of bed for the next six months," said the Duke; and he laughed lightly and gaily.

      "Good gracious!" cried Germaine.

      "It will do poor dear De Relzieres a world of good. He has a touch of enteritis; and for enteritis there is nothing like rest," said the Duke.

      Sonia was not getting on very quickly with the wedding-cards. Germaine was sitting with her back to her; and over her shoulder Sonia could watch the face of the Duke--an extraordinarily mobile face, changing with every passing mood. Sometimes his eyes met hers; and hers fell before them. But as soon as they turned away from her she was watching him again, almost greedily, as if she could not see enough of his face in which strength of will and purpose was mingled with a faint, ironic scepticism, and tempered by a fine air of race.

      He finished his tea; then he took a morocco case from his pocket, and said to Germaine, "It must be quite three days since I gave you anything."

      He opened the case, disclosed a pearl pendant, and handed it to her.

      "Oh, how