Duke raised his eyebrows.
"The amiable William?" he asked with mild astonishment, "not Bad Man Bill?"
Hank nodded gravely.
"I got a letter from Judge Morris. Bill had a pull in the state and the remainder of his sentence has been remitted by the new governor."
"Well?" asked the Duke with a yawn. Hank was searching his pocket for a letter. He opened one and read—
"... hope you are having a good time ... m—m your Nevada properties are booming ... (oh, here we are). By the way Big Bill Slewer's loose, the man the Duke ran out of Tycer country and jailed for shooting Ed. Carter the foreman.
"Bill says he is going gunning for Jukey—"
"Ugh!" shuddered the Duke.
"—and reckons to leave for Europe soon. Japhet in search of his pa will be a quaker picnic compared with Bill on the sleuth. Tell Jukey——"
The Duke groaned.
"Tell Jukey to watch out for his loving little friend Bill. Bill is going to have a big send off and a bad citizens' committee has presented the hero with a silver plate Colt's revolver and has passed a special resolution deprecating the artificial social barriers of an effete and degenerate aristocracy."
The Duke smiled.
"If Bill turns up in Brockley I'll run the military gentleman loose on him," he announced calmly; "in the meantime let us address ourselves to the soirée."
It was announced from the pulpit on the next Sunday that amongst the kind friends who has promised to help was "our neighbour the Duc de Montvillier" and the next morning Miss Alicia Terrill sought out the vicar and asked to be relieved of a certain promise she had made.
"But, my dear Miss Terrill, it's quite impossible," protested the amazed cleric; "you were so very keen on the soirée, and your name has been sent to the printer with the rest of the good people who are singing. Here's the proof." He fussed at his desk and produced a sheet of paper.
"Here we are," he said, and she read:—
"No. 5 (song), 'Tell me, where is fancy bred'—Miss A. Terrill.
"No. 6 (song), 'In my quiet garden'—The Duc de Montvillier."
"And here again in Part II," said the vicar. She took the papers with an unsteady hand.
"No. 11 (song), 'I heard a voice'—Miss A. Terrill.
"No. 12 (song), 'Alice, where art thou'—The Duc de Montvillier."
She looked at the vicar helplessly.
"Why—why does the Duke follow me?" she asked weakly.
"It was his special wish," explained the other. "He said his voice would serve to emphasize the sweetness of your singing and coming, as it would, immediately after your song—these are his own words—his feeble efforts would bring the audience to a——"
"Oh yes," she interrupted impatiently, "I can well imagine all that he said, and I'm thoroughly decided that the programme must be rearranged."
In the end she had her way.
For some reason she omitted to convey to her mother the gist of the conversation. If the truth must be told, she had already regretted having spoken of the matter at all to her family, for her mother's letter to the Tanneurs had brought to her a greater infliction than her impetuous suitor. Whatever opinion might be held of the genius of Hal Tanneur at Hydeholm, in the expressive language of the 9th's mess, he was "no flier." The girl had learnt of his coming with dismay, and the gleam of hope that perhaps after all, he might be able to effectively snub the young man of the step ladder, was quickly extinguished as the result of the brief skirmish she had witnessed. And Hal was attentive in his heavy way, and had tricks of elephantine gallantry that caused her more annoyance than alarm.
On the evening of the day she had seen the vicar, Mr. Hal Tanneur decided upon making a diplomatic offer, so set about with reservations and contingencies, that it was somewhat in the nature of a familiar stock exchange transaction. In other words he set himself the task of securing an option on her hand, with the understanding that in the event of his father's refusal to endorse the contract, the option was to be secretly renewed for an indefinite period. He did not put the matter in so few words as I, because he was not such a clever juggler of words as I am, but after he had been talking, with innumerable "d'ye see what I mean Alic's" and "of course you understand's," she got a dim idea of what he was driving at. She let him go on. "Of course the governor's got pots of money, and I don't want to get in his bad books. Just now he's a bit worried over some Nevada property he's trying to do a chap out of—in quite a business-like way of course. The other chap—the chap who has the property now has got a big flaw in his title and he doesn't know it. See? Well, unless he renews his claim and gets some kind of an order from the court, or something of that sort, the governor and the governor's friends can throw him out, d'ye see what I mean?"
"I really don't see what this is to do with me," said Alicia frankly bored, "you said you wanted to tell me something of the greatest importance, and I really ought to be seeing about mother's supper."
"Wait a bit," he pleaded, "this is where the whole thing comes in: if the governor pulls this deal off, he'll be as pleased as Punch, and I can say out plump and plain how I feel about you."
It was on the tip of her tongue to inform him that "plump and plain" was ludicrously descriptive of himself, but she forbore. Instead she plunged him into a state of embarrassed incoherence by demanding coolly—
"Do I understand, Hal, that you have been proposing to me?"
She cut short his explanations with a smile.
"Please don't wound my vanity by telling me this is only a tentative offer—anyway I'll put your mind at rest. Under no circumstances could I marry you: there are thousands of reasons for that decision, but the main one is, that I do not love you, and I cannot imagine anything short of a miracle that would make me love you."
She left him speechless.
The greater part of the next day he sulked in the garden, but towards the evening he grew cheerful. After all, a woman's No was not necessarily final.
He got most of his ideas from the comic papers.
Only for an instant had he entertained the suspicion that there might be Another Man, but this he dismissed as ridiculous. Alicia's refusal was very natural. She had been piqued by the fact that he had not been able to make her a definite offer. He resolved to bide his time, and come to his father on the crest of that prosperous wave which was to hand the Denver Silver Streak Mine into the lap of his astute progenitor. Then he would speak out boldly, trusting to the generosity of his father. Constructing these pleasant dreams, he found himself discussing the coming concert with Alicia, and the girl pleasantly relieved that her refusal had had so little effect upon his spirits, was a little sorry she had been so severe.
They were talking over the songs Alicia was to sing, when there was the sound of a carriage stopping outside the door, followed by an important rat-tat.
"Whoever can it be?" wondered Alicia.
She
