Part 11

“Without a word,” said the other.

“Without a glance?” asked the Duke. It was testified by the one and the other that there had been not so much as a glance.

“Doubtless,” the disingenuous Duke said, “she had a headache... Was she pale?”

“Very pale,” answered the one.

“A healthy pallor,” qualified the other, who was a constant reader of novels.

“Did she look,” the Duke inquired, “as if she had spent a sleepless night?”

That was the impression made on both.

“Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?”

No, they would not go so far as to say that.

“Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?”

“Quite unnatural,” confessed the one.

“Twin stars,” interpolated the other.

“Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward rapture?”

Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she HAD seemed.

It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. “I remember,” Zuleika had said to him, “nothing that happened to me this morning till I found myself at your door.” It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past.

“The purpose of your tattle?” he asked coldly.

The two youths hurried to the point from which he had diverted them. “When she went by with you just now,” said the one, “she evidently didn’t know us from Adam.”

“And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon,” said the other.

“Well?”

“Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce us. And then perhaps...”

There was a pause. The Duke was touched to kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that beset himself. So humanising is sorrow.

“You are in love with Miss Dobson?” he asked.

Both nodded.

“Then,” said he, “you will in time be thankful to me for not affording you further traffic with that lady. To love and be scorned--does Fate hold for us a greater inconvenience? You think I beg the question? Let me tell you that I, too, love Miss Dobson, and that she scorns me.”

To the implied question “What chance would there be for you?” the reply was obvious.

Amazed, abashed, the two youths turned on their heels.

“Stay!” said the Duke. “Let me, in justice to myself, correct an inference you may have drawn. It is not by reason of any defect in myself, perceived or imagined, that Miss Dobson scorns me. She scorns me simply because I love her. All who love her she scorns. To see her is to love her. Therefore shut your eyes to her. Strictly exclude her from your horizon. Ignore her. Will you do this?”

“We will try,” said the one, after a pause.