"There's always plenty of seed-cake here," whispered the duke, finding a place beside Nina at tea. "Very good seed-cake, too. Much better than at Puddlewood. Let me help you to some."

He put a piece on her plate and she leaned over to get something quite confidential from the d.u.c.h.ess, who sat on the end of the lounge nearest the fire. "Even if I am English I want to be warm," was a _bon mot_ of her youth, still quoted, and still being lived up to.

"I've the very latest word in the Carleigh affair," she whispered behind her hand, with a stolen glance toward Lady Bellingdown, who was busy over the teacups. "Come to my room before dinner and I'll tell you."

Nina nodded, and then the two chattered commonplace for a moment to throw off suspicion. When Nina sat up again her seed-cake was gone and the duke was chuckling.

"But where is it?" she asked, perplexity in her violet eyes.

His grace pointed to the floor at her farther side. Tara was lying there. "He's yours, I suppose. He took the seed-cake at a gulp. Fine staghound that. I had a pair like him once. I say, Doody, didn't I have a fine pair of black staghounds once?"

"Yes, Pucketts." That was the duke's nickname from the cradle.

"Everything's foxhounds nowadays. But when I was younger," he went on--and on--and on.

Nina, delighted to see the animal once more, was caressing his long ears and mumbling baby-talk to him.

In the privacy of the guest-suite she occupied the d.u.c.h.ess smoked one cigarette after another and told Nina Darling that it was Sir Caryll himself who had broken the engagement at the last minute, and not the prospective mother-in-law, as the world had it.

"But why? I thought he was madly in love with the girl."

"Oh, he was. But you see he learned something in a most accidental way, and when he asked Rosamond about it, she confirmed it with perfect candor. It seems her own father--Mrs. Veynol's first husband--is a convict. He is still in prison somewhere in the States.

"The whole story--without names, of course, but going just as far as they dared go--appeared last week in _British Society_. I don't take the scurrilous sheet, of course; but my maid does, and she gave it to me to read. I've been wondering if Kitty saw it."

"Perhaps it isn't true," Nina suggested.

"It must be. That's one thing about those wicked society papers--they're almost always right. Otherwise they wouldn't dare, don't you know. It's that that makes them so objectionable."

Nina left her great-aunt and flew to her own room with barely time to dress. There she found her hostess, already in full dinner regalia, awaiting her.

"I felt I must see you at once, dear," began Lady Bellingdown. "I've such a favor to ask you. You can do something for me now that I shall never forget as long as I live. And I don't know a solitary other woman that could do it."

Nina's suspicions ran at once to Lord Waltheof.

"If it's--" she began--but was checked instantly.

"You could never possibly fancy. It isn't anything you'd think. It's about Caryll Carleigh."

"About Caryll Carleigh?"

"Yes. He's been in Scotland, you know, practically buried, and growing worse--more morose, more heart-sick every day. He's had a fearful knocking down, and I've been worried about him--no end."

"Well?" pressed Nina, groping. She couldn't in the least see what she had--or could have--to do with it all.

"I want you to take him in hand--to make him forget."

"I! But how?"

"Here. He's coming. I've just had a wire. He has already started. He will be here to-morrow for tea."

Nina hesitated for just a second. "I--I'll do my best," she said at length.

CHAPTER X

A Prayer and a Prophecy

"Poor darling!" sighed the d.u.c.h.ess.

The hall was forty feet wide, eighty feet long, and fifty feet high. It was banked with palms and chrysanthemums and with Michaelmas daisies in silver pots. Yet the words echoed.

"You mean--" questioned Kneedrock, frowning.

The electricity behind a million prisms up aloft was well shaded, and the six dozen candles amid the pictures and bric-a-brac were half-smothered in pink frills. Moreover, Kneedrock had just come in and was still some distance off. Yet the frown was clearly seen.

"Oh, I didn't mean Darling. I didn't mean Darling at all," the d.u.c.h.ess corrected quickly.

"We--we were speaking of Caryll," explained Lady Bellingdown, her hand upon the teapot's handle. "We're all thinking of him, you know. He'll be here now--any minute."

"I don't see why you asked him," growled Kneedrock roughly, as was a cousin's privilege. "He'll get no comfort here."

"Nina, remember," reminded the d.u.c.h.ess, very interested in her bread and b.u.t.ter.

Then the n.o.ble viscount growled at her grace. "He'll get no comfort out of Nina. She'll chew him up alive and throw back the bones, as a snake does."

"Oh dear!" put in Lady Kitty deprecatingly. "You're always so hard upon her."

"It's Nibbetts's way," soothed the d.u.c.h.ess, looking very kindly at him.

In spite of a lingering unkemptness, he was indeed a fine object to view--ma.s.sive and leonine. "He always puts things a bit boldly."

"Boldly?" he echoed. "Ugh! Why, the fellow, you know, is all knocked up.

Can't go anywhere. Has been off spearing fish for a month, quite alone.

And then you ask him here and throw him to Nina's teeth and claws. Ha!"

A minute before the comparison was ophidian, now it was feline. He was nearly as bad as Dinghal.

The duke, who was sitting in a corner of the huge lounge, very much hunched up and nibbling seed-cake as fast as his little, lean jaws would work, spoke defensively between nibbles.

"Maybe she'll amuse him," he said thickly, his mouth full. "Nina's very amusing when she likes. She's often made me laugh. I like Nina."

"I think she's a very delightful young woman," joined in the d.u.c.h.ess, in order that her allegiance to her great-niece might not be open to question. "We shall have her at Puddlewood this autumn. We always have her at Puddlewood."

"And she makes life very interesting. Yes, she does," added the duke before taking a fresh nibble. "I always like her to come. Don't I, Doody?"