ng of the kind!" said the duke, still with heat. It seemed
to him absurd to suggest that Pollyooly was superior to his daughter.

"It is; and I shall write and tell Caroline so," said Lord Ashcroft
with the same firmness.

"I never knew such an obstinate--wrong-headed--" the duke broke out.
He broke off short, paused, began to laugh, and laughed heartily. Then
he said: "Oh, well; have it your own way. Write and tell her so."

"I shall," said Lord Ashcroft in the tone of one bent on performing a
sacred duty. "I don't see anything to laugh at."

The duke again remained silent; but twice he laughed sudden, short
laughs. Lord Ashcroft looked at him suspiciously.

"I don't know quite what's happening to you, Osterley," he said
presently in a tone hardly meant to be pleasant. "You're changing."

"Yes: getting brighter," said the duke easily.

"It may be that and again it may not," said Lord Ashcroft coldly; and
he tugged at his beard.

After that conversation seemed hard to make; and soon the duke said
that he must be going. Lady Ashcroft kept him waiting nearly twenty
minutes before she brought Pollyooly down from the nurseries. Then she
said that Pollyooly must come to spend the whole day with her children;
and Pollyooly said that she would like to come very much. The duke
looked a little doubtful: he was not sure that Pollyooly could stand
the test of hours of intimacy.

On the way home he talked for a while cheerfully; and since there was
no intellectual gulf between them, they could talk to one another with
perfect ease and understanding. Then he fell into a sudden panic.

"By Jove!" he cried, clutching at his moustache and missing it. "I'd
forgotten all about it! My sister--Lady Salkeld's coming home
to-morrow!"

Pollyooly said nothing. She looked at him with enquiring eyes.

"Suppose she goes and recognises that you aren't Marion?"

"I don't see why she should any more than any one else," said Pollyooly
in a reassuring tone.

"Oh, but, hang it! She's seen a lot of Marion. She's known her ever
since she was a baby," said the duke with a harassed air.

Pollyooly could have set his mind at rest by assuring him that during
her last stay at the court Lady Salkeld had not shown the slightest
tendency to recognise that she was not Lady Marion Ricksborough; but
she did not. She only said:

"I don't suppose that she'll take much notice of me."

"There is that. She pretty well thinks of nothi