"While I was lying in my room, shocked by the day I had spent, Mrs. Eaton came in, sun-burned, excited, and panting for breath. 'Wasn't it a terrible thing! Such an imposition. To pass himself off for a duke! I declare I could kill him.'
"'But did he deceive you?' I asked.
"'Did he, why of course, the scamp! And poor Lucy liking him so much. She wont believe it now, hardly. He looked so splendid taking up that key and swinging his sword about like a Saracen, Lucy says, just to tantalize me, when I know exactly what he is. But I come to ask a great favor, Miss Crawford. You're the only person that I breathed a word to about it. Supposing you just keep quiet, now, especially to James Harrington. It might do mischief there if you said a word, and I'm sure you wouldn't want to do that. Only think of a daughter of mine almost falling in love with one of them matadore fellows. I tell you it makes my blood boil—but you wont say a word. Poor Lucy would die of shame if you did.'
"'I certainly shall not mention the man to any one,' I answered.
"'That's a good soul. I was sure we might depend on you. Now I'll go and tell Lucy. She's been crying like a baby ever since we come home. I wonder if the fellow will have the impudence to follow us again. The Duke! The impostor, I say,—to look like a nobleman and not be one.'
"How fussy and disagreeable the woman is. But I am too weary for much thought of her or any thing else indeed, yet I cannot sleep.
"Mrs. Harrington lay on the low couch which was her favorite resting place during the day, and I sat beside her reading aloud a new English novel that Miss Eaton had lent me. Presently James came in, and making me a sign not to stop, sat down near one of the windows, as if to listen to the story; but when I glanced at him, I saw by his face that his thoughts were leagues away from any consciousness of the words my voice pronounced.
"I suppose I had no right to wonder whither his fancies had strayed, but I could not help it; and when I looked at him again, I knew that it was no idle reverie which had possession of him, but stern, absorbing thought, for his face looked hard and cold as it so often had done of late.
"I almost lost the consciousness of what I was reading, in the rush of odd fancies that came over my mind. My voice must have grown careless and indistinct, for I heard Mrs. Harrington say:—
"'Don't read any more, Mabel; I am sure you are tired.'