"You mean you saw him—saw him the week he was here?"
Nina colored faintly. She had not meant to tell.
"Yes," she answered. "He came to me at Bath. He wanted me to save him. He couldn't quite decide between the pair of them, so he wished to compromise on me."
Lady Bellingdown nearly boiled over.
"He's a most ungrateful boy," she cried. "He must have known how anxious we all were about you, and he never sent me a line. Only a wire that he had returned to Nice and Rosamond."
"If he—" Nina began, and finished with: "He might have said Rosamond and Nice. Don't you think so? It's straws, you know—"
After dinner that evening Nina got the duke alone in a corner.
"Tell me more about Hal Kneedrock," she begged, taking the clawlike ducal hand in both her own. "Is there anything really wrong, do you think?"
His grace, out of ear-shot of the duchess, didn't mince matters. "Mad as a hatter," he said earnestly. "Brain gone all to pieces over something. No doubt about it. Poor old Nibbetts!"
"But how? What has he done except haunt the tiger-house?"