"Nibbetts," she answered frankly. "I thought you knew. She's Nibbetts's little daughter."
"Ah!" murmured the duke. Then he looked at the little girl again, and was sure he saw a resemblance. Her hair was tawny, like his, but a shade lighter, and she had his gray eyes. She seemed tall for her age, so far as he could judge; but she was undoubtedly very frail.
Later Nina told him that Agnes's mother was a young Scotch woman who had inherited a pulmonary weakness and died at the age of three and twenty.
"It makes me doubly anxious about the child," she said. "London is no climate for her."
But his grace wasn't listening very attentively.
"Nibbetts's," he kept saying—"Nibbetts's! He wasn't as much of a martyr as I thought."
Nina gave him some tea, and had one of the maids fetch some seed-cake from a very excellent bake-shop where a specialty was made of it. The duke liked it, and it put him in high good humor.
Moreover, it led him to a revelation. Nina was looking very lovely in her mourning, and he had always been very fond of her. He drew his chair close to hers and clasped her disengaged hand.
"I'm never going to Bellingdown again," he announced decisively. "They are all sharks at Bellingdown. They tear every one to pieces."
"I know they do," she returned, amused. "But what's the difference? I thought you rather enjoyed the tearing."