“Never!” she exclaimed vehemently. “I do not believe you—not one word. It is all over between us. Leave me, and go and seek your paramour.”
“I will not,” he persisted doggedly. “There is none but yourself for me.”
“I am going home, I say.”
“Then I will go with you.”
She hurried a few steps farther; then, as he kept beside her, turned with a flounce, and went off in the opposite direction. He wheeled to follow—and so suddenly, that he ran into the very arms of a masked gentleman who, the moment before, had been advancing upon him from the rear. He snapped out a half-angry apology, and was for speeding on; but, to his astonishment, the other gripped and held him like a vice.
“Unhand me, sir!” cried the Duke. “What! do you dare?”
For the moment he was beside himself with fury, seeing his light quarry, who had taken advantage of the check, in the act of making her escape. But his struggles availed him nothing.
“Aye, I dare,” said the stranger viciously; and he turned his face, in a white fume, to regard the flight of the fugitive. “Go your way,” said he between his teeth, as if addressing the receding figure. “You are marked down at last, my lady, and will be called on in due time to pay the reckoning. And as for you, you villain”—he whisked like a devil on his prisoner—“you have got to answer for this here and now.”
He had to, somehow. His Highness, with that acute perception of his, saw the necessity, and ceased to strive. He was fairly trapped, and very certainly by the injured husband himself. He had nothing for it but to bring all his finesse to the solution of so embarrassing a problem.
“Sir,” said he, with a good deal of haughtiness, “will you please to quit this rude grasp on me? You need not fear. I am a man of honour.”