The duke glances at her.
"You will do nothing of the kind," he says. "I am not going to impose upon your good nature, Miss Lisle. Besides, I dare say, I shall take forty winks."
Leslie hesitates a moment, then she gets up and goes for the easel; but Yorke is too quick for her.
"Come along, Mr. Lisle," he says, touching him on the arm, while he stands looking from the edge of the tower absently, and the three descend.
"Now, this strikes me as a good place," says Yorke, setting up the easel. "Don't know much about it you know, but it seems to me that the outline and the——."
"Excellent; yes, very good," assents the artist, eagerly getting out his drawing paper. "Yes, I can make a picture of this. You need not wait," he adds. "You will want to talk and——."
"I see," says Yorke. "Come along, Miss Lisle; we're evidently not wanted."
They stroll away side by side, and slowly descend the grassy slope, which gradually becomes broken by rock, which kindly nature, who has always an eye to effect, has clothed with ferns and moss and lichen.
"I suppose I ought to show you the hermit's cell?" says Leslie. "Everybody sees it."
"By all means," he assents, but rather absently—the loud laugh of Finetta, the music-hall song are still echoing hideously in his ears. "Which hermit?"