"To me there is something sacred in the very word. My heart expands, grows warm in the presence of a good woman. I cannot look at a beautiful girl without thinking—don't misunderstand me, Yorke."
"No, no, old chap!"
"I love, I reverence them; and yet they have made me fly from London, have caused me almost to vow that I will never go back; that I will hide my misshapen self for the rest of my weary days——."
"Why Dolph——."
"Listen," said the duke. "Look at me, Yorke. Ah, it is unnecessary. You know what I am. A thing for women to pity, to shudder at—not to love! And yet"—he hid his face—"some of them have tried to persuade me that I—I—could inspire a young girl with love; that I—I—oh, think of it, Yorke!—that I had only to offer myself as a husband to the most beautiful, the fairest, straightest, queenliest of them, to be accepted!"
Yorke Auchester leaned over him.
"You take these things too seriously, Dolph," he said, soothingly. "It's—it's the way of the world, and you can't better it; you must take it as it comes."
"The way of the world! That a girl—young, beautiful, graceful—should be sold by her mother and father, should be willing to sell herself—ah, Yorke!—to a thing like me. Is that the way of the world? What a wicked, heartless, vicious world, then; and what an unhappy wretch am I! What fools they are, too, Yorke! They think it is so fine a thing to wear a ducal coronet! Ha, ha!" He laughed with sad bitterness. "So fine, that they would barter their souls to the evil one to feel the pressure of that same coronet on their brows, to hear other women call them 'Your Grace.' Oh, Yorke, what fools! How I could open their eyes if they would let me! Look at me. I am the Duke of Rothbury, Knight of the Garter—poor garter!" and he looked at his thin leg—"and what else? I almost forget some of my titles; and I would swap them all for a straight back and stalwart limbs like yours. But, Yorke, to share those titles, how many women would let me limp to the altar on their arms!"
He laughed again, still more bitterly.