How hard it was that she should be obliged to deceive this kind-hearted friend of Yorke's, and how she longed for the time when he and her father should know her and Yorke's blissful secrets, when all concealment should be at an end, and her great happiness proclaimed. And yet it was sweet, this secret of theirs; it seemed to make their love more precious and sacred.
"Yes," said the duke. "Yorke is capital company. He is a great favorite wherever he goes."
"Yes," she murmured.
"He's so light-hearted," went on the duke. "And light-hearted people are extremely rare nowadays; but after all it isn't very much to his credit; I mean that it is easy to be joyous when you are young, in perfect health, and are——," he paused a second, "a duke."
"Are dukes so much happier than other people?" she said, with a faint smile.
He winced. She had unconsciously struck home.
"No," he said, laconically. "Most of those I know are very much less happy than the rest of mankind, but it is different with the Duke of Rothbury. He is, as I say, young and in splendid health——," his lips moved and he sighed cynically, "but if he weren't he would still be very popular and always welcome everywhere."
"Why?" said Leslie, looking at him with her guileless eyes.
He met their glance for a moment, then lowered his keen, suspicious ones.
"Is it acting?" he asked himself, and he gnawed at his lip.