The duke gazed at her, at first with an expression of reverent admiration.
"Ah, yes, beautiful!" he murmured; then his face hardened and darkened. "How good, how sweet, how innocent she looks! And yet I'll wager all I own that she is no better than the rest. That with all her angelic eyes and sweet childlike lips, she will be ready to barter her beauty, her youth, her soul, for rank and wealth." He groaned, and clutched his chair with his long, thin, and, alas! claw-like hands. "I cannot bear it. Yorke, I meant to conceal my title, and while I staid down here pretend to be just a poor man, an ordinary commoner, one who would not tempt any girl to play fast and loose with her soul. I should have liked to have made a friend of that girl; to have seen her, talked with her every day, without the perpetual, ever-present dread that she would try and make me marry her. But it is too late, it seems. This woman here knows, everybody in the place knows, or will know. It is too late, unless——."
He stopped and looked up.
"Yorke!"
"Hallo!" said that young fellow, scarcely turning his head.
"Will you—do you mind—you say you owe me something?" faltered the duke, eagerly.
"Why, of course," assented Yorke Auchester, and he came and bent over him. "What's the matter, Dolph? What is it you want me to do?"
"Just this," said the duke, laying his hand—it trembled—on the strong arm; "be the Duke of Rothbury for a time, and let this miserable cripple sink into the background. You will not refuse? Say it is a whim; a mere fad. Sick people," he smiled, bitterly, "are entitled to these whims and fads, you know, and I've not had many. Humor this one; be the duke, and save me for once from the humiliation which every young girl inflicts upon me."
Yorke Auchester's brow darkened, and he bit his lip.