"You never asked her—what I think of asking one of these days?"
"Never."
"Thank God, old man. I'm dead nuts on her myself, I tell you frankly; and I mean to tell her when I can rake together the pluck. I'm not sure I can keep it to myself much longer. The one thing I'm sure of is that she'll laugh in my face—if she isn't too riled! I hear her doing it every night of my life as I lie where you're sitting and listen to the pines outside. I hear her saying every blessed thing but 'yes!' Yet it isn't such cheek as all that, is it, Claude? I want your candid opinion. I'm not such a larrikin as I was that day you met me, am I?"
And he turned to the other with a simple, strong humility, very touching in him; but Claude jumped up, and getting behind him so that their eyes should not meet, laid his hands affectionately on the Duke's shoulders.
"You are not the same man," he said with a laugh; "yet you are the same good fellow! I could wish Olivia no better fate—than the one you think of. So I wish you luck—from my heart. And now let us go."
On the lawn they found the Home Secretary driving a dozen golf-balls into space from an impromptu tee. He had come for good now, the session being over at last. And this was his daily exercise before breakfast, and his valet's daily grievance, whose duty it was to recover the balls.
Mr. Sellwood accompanied the younger men into the house, where Claude had still to shave and dress; but the Duke was the uninterested witness of an interesting scene, between the Home Secretary and his wife, before any one else came down to breakfast. The subject was that of the Nottingham murder.
"They are making an example of you!" said Lady Caroline bitterly, looking up from her husband's daily stack of press-cuttings, which she always opened.
"Let them," said Mr. Sellwood, from the depths of the Sportsman, which he read before any of his letters.
"They call it a judicial murder—and upon my word, so do I! Your decision is most unpopular; they clamour for your resignation—and I must say that I should do the same. Here's a cartoon of you playing golf with a human skull for the ball!"