Young Mr. Browne went away at dusk, half reeling under the responsibility of existence, and eventually reached the side of the anxious young woman uptown. He bared the facts and awaited the wail of dismay.
"I think it will be perfectly jolly," she cried, instead, and kissed him rapturously.
Over on the opposite side of the Atlantic the excitement in certain circles was even more intense than that produced in Boston. Lord Deppingham needed the money, but he was a whole day in grasping the fact that his wife could not have it and him at the same time. The beautiful and fashionable Lady Deppingham, once little Agnes Ruthven, came as near to having hysteria as Englishwomen ever do, but she called in a lawyer instead of a doctor. For three days she neglected her social duties (and they were many), ignored her gallant admirers (and they were many), and hurried back and forth between home and chambers so vigorously that his lordship was seldom closer than a day behind in anything she did.
There was a great rattling of trunks, a jangling of keys, a thousand good-byes, a cast-off season, and the Deppinghams were racing away for the island of Japat somewhere in the far South Seas.
CHAPTER III
INTRODUCING HOLLINGSWORTH CHASE
While all this was being threshed out by the persons most vitally interested in the affairs of Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme, events of a most unusual character were happening to one who not only had no interest in the aforesaid heritage, but no knowledge whatever of its existence. The excitement attending the Skaggs-Wyckholme revelations had not yet spread to the Grand Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg, apparently lost as it was in the cluster of small units which went to make up a certain empire: one of the world powers. The Grand Duke Michael disdained the world at large; he had but little in common with anything that moved beyond the confines of his narrow domain. His court was sleepy, lackadaisical, unemotional, impregnable to the taunts of progression; his people were thrifty, stolid and absolutely stationary in their loyalty to the ancient traditions of the duchy; his army was a mere matter of taxation and not a thing of pomp or necessity. Four times a year he inspected the troops, and just as many times in the year were the troops obliged to devote themselves to rigorous display. The rest of the time was spent in social intrigue and whistling for the war-clouds that never came.
The precise location of the Grand Duchy in the map of the world has little or nothing to do with this narrative; indeed, were it not for the fact that the Grand Duke possessed a charming and most desirable daughter, the Thorberg dynasty would not be mentioned at all. For that matter, it is brought to light briefly for the sole purpose of identifying the young lady in question, and the still more urgent desire to connect her past with her future—for which we have, perhaps intemperately, an especial consideration. It is only necessary, therefore, for us to step into and out of the Grand Duchy without the procrastination usual in a sojourner, stopping long enough only to see how tiresome it would be to stay, and to wonder why any one remained who could get away. Not that the Grand Duchy was an utterly undesirable place, but that too much time already had been wasted there by the populace itself.