Mr. Creighton shook his hand heartily. “Thank you. I won’t. But I’m glad you feel that way.”
He went with his guest to the outer door. The boy had disappeared. Mr. Creighton opened the door. The Duke was about to pass out. He turned back, hesitated a moment. “I shall go up and see your daughter at once,” he said. “Have I your permission to tell her what—what—you have told me?”
“Yes,” said Mr. Creighton. “She must know sooner or later.”
CHAPTER X.
The Duke did not call a hansom when he reached the street. The interview to come was several times more trying to face than the last had been; he preferred to walk the miles between the Equitable Building and Murray Hill.
He reached the house in an hour. Miss Creighton was in the library reading a novel by the fire, and looked up brightly as he entered.
“You are a very bad man,” she said, “I have waited in for you all day, and it is now half-past four. I am reading Kenilworth. The love scenes are too funny for words. Amy hangs upon Leicester’s neck and exclaims ‘My noble earl!’ Fancy if I called you ‘My noble duke.’ How perfectly funny!”
The Duke took his stand on the hearth-rug—man’s immemorial citadel of defence—and tapped his chin with his hat, regarding Mabel stolidly with his fishy pale-blue gaze. He was cross and uncomfortable and hated himself, but his face expressed nothing.
“I have seen your father,” he said.
“Oh—have you? What—what did he say?”