"It is getting late," I said. "Don't you think we had better bid each other good-night?"
"Perhaps we had, and yet I don't feel a bit tired."
"Are you quite sure that you have had a pleasant day?"
"Quite sure," he said, with a laugh. "The only thing I regret is having heard that wretched story this morning. Do you recall the gusto with which Nikola related it?"
I replied in the affirmative, and asked him his reason for referring to it now.
"Because I could not help thinking of it this evening, when his voice was so pleasant and his manner so kind. When I picture him going back to that house to-night, to that dreadful room, to sleep alone in that great building, it fairly makes me shudder. Good-night, old fellow. You have treated me royally to-day; I could scarcely have had more sensations compressed into my waking hours if I'd been a king."
CHAPTER IV
After our excursion through Venice with Nikola by night, an interval of a week elapsed before we saw anything of him. During that time matters, so far as our party was concerned, progressed with the smoothness of a well-regulated clock. In my own mind I had not the shadow of a doubt that Glenbarth was head over ears in love with Gertrude Trevor. He followed her about wherever she went; seemed never to tire of paying her attention, and whenever we were alone together, endeavoured to inveigle me into a discussion of her merits. That she had faults nothing would convince him.
Whether she reciprocated his good-feeling was a matter which, to my mind, there existed a considerable amount of doubt. Women are proverbially more secretive in these affairs than men, and if Miss Trevor entertained a warmer feeling than friendship for the young Duke, she certainly managed to conceal it admirably. More than once, I believe, my wife endeavoured to sound her upon the subject. She had to confess herself beaten, however. Miss Trevor liked the Duke of Glenbarth very much; she was quite agreed that he had not an atom of conceit in his constitution; he gave himself no airs; moreover, she was prepared to meet my wife half-way, and to say that she thought it a pity he did not marry. No, she had never heard that there was an American millionaire girl, extremely beautiful, and accomplished beyond the average, who was pining to throw her millions and herself at his feet! "And then," added my wife, in a tone that seemed to suggest that she considered it my fault that the matter had not been brought to a successful conclusion long since, "what do you think she said? 'Why on earth doesn't he marry this American? So many men of title do now-a-days.' What do you think of that? I can tell you, Dick, I could have shaken her!"