"I say," panted the duke.
"You are our prisoner. Dismount and come into this house."
"Prisoner, you fool! I'm a guest at Ardsley and I'm looking for a lady."
"That's a very unlikely story. Collins, help the gentleman down;" and the reporter obeyed instructions with so much zeal that the noble gentleman fell prone, and was assisted to his feet with a fine mockery of helpfulness.
"I tell you I'm looking for a lady whose horse ran away with her! I'm the Duke of Ballywinkle and brother-in-law to Mr. Ardmore. I'll have you sent to jail if you stop me here."
"Come along, Duke, and we'll see what you look like," said Cooke, leading the way to the bungalow veranda. Within Ardmore was lighting lamps. There was a long room finished in black oak, with a fireplace at one end, and a table in the center. The floors were covered with handsome rugs and the walls were hung with photographs and etchings. Ardmore sat on the back of a leather settee in a pose assumed at the moment of the duke's entrance. It was a pose of entire nonchalance, and Ardmore's cap, perched on the back of his head, and his brown hair rumpled boyishly, added to the general effect of comfort and ease.
The duke blinked for a moment in the lamplight, then he roared out joyously:
"Ardy, old man!" and advanced toward his brother-in-law with outstretched hand.
"Keep him off; he's undoubtedly quite mad," said Ardmore, staring coldly, and bending his riding-crop across his knees. "Collins, please ride on after the lady and bring her back this way."
Cooke had seated the prisoner rather rudely in a chair, and the noble duke, having lost the power of speech in amazement and fright, rubbed his eyes and then fastened them incredulously on Ardmore; but there was no question about it, he had been seized with violence; he had been repudiated by his own brother-in-law—the useless, stupid Tommy Ardmore, who, at best, had only a child's mind for pirate stories and who was indubitably the most negligible of negligible figures in the drama of life as the duke knew it.