At last the thunder broke, for the scandal reached the castle, and was there overheard by the Duchess in a verse of the ballad sung under her window by a gardener's boy. She made some inquiries, and thereafter went straight to her husband.
“What is this I hear about your Chamberlain?” she asked.
Argyll drew down his brows and sighed. “My Chamberlain?” said he. “It must be something dreadful by the look of her grace the Duchess. What is it this time? High treason, or marriage, or the need of it? Or has old Knapdale died by a blessed disposition and left him a fortune? That would save me the performance of a very unpleasant duty.”
“It has gone the length of scurrilous songs about our worthy gentleman. The town has been ringing with scandals about him for a week, and I never heard a word about it till half-an-hour ago.”
“And so you feel defrauded, my dear, which is natural enough, being a woman as well as a duchess. I am glad to know that so squalid a story should be so long of reaching your ears; had it been anything to anybody's credit you would have been the first to learn of it. To tell the truth, I've heard the song myself, and if I have seemed unnaturally engaged for a day or two it is because I have been in a quandary as to what I should do. Now that you know the story, what do you advise, my dear?”
“A mere woman must leave that to the Lord Justice-General,” she replied. “And now that your Chamberlain turns out a greater scamp than I thought him, I'm foolish enough to be sorry for him.”
“And so am I,” said the Duke, and looked about the shelves of books lining the room. “Here's a multitude of counsellors, a great deal of the world's wisdom so far as it has been reduced to print, and I'll swear I could go through it from end to end without learning how I should judge a problem like Sim MacTaggart.”
She would have left him then, but he stopped her with a smiling interrogation. “Well?” he said.
She waited.
“What about the customary privilege?” he went on.