“I presume you allude to Lady Lymston?” put in the painter coldly.
“Of course. I say, in tumblin’ to the idea and embarkin’ in the game, I’ve made an ass of myself,” said the Duke. “As for you, you’re in clover.”
“Say nettles,” sighed the painter.
“Passin’ under my name——”
“Pardon,” said the painter. “The name is my own. And let us say, simply, that in changing identities with your Grace in order to enable your Grace to cast a glamour of artistic romance over a very ordinary——”
“Eh?” interjected the Duke.
“Situation,” continued the painter. “In doing this I have laid up for myself a considerable store of regret.”
“Regret! Why, hang you! You’re chalkin’ up scores the whole bally time!” shrieked the Duke, stamping his tan shoes on the canvas-protected parquet. “Beaumaris’s guests—only a few purposely selected fogies and duffers, who don’t count, it’s true—believe you to be me. They flatter you and defer to you. You take the Dowager in to dinner, and I’m left to toddle after with Susanna’s French governess. I’m out of everything—and obliged to talk Art, bally Art—from mornin’ till night! While you—you’ve ridden to cub-hunts on my mounts—driven my motor-cars and bust my tires——”
“And very bad ones they are,” said the painter.
“You ride infernally well, and show off before the field at Henworthy Three Gates, where the hardest riders in the county hang back. You ain’t afraid of a trappy take-off—you weren’t built for a broken neck,” screeched the incensed Peer. “You play golf too, and win the Coronation Challenge Cup for the Lymston Club, takin’ seven holes out of the eighteen, and holin’ the round in the score of sixty-eight.”