He smiled again, thinking how far Marion would be removed from the condition of a decayed spinster.
"If you go to the Castle now you will most certainly not see the Duke there. The orders are very strict that no one is to be admitted, and I am sure you would have no chance of seeing him there. But if you give me any message, I promise it shall reach him as though you had seen him yourself."
"Perhaps," she said vivaciously, "you are the Duke yourself."
"I am," he said simply; "I am the Duke." He felt glad that the first person of the outside world who knew him as the Duke, should have reminded him of Marion. "If you give me your name and address, you may count on a subscription from me, on one condition."
"And what is the condition, your grace?"
"That you say nothing about this meeting; for if you did, the place would so swarm with good people like yourself, that we should have to fly. Stay, I'll enlist you in my defence. I will give you a subscription every year. I have promised you the subscription with a condition, and I will impose no fresh condition now. But if between this and the time I leave the Castle for town, no one else gets into the grounds, I'll give you a donation as well as a subscription."
He had spoken playfully, and she laughed.
"If that is so, I will paint your grace in the most atrocious colours."
"But that will be telling of our meeting."
"Oh no! I will paint as though from hearsay."