"Did the brute tell you that he meant to cut off your little finger?"
A very curious look came into the lady's face. She glanced at the Duke as if she, all at once, were half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what really seemed to be a look of enquiry. Her voice was tremulously anxious:
"Hereward, did--did the accident affect you mentally?"
"How could it not have affected me mentally? Do you think that my mental organization is of steel?"
"But you look so well?"
"Of course I look well, now that I have you back again. Tell me, darling, did that hound actually threaten you with cutting off your arm? If he did, I shall feel half inclined to kill him yet."
The Duchess seemed positively to shrink from her better-half's near neighbourhood:
"Hereward, was it a Pickford's van?"
The Duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be:
"Was what a Pickford's van?"