The brown man’s—I mean the Duke’s—voice came to my still startled ear.
“You’ll find being a Duchess rather a bore. The natural boredom, to which all flesh is heir, will afflict you in an accentuated form. But you’ll get used to it. Use is by way of being a universal panacea. Then you’ll discover that it’s a sort of boredom which you have rather grown to like. My mother used to say she had.”
I turned the handle of the door, and, without a word, stepped out into the road. So soon as I stood upright I realised that I was trembling from head to foot. I wondered, hazily, if I was going to be silly; dimly aware that it was an absurdly inconvenient place in which to make a fuss. Instantly the brown man—I mean the Duke—was at my side.
“Why have you got out here? You prefer to walk the remainder of the distance? It’s fine for walking. My house—our house—is but over the way.”
“Will you please tell me where is the nearest place at which I can find a cab?”
I know little of that part of London. Especially is it strange to me at night. We seemed to be in a great square, with huge houses all round it, and a fine wide road, which, apparently, we had all to ourselves.
“We shall not need one, it is but a step.” Then, I suppose, he perceived that I was looking queer, because all at once his tone became solicitous. “May I beg you to accept my arm. Has anything distressed you?”
“I want a cab,” was all that I could murmur.
What he would have said I do not know. Before he could speak another brougham came bowling along. It stopped just by us, and out of it—of all persons in the world—walked that wicked old man. He marched straight up to where we were standing—as if he had the slightest ground for interference. What he imagined had occurred I, of course, cannot say; but he addressed us in a truly remarkable strain.
“Just what I expected—knew I should find this sort of thing going on. If you had asked me, you would have been warned in time. You young people are never able to judge for yourselves whom you can trust. Now, my dear young lady, you would have seen how much wiser you would have been if you had remained with me.”