"You will have what framed?" The duchess glanced at what the duke was so tenderly caressing, almost, as it seemed, a little dubiously. "Whatever is it you have there?"
"It is the lock of hair which that scoundrel sent me." Something in the lady's face caused him to ask a question; "Didn't he tell you he had sent it to me?"
"Hereward!"
"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, was half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what really seemed to be a look of inquiry. 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 neighborhood.