Mr. Mamble, who had listened in fulminating wrath, expressed the opinion that he was a practised rogue, and besought the constable to do his duty. The constable, who had been slightly impressed by the Duke’s manner, said in an aloof way that he knew his duty without being told it, and asked the Duke for his full name.

“Adolphus Gillespie Vernon Ware,” responded the Duke coolly. “Would you wish me also to recite my titles to you?”

Mr. Mamble roared out: “Stow that foolery, will you? Your name’s Rufford!”

“No, that is merely one of my minor titles,” said the Duke.

The constable laid down his pen. “Now, look’ee here!” he said mildly. “If so be you’re his Grace of Sale, you’ll have to prove it, because it don’t seem a likely tale, and you don’t look like no Duke, nor you wouldn’t be staying at the Pelican!”

Mr. Snape smiled with malign satisfaction. “No doubt you have your visiting-card upon you, sir?” he said.

“Ay, that’s the dandy!” agreed the constable, brightening, and looking hopefully at the Duke.

The Duke, now quite confirmed in his dislike of Mr. Snape, said, flushing slightly: “No. I have not. I—I am travelling strictly incognito.”

Mr. Mamble gave a crack of sardonic mirth. “Ay, I’ll be bound you are! How much more time am I to waste kicking my heels here?”

“But I have got my watch!” suddenly remembered the Duke, drawing it from his pocket, and laying it upon the table. “You will perceive that it is engraved with my arms on one side, and with the letter S on the other.”

All three men closely inspected the timepiece, and the constable began to look uneasy. However, Mr. Snape pointed out that such a daring rogue would make nothing of picking pockets, and was felt to have scored a point. The constable then had a happy thought, and said with some relief: “It’s easy settled, and it won’t do for me to go making no mistakes. I’ll have a man go out to Cheyney, which is his Grace of Sale’s place, and if this gentleman is the Duke he can easy be identified by them as knows him!”

Mr. Mamble, who had watching the Duke, said shrewdly: “Don’t like the sound of that, eh, my fine fellow?”

The Duke did not like the sound of it at all. It seemed to him more than probable that those in charge of Cheyney would spurn with contumely the suggestion that he might be in the Roundhouse at Bath; while if it was disclosed to them that he had come to Bath with one coat and no attendants they would quite certainly refuse to believe it. He was not really at all anxious that they should believe it, either, for they would be very much shocked, and he would find himself obliged to enter into long and fatiguing explanations.

“No, I do not like it,” he said. “I’ve no desire to sit here for the rest of the day, while someone goes to Cheyney and back. I have a better notion than that.” He turned to the constable. “Are you familiar with Lord Gaywood?” he asked.

The constable said bitterly that he was very familiar with Lord Gaywood, and added some pungent criticisms on high-spirited young gentlemen’s notions of amusement.

“Does he box the watch?” asked the Duke sympathetically. “I don’t do it myself, but I feel sure Gaywood does, when he isin his cups. Let me have a pen and some paper, if you please.”

Mr. Mamble at once protested against this further waste of time, but the constable, on whom (for all his dislike of that young gentleman) Lord Gaywood’s name was working powerfully, fetched some writing materials, and told Mr. Mamble it would be as well not to act hasty.

The Duke drew up his chair to the table, and began to write a note to his betrothed.

“My dear Harriet,” he scrawled rapidly, “J fear you will utterly cast me off, for I am now under arrest for being a dangerous rogue. Unless I can convince Mr. Mamble that I am indeed myself, nothing short of my instant incarceration in a dungeon will satisfy him. I beg your pardon for putting you to so much trouble, but pray tell Gaywood the whole, and desire him, with my compliments, to come to the Roundhouse and identify me. Ever yours, Sale.”

He folded this missive, wrote Harriet’s name and direction upon it, and handed it to the constable with instructions to have it conveyed immediately to Laura Place. The constable said he would do this, and added apologetically that duty was duty, and he hoped, if he should have made a mistake, that it would not be held against him.

The Duke reassured him on this head, but Mr. Mamble exploded with wrath, and said that all this tomfoolery was not helping him to find his boy.

“Well, I will help you to find you, provided you go to look for him yourself, and do not send this objectionable fellow to bully him into saying what he wants him to,” said the Duke. “You may then ask him if I kidnapped him, and I hope you will be satisfied that I did not.”

“Where is he?” demanded Mr. Mamble.

“Are you going to go yourself?”

“Damn your impudence, yes, I am!”

“He is in Sydney Gardens, probably lost in one of the labyrinths. And don’t storm and roar at him, for it doesn’t answer at all!”

“I don’t need you to tell me how to treat my own son!” said Mr. Mamble angrily.

“That is precisely what you do need,” replied the Duke, his serene tones in striking contrast to Mr. Mamble’s explosive method of speech. “Presently I shall have a good deal to say to you on that score, but you had best find Tom first. I don’t know where you are putting up in Bath, but you may send this fellow to await you there. I’ve no wish for his company.”

Mr. Mamble glared at him, but he was a fair-minded man, and, having endured Mr. Snape’s unadulterated society for several days, he could not but admit the reasonableness of the Duke’s request. He told Mr. Snape to go back to the White Horse, since he was of no use to anyone, being a muttonheaded fool, no more fit to be in charge of a guinea-pig than of a growing lad. He then said that if the Duke was trying to fob him off while his accomplices spirited Tom away he would rend him limb from limb, and departed, calling loudly for a hack.

The Duke resigned himself to await Lord Gaywood’s arrival. As the minutes crawled by, it began to be borne in upon him that the messenger had not found Lady Harriet at home. He hoped very much that her return to Laura Place would not be long delayed, for not only did he find the chair on which he was sitting excessively uncomfortable, but he fancied that the constable was regarding him with increasing suspicion.

After about three quarters of an hour a diversion took place. Tom, looking heated and pugnacious, bounced into the room, and launched himself upon the Duke, grasping him by the arm with painful violence, and crying: “They shan’t arrest you! They shan’t! I’ll fight them all! Oh, sir, don’t let Pa take me away, for I won’t go with him, I won’t!”

Mr. Mamble, who had followed his son into the room, said: “You young rascal, that’s a pretty way to talk! And me your Pa! Ay, and as for you, Mr. Whatever-your-name-is, if you didn’t kidnap my boy—which, mind you, I’m not by any means sure you didn’t—you’ve properly cozened him out of his senses with your smooth talk! And what’s more, he says you’re no more the Duke of Sale than what I am!”

“No, he doesn’t know I am,” said the Duke.

“Sir, you’re not!” said Tom, apparently feeling that it must be to his discredit.

“Well, yes, Tom, I’m afraid I am,” said the Duke apologetically.

“You’re Mr. Rufford! Oh, do say you are, sir! I know you are only bamming! Dukes are grand, stuffy people, and you aren’t!”

“No, of course I am not,” said the Duke soothingly. “I cannot help being a Duke, you know. You need not let it distress you! I am still your Mr. Rufford, after all!”

The sullen look, which indicated that he was very much upset, descended upon Tom’s face. He said gruffly: “Well, I don’t care! I won’t go home with Pa, at all events! I hate Pa! He has spoiled everything!”

“That is not a proper way to speak of your Papa, Tom, and it is moreover quite untrue,” replied the Duke, removing the clutch from his arm.

“What you need,” Mr. Mamble informed his son bodingly, “is to have your jacket well dusted, my lad! Ay, and it’s what you’ll get before you’re much older!”

“And that,” said the Duke, “is hardly a felicitous way of recommending yourself to your son, sir.”

What Mr. Mamble might have replied to this was never known, for at that moment the constable who had been sent to Laura Place ushered Lady Harriet into the room.

The Duke leaped to his feet, exclaiming: “Harriet!”

She put back her veil, blushing, and saying in her soft shy voice: “I thought I should come myself. Gaywood is gone out, and you know how he would roast you! I am so very sorry you have been kept in this horrid place for so long! I had gone out with Belinda, and this poor man was obliged to stay till I returned.

The Duke took her hand, and kissed it. “I would not have had you come for the world!” he said. “Indeed, I don’t know what I deserve for dragging you into such a coil! You did not come alone!”

“No, indeed, the constable brought me,” she assured him. “I beg your pardon if you do not like it, Gilly, but I did not wish to bring my maid, or James, for they would have been bound to gave gossiped about it, you know. What is it I must do to have you set at liberty?”

She looked enquiringly towards the senior constable as she spoke, who bowed very low, and said that if it was not troubling her ladyship too much he would be obliged to her for stating whether or not the gentleman was the Duke of Sale.

“Oh, yes, certainly he is!” she said. She blushed more than ever, and added: “I am engaged to be married to him, so, you see, I must know.”