He led the way, as he spoke, across the wide hall to the library door, and set this open, smiling benignly upon the Duke and informing him in a confidential undervoice that he need entertain no fear that the dinner being prepared would disgrace him in the eyes of his future Duchess. “For,” he said, “I deemed it proper at the outset to give the matter my personal supervision.”

The Duke found himself saying thank-you in what he knew to be a weak way.

His cousin was lounging in a chair beside the fire. He looked up lazily, and, when he saw Harriet, got to his feet, his brows lifting. “Your very obedient servant, ma’am!” he said, laughing, and shaking hands with her. “How very like Adolphus not to tell us that he meant to bring you with him! You may blame him for it that you find me very unsuitably dressed to receive you. How do you go on, Harry? You look very becomingly!” He drew forward a chair for her. “I have been laughing this hour past, Adolphus, at your protégé’s crowning devilry! Oh, yes, I was dragged out into the shrubbery to be regaled with it! I will own that he is a youth of parts. What have you done with the fair Belinda?”

“We dropped her—quite literally, you know!—into the arms of her precious Mr. Mudgley, and there left her. Gideon, when I said that that fellow might make himself useful, I never meant that he should take upon himself the entire conduct of my house! What is to be done with him? Borrowdale himself never bade me welcome in a more fatherly spirit!”

“You had better turn him off then. I have no objection, since I am not residing here, but I think it only right to warn you that he has won my father’s approval—as much by his firm handling of Mamble as by his undoubted excellence as a steward and butler.”

The Duke could not help laughing. “He is incorrigible! Only conceive of my uncle’s feelings if he knew the truth! I bear him no malice—indeed, I am grateful to him for so much enlarging my experience—but I will not permit him to rule my household!” He saw that Harriet was looking from him to Gideon in a little perplexity, and added: “My love, it is the most ridiculous situation! That is the fellow who cast me into acellar, and offered to sell me to my wicked cousin!”

She was verymuch shocked, and exclaimed in a faint voice. It was incomprehensible to her that anyone should be amused by such a circumstance, but both Gilly and Gideon plainly thought it excessively funny, so she smiled dutifully, realizing the truth of her mama’s dictum, that there was never any knowing what stupidities men would find diverting. But she could not forbear to implore the Duke not to keep such a dreadful person near him. “Indeed, he ought to be put in prison!” she said earnestly.

“Undoubtedly he ought, my dear, but you must hold me excused from denouncing him, if you please! He is by far too amusing! Besides, he did me no harm, but, on the contrary, a great deal of good.”

It was not to be supposed that Harriet could regard with anything but horror one who had cast her Gilly into a cellar, but she perceived that the Duke’s mind was made up, and said no more. Liversedge himself came back into the room a minute or two later, with an offer to escort her to the housekeeper, and so bland and respectful was his manner that she could almost have supposed the whole affair to have been a mistake. She rose from her chair, and said meekly that she would like to take off her hat.

“I warn you, Harriet, you will not escape from Mrs. Kempsey for an hour at least!” Gideon told her, mocking his cousin. “She will tell you how weak a chest Adolphus always had, and what remedies were tried, and how she nursed him once when he had the measles. She nursed me too, but she won’t waste a moment on my sufferings, though I swear I was much more full of measles than Adolphus!”

The Duke smiled. “But you brought them home from Eton and I took them from you!” he reminded his cousin. “How could you expect to be forgiven such shocking conduct? Don’t let her bore on for ever, Harry!”

“Indeed, I shall not think it a bore!” she said. “I hope she will tell me what she likes, for I mean to get upon terms with all your people, Gilly.”

He walked beside her to the door, handing her cloak to Liversedge, and saying, as he did so: “When you have taken her ladyship upstairs, come back to me: I must settle with you.”

“I will certainly do so, your Grace,” Liversedge responded with a bow. “But possibly you will excuse me for a few minutes while I cast my eye over the kitchen. I fancy you will be pleased with my way of serving woodcocks a la Tartar, but the menial at present presiding in the kitchen is not to be trusted with rare dishes. There is, moreover, the question of a sweet, which the presence of a lady at the board makes indispensable. I doubt whether the individual aforementioned has a mind fit to rise above damson tart and jelly, but I hope to contrive a Chantilly Basket which will not disgust her ladyship.”

He bowed again at the conclusion of this speech and sailed away without giving the Duke time to answer him. “If I must consort with rogues,” remarked Gideon, pouring out some sherry, “I own I like them to be in the grand manner. It’s my belief you’ll never be rid of this one, Adolphus.”

He was mistaken. When Liversedge presently returned to the library, it soon became evident that he had no desire to remain at Cheyney. He found the life there too circumscribed.

“Had it been your Grace’s principal residence, I might have been tempted to consider the propriety of establishing myself in some useful capacity,” he explained, with one of his airy gestures. “Although, I must add, servitude, however genteel in its nature, has little charm for me. It does not, if I may say so, offer sufficient scope for a man of my vision. Not that I would have your Grace think that it was with reluctance that I assumed the control of this establishment. On the contrary! I have the greatest regard for your Grace—indeed, I may say that I was much taken with you at the first moment of setting eyes on you!—and I have been happy to feel that I was being of service to you.”

“Before you succumb to this eloquence, Adolphus,” drawled Gideon, “I would remind you that this admirer of yours would have murdered you for a paltry sum.”

“There, sir,” instantly replied Liversedge, “I must join issue with you! For fifty thousand pounds I might have been able to overcome my natural repugnance to putting a period to his Grace’s life, but for a lesser sum I could not have brought myself to contemplate it. Those nobler instincts which even the basest of us have must have revolted.”

The Duke regarded him curiously, his chin in his hand. “Would you really have murdered me?” he asked.

“If,” said Mr. Liversedge, “I were to seek refuge in a lie, you, your Grace, would not believe me, and I should have debased myself to no purpose. I shall not seek to deceive you: for fifty thousand pounds I must have steeled myself, if not to perform the deed, at least to order its execution. I do not deny that it would have been a struggle, for I am not a man of violence, but I am inclined to think that the temptation would have been overmastering. A man of your wealth, sir, has no business to offer himself to be the prey of those less fortunately circumstanced, and that, you will allow, is precisely what you did. It was neither politic nor right, but I shall say no more on that head. Your Grace is young, and, when you came, incognito, into my orbit, you were—if I may say so without offence—shockingly green! I flatter myself that through my exertions you have gained in experience, and will not err again after that fashion.”

“You had better reward the fellow!” interpolated Gideon.

Mr. Liversedge was quite unabashed. “Captain Ware, though scarcely in sympathy with me, touches the very nub of the matter,” he said. “Consider, your Grace! If we are to balance our accounts, which of us is the gainer?”

“I perceive that you are of the opinion that I stand in your debt,” replied the Duke, faintly smiling.

“Certainly,” said Liversedge, inclining his head. “Can it be in doubt? You were, I fancy, in search of adventure: I gave it to you. You were green: I compelled you to put off the boy and to assume the man. Let us glance for a moment at the other side of the ledger! You snatched from me the letters which I had acquired from your young cousin; you stole from me the means whereby I might have hoped to have acquired other such letters—I refer to my adopted niece; you burned down the wretched hovel which was my sole shelter; you drove into miserable seclusion the individual who owned it, and is nearly related to me; and by these several acts—unthinkingly, I daresay, but none the less painful in their consequences—reduced me to a state of penury which makes it impossible for me to depart from this house.”

“If I made it possible for you to leave this house, what would you do?” asked the Duke.

“God grant me patience!” groaned Gideon.

The Duke ignored him. “Well, Liversedge?”

“It would depend,” replied Liversedge, “on the extent of your Grace’s generosity. My ambition has ever been to preside over a genteel establishment where those with a taste for gaming may be sure of select company, elegant surroundings, and fair play—for my experience has taught me that nothing could be more fatal to the ultimate success of such a venture than to make use of such shifts as the concave-suit, fuzzing, cogging, or in a word any of the Greeking transactions by which novices in this form of livelihood too often think to make their fortunes. That kind of thing may answer for a space, but can never lay the foundations of a permanent establishment of the refinement I have in mind. I attempted something of the sort in this country, but the difficulties are great, and the sordid precautions one is obliged to take against unwarrantable interference set too heavy a drain upon one’s resources. If the means lay within my grasp, I should repair to Strasbourg, a town where my talents could flourish, and one, moreover, where I own acquaintances who would count themselves fortunate to acquire my assistance in the management of their houses. A small beginning, you may think, but I do not doubt of rising swiftly from it.”