“Yet she did not seem listless or unhappy?”
No, they would not go so far as to say that.
“Indeed, were her eyes of an almost unnatural brilliance?”
“Quite unnatural,” confessed the one.
“Twin stars,” interpolated the other.
“Did she, in fact, seem to be consumed by some inward rapture?”
Yes, now they came to think of it, this was exactly how she HAD seemed.
It was sweet, it was bitter, for the Duke. “I remember,” Zuleika had said to him, “nothing that happened to me this morning till I found myself at your door.” It was bitter-sweet to have that outline filled in by these artless pencils. No, it was only bitter, to be, at his time of life, living in the past.
“The purpose of your tattle?” he asked coldly.
The two youths hurried to the point from which he had diverted them. “When she went by with you just now,” said the one, “she evidently didn’t know us from Adam.”
“And I had so hoped to ask her to luncheon,” said the other.
“Well?”
“Well, we wondered if you would re-introduce us. And then perhaps...”
There was a pause. The Duke was touched to kindness for these fellow-lovers. He would fain preserve them from the anguish that beset himself. So humanising is sorrow.
“You are in love with Miss Dobson?” he asked.
Both nodded.
“Then,” said he, “you will in time be thankful to me for not affording you further traffic with that lady. To love and be scorned—does Fate hold for us a greater inconvenience? You think I beg the question? Let me tell you that I, too, love Miss Dobson, and
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