“I am,” returned the Duke, with infinite sense, “the last person in town to hear what people are really saying.”

“You can go and tell them what you think about the whole disgusting business,” said the Duchess.

“I’m hanged if I do,” the Duke returned. “If they have any sense they can guess that.”

“Pray what do you expect then I am going to do?” the Duchess demanded.

The Duke intimated by a shrug that he had formed no definite anticipations as to his consort’s line of conduct.

“If you were not a fool,” she said, “you would know that people haven’t any sense. They just accept any ideas that may be given them.”

“Well, I’m not going to run about town giving people ideas,” the Duke declared sullenly.

“You know best how far you are justified in coming to that decision,” the Duchess returned, with a world of meaning behind the mere inoffensive words. “Then you mean to let these abominable papers have it all their own way?”

“I don’t care.”

“But you ought to care.” Her Grace’s temper was rising. “You have no business to be a Duke. You are a disgrace to your order. You’ll get a wigging, my dear boy, when the King hears of it. Don’t expect me to come to the rescue, that’s all. If you don’t face[40] it out, I shall have to leave town in the height of the season, and I won’t leave town, so there!”

[40]

“Leave town, Isabel? What in the name of common sense have we done that we should run away?” The Duke was getting exasperated.

“We?” screamed the Duchess. “What have you done? To take trouble and spend money in hushing a thing up, and then to allow it to come out, at a particularly awkward time, too, is the method of an imbecile.”

Like most stupid persons the Duke was sensitive on the subject of nous, and the Duchess knew it.

“Imbecile?” he echoed huskily. “I was clever enough for you to marry.”

“You were clever enough to marry me, if you like,” she returned, with a puff of scorn.

“Clever!” he repeated in turn, in as withering a voice as he could command. “The general opinion at the time, pretty freely expressed, was that I was a 

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