Dacre. He put to him this question:
"Ivor, what are you laughing at?"
Mr. Dacre drew his hand across his mouth with rather a suspicious gesture.
"My dear fellow, only a smile!"
The duchess looked from one to the other.
"What have you two been doing? What is the joke?"
With an air of preternatural solemnity the duke took two letters from the
breast pocket of his coat.
"Mabel, you have already seen your letter. You have already seen the lock
of your hair. Just look at this--and that."
He gave her the two very singular communications which had arrived in such
a mysterious manner, and so quickly one after the other. She read them
with wide-open eyes.
"Hereward! Wherever did these come from?"
The duke was standing with his legs apart, and his hands in his trousers
pockets. "I would give--I would give another five hundred pounds to know.
Shall I tell you, madam, what I have been doing? I have been presenting
five hundred golden sovereigns to a perfect stranger, with a top hat, and
a gardenia in his buttonhole."
"Whatever for?"
"If you have perused those documents which you have in your hand, you will
have some faint idea. Ivor, when it's your funeral, I'll smile. Mabel,
Duchess of Datchet, it is beginning to dawn upon the vacuum which
represents my brain that I've been the victim of one of the prettiest
things in practical jokes that ever yet was planned.
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