When that fellow
brought you that card at Cane and Wilson's--which, I need scarcely tell
you, never came from me--some one walked out of the front entrance who was
so exactly like you that both Barnes and Moysey took her for you. Moysey
showed her into the carriage, and Barnes drove her home. But when the
carriage reached home it was empty. Your double had got out upon the
road."
The duchess uttered a sound which was half gasp, half sigh.
"Hereward!"
"Barnes and Moysey, with beautiful and childlike innocence, when they
found that they had brought the thing home empty, came straightway and
told me that you had jumped out of the brougham while it had been driving
full pelt through the streets. While I was digesting that piece of
information there came the first epistle, with the lock of your hair.
Before I had time to digest that there came the second epistle, with yours
inside."
"It seems incredible!"
"It sounds incredible; but unfathomable is the folly of man, especially of
a man who loves his wife." The duke crossed to Mr. Dacre. "I don't want,
Ivor, to suggest anything in the way of bribery and corruption, but if you
could keep this matter to yourself, and not mention it to your friends,
our white-hatted and gardenia-buttonholed acquaintance is welcome to his
five hundred pounds, and--Mabel, what on earth are you laughing at?"
The duchess appeared, all at once, to be seized with inextinguishable
laughter.
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