Chapter IV

"My dear kind host," explained Vingie to Lord Fordingbridge in a corner of his drawing-room after dinner, "he's in love with romance, and he thinks he's in love with her. Men are all children. They don't love us; they love what they think we are. If I can persuade him she doesn't monopolize romance, you're safe. Do you care to let me try?"

Lord Fordingbridge eyed her very thoughtfully, glanced across at the bridge four in the middle distance and sighed.

"Perhaps it depends on your idea of romance," he temporized. "We shall be taking a certain responsibility. What do you propose?"

Vingie leaned back in her gilded chair.

"Diane's indoor and exotic. I want to be open-air and natural. She pretends to be simple; she isn't really. You aren't simple just because you fool about with an omelette. I think a summer camp--just he and I, some older woman to play propriety and p'r'aps one man-servant to do the rough work. I'd suggest your sister only her type and generation simply couldn't do it. Charles has a perfect housekeeper, Vokes, getting on for sixty, absolutely discreet and utterly trustworthy. She's known me since I was a baby. He can take a chauffeur-valet. You'll never understand--or p'r'aps you will--but I want to stage a twentieth century _Midsummer Night's Dream_. Are you going to trust me? I don't think you'd better tell Rupert. He's too conventional."

She outlined her conversation with the duke. "And if you let me have my way I'm going to produce a very effective climax. And I may have to do it just to oblige you, though not if I can help it. Financial considerations don't seem in keeping with the atmosphere at the moment. Is it a bargain?"

Still he hesitated. She read his thoughts and added:

"Of course I shall consult Charles first. I never do anything without telling him."

"Well," said Lord Fordingbridge at last, "the duke has some leisure in a day or two. He's got a shooting estate in Yorkshire remote enough for anything if it comes to that. But you'll be very careful, won't you?"

"My dear," replied Vingie in tender mockery, "a boy of his age would rather die. They're perfect dragons of respectability if a girl trusts them. Besides, you forget Vokes. But don't tell Rupert. He'd never understand."

Rupert had arrived, draped with dispatch boxes, in time to make a fourth at bridge.

At ten o'clock Lord Fordingbridge's sister discovered, by means of that social telepathy peculiar to Queen Victoria's earlier god-children, that bridge began to pall on the duke. In consequence she pleaded fatigue, excused herself and retired, removed her transformation, assumed a woolen night-gown with long sleeves, and slept as only people with no nerves and a good conscience do sleep. The duke yawned, half closed his eyes at Captain Hamish Duncan, made an imperceptible movement of the head, and found himself alone with Vingie. She still sat in the gilded chair, her hands resting lightly on its arms, deep in thought. He stood before her awaiting his opportunity.

"Were you serious this morning?" he said at last.

She turned upon him unfathomable eyes.

"If you know a garden of Paradise, I'll try to be your good angel. It sounds to me like a tiny camp remote from anywhere. There are only you and I and my chaperon and your servant. I'll leave it to you to arrange if you still want it. I shall have to go back to town first and collect some kit."

"Let's go and look at my black list and settle dates," he suggested. In a small businesslike room they found Captain Duncan methodically dealing with correspondence. "Hamish," announced the duke, "I propose to take a holiday. What are our bookings for the next few days?"

The equerry, whistling noiselessly, consulted a small red volume.

"To-morrow there's a parade of ex-service men. Memo: say the right thing to Sergeant Robert Smith, aged eighty-five. Wellington shook hands with his father, Acting-Bombardier John Smith, after the Battle of Waterloo. Except for that you appear to be free for a week."

He closed the book, replaced it and looked a little wistful.

"If you don't actually need me I could idle for a day or two myself," he concluded.

William Albert smiled privately at Vingie.

"Run away and play by all means. Invent some yarn to account for me. In two days, Hamish, I shall, with luck, be out of reach."

He turned joyfully to Vingie.

"In two days," he repeated. "Leave everything to me. In two days the blasé stars may look down on that which will cause sensation among astronomers."

"I'm going up to town," she answered in the manner of one who hears but does not listen. "I need to collect a few necessaries and make peace with my relations. One tells the right story for fear the wrong should get about. You will be ever so discreet, won't you? Remember I'm doing a great deal for you."

She smiled, and smiling contradicted her words. He said good night and watched her move delicately up the great staircase. For a man hopelessly in love with some one else the young blood flowed through his aristocratic veins not unriotously.

Much of Sir Charles' attraction for Vingie lay in the fact that he treated her with the devotion of a new lover allied to the sureness and experience of an old husband. For this reason, in his Park Street library, after a very perfect little _diner à deux_, she told him all.

"I've collected the right clothes," she murmured dreamily, "and the main idea's absolutely cast-iron. He doesn't really love Diane; she's just been very clever, but I shall be cleverer still. All the same, Charles, I want a partner, a confederate among the crowd. Do you want to come to the rescue?"

"Frankly," declared Sir Charles, "I do not. My years and my position forbid it. You, my dear Virginia, are in the predicament of a secret agent. If they succeed they get no reward, and if they fail we disown them. They languish in a foreign prison and if ever they get out their name is mud. I may sympathize privately, but the most I can do publicly is to send you on a long voyage to the Far East with an impeccable chaperon when your reputation lies in tatters on all the dinner tables of Mayfair."

Vingie slid from her armchair and crept gently on to his knee. "I wouldn't compromise you for all the world, darling," she murmured, stroking his gray hair with caressing fingers. "I know just the man for the job--that very charming Mr. Berriman, the foreign editor of the _Daily Tale_ who helped me once before. He's perfectly unscrupulous, and so adequate."

"In heaven's name, Virginia, keep away from the newspapers," implored Sir Charles. "One can't touch pitch without being defiled."

Vingie spread out two small pale hands.

"I pray I may ever keep these unsullied!" she said solemnly. "Only lend me Vokes, Charles, and if I perish I will never darken your doors again."

"You may have Vokes by all means, but try not to put a most respectable, faithful servant to the blush," replied Sir Charles a little plaintively.

In the morning Vingie, all Paris in her summer frock, drifted from Sir Charles' limousine through the stern portals of the _Daily Tale_, eclipsing the most divine divorcee that ever lied through her tears to a sympathetic special writer. She penetrated via the intoxicating hum of giant machines and the faint violet smell of printing ink to a calm silent room containing one really nice man and many telephones.

Mr. Berriman laid aside the habitual ferocity before which correspondents in Brussels, Vienna, and even far New York, dwindled and pined, rose from his lair amid blue pencils and damp proofs and gripped her hand.

"Thank God it's only eleven and the rush hasn't begun. If there's anything in the world I can do for you, Miss Lauriston, I shall be so happy. Or perhaps"--his stocky figure gathered as for a spring, and his quiet, good-looking face hardened--"perhaps you've got news?"

Vingie shook her head and sank plaintively into a chair.

"I've come to you for that. I'm at my last gasp, and you helped me once before. Who, what, and why is Diane de Blanchefôret?"

Mr. Berriman lifted the receiver of a telephone.

"Is that the news room?" he inquired. "I want Mr. Marsh."

Vingie glimpsed curiously the discipline of a great paper. The door opened quietly and a young man entered.

"This," explained her host, "is Mr. Marsh, who does the society feature. What do we know of Mademoiselle Diane de Blanchefôret, Marsh?"

"She's one of those weird birds--on the stage and yet not of it," observed Mr. Marsh, like a distinguished naturalist explaining a rare species. "Everybody that is anybody receives her; she dresses quietly, lives in a house, not a flat, women recognize her, she only runs a very small car, she doesn't go to dance clubs, her credit is good in the West End and she pays her own bills. Extremely good-looking and intelligent. I should call her a dark horse."

"All right, Marsh," murmured Mr. Berriman, assembling his proofs methodically and ringing for a boy to remove them. "And what exactly do you want me to do?" he went on to Vingie with the painful directness that seemed to her a feature of the place.

"To produce her plausibly at a given place and time," answered Vingie, growing reckless. "If you can, you shall be the first to announce whom the Duke of Sussex is really going to marry. Is it a bargain?"

"Suppose," said the imperturbable Mr. Berriman, "you tell me the whole story, strictly in confidence."

So, looking him straight in the face, she told it. His expression never varied by the flicker of an eyelash.

"Probably we know fairly well whom he'll marry, but you and I are only just beginning. One day we'll land a real story," he said at last. "Anyway, I think I can work it. We've got a certain stunt going--'Is the Country Girl Prettier than the Town Girl?' I might ask her to help judge, and take her along to Yorkshire to look at country girls. We can always lose our way. Now I'm afraid I must ask you to go. Sorry, but there's a crisis in the Near East. It keeps me rather on the stretch. Remember to let me know the date, the place and the time. Good-by!"

She went out thoughtfully in the light of his brief smile. In the lift she glanced at her platinum diamante wrist-watch. "That took him just five minutes. I wonder what he could do in an hour?" she mused. Undoubtedly Mr. Berriman had made a certain impression.

At the great entrance of Diss, Rupert, his trousers baggy-kneed with distress, stood beside Captain Hamish Duncan surveying the chaste outlines of a two-seater Rolls-Royce. Lord Fordingbridge, who preferred not to be present officially, had laid this burden upon him.

As in a nightmare he beheld Vingie, shrouded in a fleece-lined weather-proof, escalade the passenger's seat. The sporting body being innocent of doors, she revealed a certain wealth of silk-veiled limbs, to the extreme delight of Captain Duncan, and the intense disgust of Rupert. Vingie nestled in her padded shell, adjusting a rug with joyous fingers.

Hours ahead, harbinger of a brighter convoy, Figgis, the duke's chauffeur, guided a baggage car, and by his side sat Vokes, austere with sixty years, sublime in decent black.

The duke gave a last look round, climbed neatly to the wheel, took off the side-brake and waved a benevolent hand.

"Well, toodle-oo, every one," he said serenely.

"Pip-pip, sir," returned the faithful equerry.

The sweetest clutch in the world took up the noiseless drive; with scarce a disturbed pebble they glided unstressed away.

"It is the most appalling error of judgment I ever heard of!" said Rupert hollowly.

"Now, now!" reproved Captain Duncan in his soothing fashion. "Try to take the broad view, dear old bird. Don't be mother's little kill-joy!"

Vingie glanced lazily at the good-looking profile beside her and put her thoughts into words.

"We're playing truant from life like two happy kids," she said. "We'd better leave the trappings of state in care of Rupert for the time being. I think you may call me Vingie, oh, fellow conspirator, and I'm going to call you Bill."

"My dear Vingie," replied her princely chauffeur with profound appreciation, "Bill was always my middle name."

Vingie lay back in murmuring peace. Her soul took wings and sought a certain window in the Diplomats' Club where a neat elderly figure, with gray thick hair and a Victorian mustache perused the _Morning Post_, a thin-stemmed glass at his elbow.

"Oh, Charles," she crooned to herself, "you who preached marriage to me, how many times have you done what I'm doing, you delightful old hypocrite, except that my indiscretion's as innocent as the light of day? How many girls haven't you eloped with in everything from a post-chaise to a hansom cab, and told them all how you loved them, with that perfect, devastating, far-too-wonderful-for-this-world manner of yours? And yet you threaten me with the Far East and a chaperon, you deceitful adorable darling. As if even that wouldn't be worth setting my teeth to this delicious stolen fruit!"

She turned again to the tanned face beside her.

"Bill," she announced, "this might be a honeymoon, but it isn't."

"_Don't_," groaned the duke bitterly.

"It might be an escapade, but it isn't. I'm going to christen it 'The Quest of the Young Wild Oat.'"

They floated on north by east. They flickered through a kinematograph film of summer green varied by distracting close-ups; the halt in the market town at the foot of a fifteenth-century market cross while a flock of sheep flowed by; the ten-minute answer to an S.O.S. call from two unmechanical girls in a stricken two-seater; the picnic lunch in a little wood with Vingie licking the traces of the last peach from her slender fingers; the quest for cheap cigarettes in a wayside village because his costly Turkish cloyed her palate.

Toward sunset they began their long climb upward on a moorland road, with the everlasting heather stretching for miles on either hand. The scented air grew keener; the car took on that super-efficiency cars do take on mysteriously by twilight. Shaggy woods loomed up to clothe the moorland fells; they won the peak of the road, dropped down and swung into scarcely more than a bridle track, the furze brushing their wings, the startled rabbits hopping wildly for safety. Presently in the distance a little river gleamed, bordered by five green tents, two of them each in its own isolation, three clustered at a greater distance. The baggage car stood parked in the shelter of the trees; a camp-fire sent up its cheery glow and scented wood smoke. The duke swept round into a little clearing, reversed faultlessly in line with the baggage car, switched off, removed a glove, and held out his hand.

"Welcome to our camp, Vingie, dear," he said joyfully. "We've done it. Let me help you down."

She sauntered stiffly to her own green tent, and Vokes ministered to her; there came a shedding of dusty clothes, the steaming luxury of a canvas bath, a clean, cool, costly linen frock simple enough to deceive a man, the saunter back to a table spread beneath the rising moon. The duke came out in comfortable gray flannel, they sat down, and Figgis served dinner.

"They cook it over there," explained the duke, jerking his head to the clustered tents. "I've arranged for a first-rate man. We may as well be comfortable. Well, cheerio!"

Vingie raised her glass of bubbling wine. He watched her as if he hoped to see it flow down her slender throat. She set down the glass, rested her chin on her hands and smiled into his eyes.

"Bill," she murmured dreamily, "this is going to be sheer heaven."

Sleepily they ate, drugged by a day in the fresh air. Sleepily she stretched for his cigarette-case, tilted her chin to the held match. At last the beautifully waved head drooped; she offered her fingers for a good-night clasp, staggered to her tent and slept like a baby, with Vokes in the outer division lying between her and the censorious world.

William Albert sat dreaming over a final cigar. With an effort pathetic from fatigue he conjured up a mental image.

"Diane, Diane, if it were only you!" he said, and really believed he meant it.

At seven thirty A.M. a slender figure shrouded in a cream and scarlet bathing cloak tiptoed past Vokes and sought the sweet morning air. Vingie, whistling softly, stretched one white arm to adjust her already perfect bathing cap, and wandered in search of Figgis. She found him as a good chauffeur should be found, in overalls grooming his car.

"Figgis," began Vingie, "I want a message taken to the outer world, and it's private. I want it handed in at a post-office with instructions to wire it."

"We have a lad who runs errands on a motorcycle, miss," replied Figgis, not unimpressed by the vision before him. "I will see to it at once."

Vingie nodded, plucked a sheet of paper from an envelope and reread it for the last time.

"Berriman, _Daily Tale_, London. Bring Diane day after to-morrow, tea time. Place is Long Moor, near Cleckbarrow, Yorks. Bear left on top of moor and make for river. Good luck. Virginia L."

"I'm very much obliged to you, Figgis," said Vingie, moistening and sealing the envelope flap. Turning away on happy feet that longed to dance she ran across to the duke's tent and stood listening.

"Coo-ee!" she cried at last. "Wake up, Bill! It's a lovely morning."

Two seconds later a pajama-clad form emerged from the tent door, hair charmingly tousled, cigarette between fingers.

"Good morning," said Vingie. "Have you forgotten that river? Put on your bathing-kit and be quick, 'cause I've been waiting hours."

He disappeared obediently. In five minutes, approaching the river-bank he came upon a naiad in a scarlet one-piece swimming suit seated upon her cloak with an air of great patience. She stood up, waved a hand, raised her arms, stayed poised for one heart-beat, and dived. A moment after his blue-clad form cut the air in pursuit.

"I'm going to cook breakfast, Bill," she announced later, pattering tentward by his side. "You're keen on these real women, and you think I'm only a butterfly. Run along and shave and I'll be ready when you're finished."

By some miracle of galvanizing the sixty-year-old limbs of Vokes into young activity, Vingie, when he came forth groomed and hungry, he beheld deep in the mysteries of chafing-dish cookery.

Eggs and bacon sizzled with an appetizing smell; coffee steamed near by. Figgis, having spread a table in the wilderness, looked on indulgently. The duke praised while he marveled.

"I brought my own tools," explained Vingie, heaping his plate. "They say seeing's believing. You never knew I was useful before, did you, Bill? Look how the toy of an idle hour can produce grub and coffee for two. And what are we going to do with our nice day?"

"Anything in the world you like, Vingie."

She thought a moment.

"Let's take the boat and sandwiches and go exploring along the wild coasts of the river. If we get tired of it we can always land and go for a tramp across the moor. I love a boat. It's kind of lazy and romantic. Do you mind?"

The duke sighed. "No," he said. "I don't mind." He looked at her thoughtfully while she sat bare armed in some little elbow-sleeved rag and smiled at him from sheer vitality. "If you asked me to rig up sky-hooks and a rope and try and climb to the moon I'd do it. One does do things you suggest somehow. One gets the habit and then it's fatal. You see, they always sound so nice when you say them."

All day she made a perfect playfellow. Sometimes she would be a little girl, when she preferred not to walk any farther, and let him take care of her. At others she played the calm sensible friend, full of elder wisdom. Occasionally she remembered Diane and oozed soothing maternalness, as when he cut his finger and she bound it up, or when arriving back in camp she insisted on mending a tear in his coat.

For dinner that night she arrived bathed, powdered, beautiful, manicured, not one hair out of place, with a faint air of haughtiness very compelling. Having made a worm of him she relented and became kind as they sat smoking beneath the stars.

"Happy, Bill?" she asked.

"Yes, thank you."

"Know any more about what a woman can be to you than you did?"

"Oh well, you're not an ordinary woman. You're a witch or a devil or a darling, and sometimes all three at once."

Vingie rose to her feet in judgment.

"Either every woman's ordinary or else there are no ordinary women. Once a woman's attracted a man she can be anything she chooses to him if she likes to take the trouble. Attracting him's easy. She only has to ignore him and the vain thing comes running up to see why."

"No, really? By jove, you amaze me!" said the duke with mild sarcasm.

"So I'm going to bed, so night-night," she ended and left him, proving the truth of her wisdom, for he sat down feeling a little lonely and forsaken, wondering how she could bear to be without him, seeing it was only nine o'clock.

They came at tea-time. Mr. Berriman knew that punctuality is the courtesy of kings, having dealt with kings at odd times in the execution of his duty; consequently his hired limousine rolled gently into the duke's camp at four P.M. looking a little self-conscious and metropolitan. The chauffeur gazed about with a "Well, I never!" expression, got down, opened a door and consulted Mr. Berriman. Mr. Berriman alighted, a comforting and unmovable figure in tweed, and assisted Mademoiselle Diane de Blanchefôret to alight also. They moved slowly in the direction of the two isolated tents.

Vingie and the duke sat in two comfortable deck-chairs awaiting tea. Vingie was the first to behold the advance of Mr. Berriman and a tall dark woman with dead white complexion who moved with the subtlety of a snake, wearing an afternoon frock suitable for the races and an immense black hat. The high heels of her wonderful shoes were such as are forbidden by large and legible notices on all the best golf-courses. She would have looked perfect in the Park or Bond Street.

"Frenchwomen simply don't understand country kit," murmured Vingie to herself, and aloud: "Oh, Bill, look what's blown in!"

The duke raised his eyes and froze. First the color drained from his cheeks and then it returned at double-strength. Then his training asserted itself. He had received too many deputations not to know what to do. He went forward with outstretched hand.

Diane's dagger-glance flashed past him for one second to photograph a perfectly adorable Vingie utterly self-possessed; then her smile bathed the duke's unhappy face.

"_Ah! Monseigneur, que je suis enchantée de vous voir!_" she exclaimed in a voice like milk trickling over white velvet. "_Figurez-vous que nous nous sommes perdus! Permettez que je vous présente Monsieur Bairymont._"

Mr. Berriman raised his soft felt hat and remarked: "How do you do, sir? I must apologize for this descent on you, but we lost our way on top of the moor. What a perfectly delightful spot!"

"Oh, a filthy hole really, but I rather like it," deprecated the duke, and introduced him to Vingie. They met as perfect strangers. Figgis, having grasped the situation from the alien chauffeur, came forward to arrange tea.

Vingie with the feeling of one whose work is well done took the woman guest tentward, and Vokes offered hairpins and face powder and all that she had. Nevertheless all traces of Vingie's occupation had been removed, and plain hair-brushes replaced her ivory-backed treasures. From the subtle under-currents it was plain to her that the romance of Diane and the duke was shattered into bits and on the other hand would never be remolded nearer to the heart's desire. The slight on Diane was too deep, the pride of the duke too profound. The bright sallies and tinkling mirth of the tea-party proved this beyond a doubt.

As Vingie sat marveling at her own cleverness, a second car curved into the little clearing, an open touring car of distinguished lineage. A door opened and Rupert alighted, turning to assist his companion, the Lady Celia Pytchley. They advanced gently upon the tea-party.

Rupert wore the expression of a murderer who, found with the body of his victim, declares he has never noticed it before.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed with false geniality. "We thought we'd just drop in to tea."

"Cheerio!" returned the duke with equivalent heartiness. "The very thing! Figgis, two more cups, please."

Vingie smiled upon Lady Celia and Rupert as the sun shines on the just and unjust alike, but her eyes when they met Rupert's told him through the smile that rat-poison was too good for him. Lady Celia being a pleasant, pretty girl who played all sorts of games, fitted into the gathering without one wrinkle on her fair brow. If any man had said, "What a fine day!" she would have replied "Yes, isn't it!" and if he had continued, "No, it's wet!" she would have replied "Yes, it is rather wet!" Thus she had the making of a perfect wife, but Vingie's brain worked furiously nevertheless.

"Diane doesn't know me, but Celia and I played as children. There's no deceiving even an imbecile who played with you as a child. I must seem to be nothing but a tea-party guest and leave with the others. If she knew I was staying here my reputation would disappear. As Rupert has done me in it's up to him to rescue me."

With considerable skill she drew him aside and sauntered toward the river-bank. Then she turned on him.

"I always realized you were a fool, Rupert," she said bitterly, "but would you mind telling me exactly why even you brought Celia here?"

Rupert frowned thoughtfully.

"It is the theory of the attraction of opposites," he explained. "I considered it likely that the violent contrast between you and her might turn his fancy in her direction. It was an experiment in psychology, my dear Virginia. Of course, I had no idea that other woman would be here. It is most distressing that Lady Celia should breathe the same air----"

"It would take more than air to hurt Celia," snarled Vingie. "My dear Rupert, you're the hopeless frozen limit. I get him here quietly, handle him perfectly for days, arrange for Diane to come down looking like a film star on a desert island, and to-night I'd have finished the job and packed him off to Celia in the morning. Now I wash my hands of you and your duke. All I'm concerned is to get away before Celia. She must never know I'm staying here."

"Why not?" asked Rupert kindly.

"Because----" retorted Vingie, fighting for breath, "because it's--just possible--she might think it--funny. Not laughing funny you know, curious funny, like widows who aren't married and that kind of thing. Do you see that man over there with two arms and two legs? That is Figgis, the chauffeur. Go and tell him to get the Rolls ready and not be surprised when I tell him to drive me home, but just to do it. And tell him to tell Vokes to hide. Celia must never see Vokes. She might remember her. And tell him to get a coat of mine and put it in the car. It looks better and I'll need it. And, Rupert, if I didn't happen to have a hat on nothing could have saved me. Now go!"

Rupert had at least one virtue, the capacity to obey. He went.

For ten minutes Vingie tossed the shuttle-cock of conversation lightly to and fro. Then she rose and held out a hand to the duke. He had long ceased to think or wonder; he hid a bruised and bewildered boy behind a grinning society image, but under this last blow his nerve almost cracked.

"Good-by," said Vingie. "I've enjoyed my tea most awfully; thank you for a gorgeous time."

His eye, wandering helplessly, beheld Figgis, capped and dust-coated, beside a purring Rolls.

"But," he began, "must you go? What about your----"

"My coat's in the car, thanks!" she broke in. "Rupert, you can take me over to it if you like. Good-by, every one."

Once again, Rupert watched with disapproval while she escaladed the sporting body.

"I didn't really want you; I loathe the sight of you," she explained over the side of it. "But I must know which road your car will take."

"We go north. Celia and I are both staying with the Tees. I think you are being a little unkind, Virginia."

"Let's go south then," said Vingie to Figgis, and at her word the car glided away.

"I followed your instructions, miss," he reassured her. "I told the other chauffeurs what I thought would do most good, and Vokes is concealed in the stores tent."

"Jolly good of you, Figgis. Take me about twenty miles and stop at some decent place for dinner, and then we'll go back when the coast's clear."

Even as Vingie nourished herself in the ancient splendor of the Rose & Crown while Figgis lurked in the outer darkness where chauffeurs feed, the duke dined alone in his stricken camp. Diane had gone and Celia had gone and Vingie, for all he knew, still traveled south in his pet car. His dinner was badly served by some awkward substitute for Figgis. Afterward he lay back in a cane lounge, smoked a cigar and stared at the evening sky.

"A person in my position," he said to himself at last, "is doomed as far as women are concerned. The suitable ones are dull and the attractive ones aren't suitable. They do these things better in the East; I believe I could get together a harem as well as the next person if only people's silly prejudice didn't stand in the way."

The sight of an approaching car interrupted, but he never raised his head. There had been so many cars that day. He did not hear Vingie's feet upon the grass, and started when she laid a hand on his shoulder.

"Bill, darling," she said reproachfully, "you didn't think I wouldn't come back, did you? Have you forgotten this is our last night? We've got to go home to-morrow."

"Don't touch me or I shall go mad," implored the duke. "You might remember that when you touch them men are inclined that way, Vingie. It may simplify life for you. Sit over there and listen."

She went obediently.

The duke held up his left hand and ticked things off on its fingers with his right.

"Diane is finished," he began. "She looked rather a fool in those clothes out here, and I looked rather a fool being caught here with you. A man does look a fool when one woman catches him with another. I don't know why. And directly people have looked fools, love ceases to exist."

He paused, and ticked off a second item on a second finger.

"You," he went on, "are perfectly delightful. But with you it was all fair and above-board, a kind of demonstration like when I go down to Aldershot and a general with no brains, for reasons that don't exist, maneuvers troops armed with blank cartridge against an enemy that isn't there."

"The enemy was there, Bill," murmured Vingie. "And kindly don't confuse me with people who have no brains."

"Well, never mind all that. Now we come to Celia. She's a nice bright girl, and she'd never give me a moment's anxiety. But think of a lifetime with a woman who never gave one a moment's anxiety!"

Vingie rose, seated herself on the edge of the cane lounge and slid an arm behind his tired head. He let it fall back against her with a little sigh.

"Listen," she said. "Celia will be just as nice to you as I've been. All women are the same really. The difference between one and the other is what you imagine. A man always falls in love with an imaginary girl, but he marries a real one, and spends his life discovering the difference. But with you it'll be the other way round. You'll expect nothing and make all sorts of exciting discoveries."

The duke reached up, drew her head down and kissed her affectionately. At length he delivered judgment.

"If it were going to be you and not Celia I should never have a moment's peace of mind till the grave closed over me," he said.

In her Park Street boudoir Vingie entertained Lord Fordingbridge to tea. There is a certain appeal about these intimate entertainments which no man is too old to appreciate. Lord Fordingbridge's genial, rubicund countenance wore an expression of beatitude.

"So you see," continued Vingie, "I managed to persuade him finally. But it was a fearf'ly narrow escape and I can't tell you how sick I am with Rupert. He nearly wrecked everything."

There is also something in the charm of a delightful girl which makes men reveal secrets they would do better to hide. Lord Fordingbridge simpered self-consciously.

"As a matter of fact it wasn't Rupert's idea at all," he confessed.

"You don't mean you----?"

Lord Fordingbridge shook his head.

"I'm a very stupid old man. All I can do is to look cheerful and pick other people's brains. But somehow I felt a little nervous about our conspiracy--indeed you were somewhat uncertain yourself."

"Oh, no, I wasn't!" scoffed Vingie.

"So I went and had a chat with Charles," Lord Fordingbridge rumbled on. "Charles is the brainiest fellow I know, a perfect marvel; never makes a mistake. And Charles said to me: 'Arrange for Celia Pytchley to find him with the other two.' So I got the Tees to ask her and Rupert up to their place, and told Rupert what to do. Of course he had to do it, so you mustn't be angry with him."

"And what was Charles' reason for the idea?" asked Vingie in a gray voice.

Lord Fordingbridge chuckled.

"He explained it all to me, because you know I haven't his brain. He said: 'I know Vingie's damned attractive and I presume Diane's damned attractive, but Celia's absolutely safe. Now when he sees all three together he'll lose his nerve and play for safety. He'll choose the safe one and that's exactly what you want him to do.'

"'But why will he?' says I.

"'Because, you fool, a man always does!' says he, and you see he was right. Charles was right! But your skilful handling of the situation--your tact--your patience--your insight--marvelous, my dear young lady. Simply marvelous!"

Vingie surveyed him in frigid silence. He continued to smile benignly.

"I may say that the--ah!--investments you suggested have been made in your name," he purred. "And the news of the duke's engagement shall be announced in that deplorable newspaper, a copy of which, thank God, I have never seen."

"And one thing more," demanded Vingie swiftly. 'You must send Rupert to Mr. Berriman to arrange the announcement."

"But why?" asked Lord Fordingbridge dubiously.

Vingie's smile was very sweet.

"Because they'll put him in his place at the _Daily Tale_," she said. "He'll stroll in languidly and they'll grab him, and shut him in a waiting-room, and whiz him up in a lift and rush him into Mr. Berriman's room and rush him out. They only let me stay five minutes! And Charles' brain conceived it, but Rupert's was the hand that torpedoed me."

Lord Fordingbridge, still smiling, turned his thumbs down.