olness that is
partly due to the unpleasant fact (as you may perceive) that I have no
coat on, 'twas quite the other way, and your bravest of servants thrust
himself upon my attention that had otherwise been directed to the real
object of my being in Scotland at all."

The Duke gave a gesture of impatience. "I am not at the heart of these
mysteries," said he, "but--even at my age--I know a great deal more
about this than you give me credit for. If it is your whim to affect
that this wretched business was no more than a passage between
gentlemen, the result of a quarrel over cards or the like in my house--"

"Ah!" cried the Count, "there I am all to blame. Our affair ought more
properly to have opened elsewhere. In that detail your Grace has every
ground for complaint."

"That is a mere side affair," said the Duke, "and something else more
closely affects me. I am expected to accept it, then, that the Comte
de Mont-aiglon, travelling incognito in the unassuming _role_ of a
wine merchant, came here at this season simply from a passion for our
Highland scenery. I had not thought the taste for dreary mountains and
black glens had extended to the Continent."

"At least 'twas not to quarrel with a servant I came here," retorted
Count Victor.

"That is ill said, sir," said his Grace. "My kinsman has ten generations
of ancestry of the best blood of Scotland and the Isles underground."

"To that, M. le Duc, there is an obvious and ancient retort--that
therein he is like a potato plant; the best of him is buried."

Argyll stood before the Frenchman dubious and embarrassed; vexed at the
tone of the encounter, and convinced, for reasons of his own, that in
one particular at least the foreigner prevaricated, yet impressed by
the manly front of the gentleman whose affair had brought a morning's
tragedy so close upon the heels of an evening's mirth. Here was the sort
of quandary in which he would naturally have consulted with his Duchess,
but it was no matter to wake a woman to, and she was still in her
bed-chamber.

"I assume you look for this unhappy business to be treated as an affair
of honour?" he asked at last.

"So to call it," replied Count Victor, "though in truth, the honour, on
my word, was all on one side."

"You are in doubtful taste to put it quite in these terms," said the
Duke more sternly, "particularly as you are the one to come out of it so
far scathless."

"Would M. le Duc know how his servant compell