ed my--my attentions?"

"Compelled your attentions! I do not like the tone of your speeches,
monsieur. Dignity--"

"_Pardieu!_ M. le Duc, would you expect a surfeit of dignity from a man
without a jacket?" said the Count, looking pathetically at his arms.

"Dignity--I mean the sense of it--would dictate a more sober carriage in
face of the terrible act you have committed. I am doing my best to find
the slightest excuse for you, because you are a stranger here, a man of
good family though engaged upon a stupendous folly, and I have before
now been in the reverence of your people. You ask me if I know what
compelled your attention (as you say) to my Chamberlain, and I will
answer you frankly that I know all that is necessary."

At that the Count was visibly amazed. This was, indeed, to put a new
face on matters and make more regrettable his complacent surrender after
his affair on the sands.

"In that case, M. le Duc," said he, "there is no more to be said. I
protest I am unable to comprehend your Grace's complacence towards a
rogue--even of your own household."

Argyll rang a bell and concluded the interview.

"There has been enough of this," he said. "I fear you do not clearly
realise all the perils of your situation. You came here--you will pardon
a man at my age insisting upon it, for I know the facts--with the set
design of challenging one who properly or improperly has aroused your
passion; you have accomplished your task, and must not consider yourself
harshly treated if you have to pay the possible penalty."

"Pardon, M. le Duc, it is not so, always with infinite deference, and
without a coat as I have had the boldness to remark before: my task had
gone on gaily enough had your Monsieur MacTaggart not been the victim
of some inexplicable fever--unless as I sometimes suspect it were a
preposterous jealousy that made me the victim of his somewhat stupid
folly play."

"You have accomplished your task, as I say," proceeded Argyll, heedless
of the interruption, "and to tell the truth, the thing has been
done with an unpardonably primitive absence of form. I am perhaps an
indifferent judge of such ceremonies; at my age--as you did me the
honour to put it--that is only to be expected, but we used, when I was
younger, to follow a certain formula in inviting our friend the enemy
out to be killed. What is this hasty and clandestine encounter before
the law of the land but a deliberate attempt at murder? It would b