se of complaint, your Grace," said the doctor
complacently, "except that nowadays honour nor nothing else rarely sends
so nice a case of hemorrhage my way. An inch or two to the left and Mr.
MacTaggart would have lifted his last rents."

Argyll grimaced with distaste at the idea.

"Poor Sim!" said he. "And my tenants would have lost a tolerable agent,
though I might easily find one to get more money out of them. Condemn
that Frenchman! I wish the whole race of them were at the devil."

"It could never have been a fair fight this," said the doctor, spreading
a plaster.

"There never _was_ a fair fight," said Argyll, "or but rarely, and
then neither of the men was left to tell the tale. The man with most
advantages must ever win."

"The other had them all here," said the doctor, "for the Chamberlain was
fighting with an unhealed wound in his right arm."

"A wounded arm!" cried Argyll. "I never heard of that."

It was a wound so recent, the doctor pointed out, that it made the duel
madness. He turned over the neck of his patient's shirt and showed the
cicatrice, angry and ugly. "A stab, too!" said he.

"A stab?" said the Duke.

"A stab with a knife or a thrust with a sword," said the doctor. "It has
gone clean through the arm and come out at the back."

"Gad! this is news indeed! What does it mean? It's the reason for the
pallour and the abstraction of some days back, for which I put the blame
upon some love-affair of his. He never breathed a word of it to me, nor
I suppose to you?"

"It has had no attention from me or any one else," said the doctor; "but
the wound seems to have healed of itself so far without anything being
done for it."

"So that a styptic--even the famous styptic--can do no more wonders than
a good constitution after all. Poor Sim, I wonder what folly this came
of. And yet--to look at him there--his face so gentle, his brow so calm,
his mouth--ah, poor Sim!"

From a distant part of the house a woman's voice arose, crying, "Archie,
Archi-e-e!" in a lingering crescendo: it was the Duchess, and as yet she
had not heard of the day's untoward happenings. He went out and told her
gently. "And now," he went on when her agitation had abated, "what of
our Chevalier?"

"Well!" said she, "what of him? I hope he is not to suffer for this,
seeing MacTaggart is going to get better, for I should dearly like to
have him get some return for his quest."

"Would you, indeed?" said the Duke. "H'm," and s