n can recall in broken stanzas, and of one of
these, by far the best informed, Petullo's clerk was the reputed author.

As usual, the object of the scandal was for a while unconscious. He went
about experiencing a new aloofness in his umquhile friends, and finally
concluded that it was due to his poor performance in front of the
foreigner on the morning of the ball, and that but made him the more
venomously ruminant upon revenge. In these days he haunted the avenues
like a spirit, brooding on his injuries, pondering the means of a
retaliation; there were no hours of manumission in the inn; the reed
was still. And yet, to do him justice, there was even then the frank and
suave exterior; no boorish awkward silence in his ancient gossips made
him lose his jocularity; he continued to embellish his conversation with
morals based on universal kindness and goodwill.

At last the thunder broke, for the scandal reached the castle, and was
there overheard by the Duchess in a verse of the ballad sung under her
window by a gardener's boy. She made some inquiries, and thereafter went
straight to her husband.

"What is this I hear about your Chamberlain?" she asked.

Argyll drew down his brows and sighed. "My Chamberlain?" said he. "It
must be something dreadful by the look of her grace the Duchess. What is
it this time? High treason, or marriage, or the need of it? Or has old
Knapdale died by a blessed disposition and left him a fortune? That
would save me the performance of a very unpleasant duty."

"It has gone the length of scurrilous songs about our worthy gentleman.
The town has been ringing with scandals about him for a week, and I
never heard a word about it till half-an-hour ago."

"And so you feel defrauded, my dear, which is natural enough, being a
woman as well as a duchess. I am glad to know that so squalid a story
should be so long of reaching your ears; had it been anything to
anybody's credit you would have been the first to learn of it. To tell
the truth, I've heard the song myself, and if I have seemed unnaturally
engaged for a day or two it is because I have been in a quandary as to
what I should do. Now that you know the story, what do you advise, my
dear?"

"A mere woman must leave that to the Lord Justice-General," she replied.
"And now that your Chamberlain turns out a greater scamp than I thought
him, I'm foolish enough to be sorry for him."

"And so am I," said the Duke, and looked about the shelves o