who, at once thrifty and infatuate,
had planned a luncheon a deux. "I had hoped--" he began.

"Vainly," she cut him short.

There was a pause. "Whom shall I invite, then?"

"I don't know any of them. How should I have preferences?" She
remembered the Duke. She looked round and saw him still standing in the
shadow of the wall. He came towards her. "Of course," she said hastily
to her host, "you must ask HIM."

The MacQuern complied. He turned to the Duke and told him that Miss
Dobson had very kindly promised to lunch with him to-morrow. "And," said
Zuleika, "I simply WON'T unless you will."

The Duke looked at her. Had it not been arranged that he and she should
spend his last day together? Did it mean nothing that she had given him
her ear-rings? Quickly drawing about him some remnants of his tattered
pride, he hid his wound, and accepted the invitation.

"It seems a shame," said Zuleika to The MacQuern, "to ask you to bring
this great heavy box all the way back again. But--"

Those last poor rags of pride fell away now. The Duke threw a prehensile
hand on the casket, and, coldly glaring at The MacQuern, pointed with
his other hand towards the College gate. He, and he alone, was going to
see Zuleika home. It was his last night on earth, and he was not to be
trifled with. Such was the message of his eyes. The Scotsman's flashed
back a precisely similar message.

Men had fought for Zuleika, but never in her presence. Her eyes dilated.
She had not the slightest impulse to throw herself between the two
antagonists. Indeed, she stepped back, so as not to be in the way. A
short sharp fight--how much better that is than bad blood! She hoped the
better man would win; and (do not misjudge her) she rather hoped this
man was the Duke. It occurred to her--a vague memory of some play or
picture--that she ought to be holding aloft a candelabra of lit tapers;
no, that was only done indoors, and in the eighteenth century. Ought
she to hold a sponge? Idle, these speculations of hers, and based on
complete ignorance of the manners and customs of undergraduates. The
Duke and The MacQuern would never have come to blows in the presence of
a lady. Their conflict was necessarily spiritual.

And it was the Scotsman, Scots though he was, who had to yield. Cowed
by something demoniac in the will-power pitted against his, he found
himself retreating in the direction indicated by the Duke's forefinger.

As he disappeared into the porch,