that lock of hair. Where did
the villain take it from?"

The lady looked a little puzzled.

"What lock of hair?"

From an envelope which he took from his pocket the duke produced a shining
tress. It was the lock of hair which had arrived in the first
communication. "I will have it framed."

"You will have what framed?" The duchess glanced at what the duke was so
tenderly caressing, almost, as it seemed, a little dubiously. "Whatever is
it you have there?"

"It is the lock of hair which that scoundrel sent me." Something in the
lady's face caused him to ask a question; "Didn't he tell you he had sent
it to me?"

"Hereward!"

"Did the brute tell you that he meant to cut off your little finger?"

A very curious look came into the lady's face. She glanced at the duke as
if she, all at once, was half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what
really seemed to be a look of inquiry. Her voice was tremulously anxious.

"Hereward, did--did the accident affect you mentally?"

"How could it not have affected me mentally? Do you think that my mental
organization is of steel?"

"But you look so well."

"Of course I look well, now that I have you back again. Tell me, darling,
did that hound actually threaten you with cutting off your arm? If he did,
I shall feel half inclined to kill him yet."

The duchess seemed positively to shrink from her better half's near
neighborhood.

"Hereward, was it a Pickford's van?"

The duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be.

"Was what a Pickford's van?"

The lady turned to Mr. Dacre. In her voice there was a ring of anguish.

"Mr. Dacre, tell me, was it a Pickford's van?"

Ivor could only imitate his relative's repetition of her inquiry.

"I don't quite catch you--was what a Pickford's van?"

The duchess clasped her hands in front of her.

"What is it you are keeping from me? What is it you are trying to hide? I
implore you to tell me the worst, whatever it may be! Do not keep me any
longer in suspense; you do not know what I already have endured. Mr.
Dacre, is my husband mad?"

One need scarcely observe that the lady's amazing appeal to Mr. Dacre as
to her husband's sanity was received with something like surprise. As the
duke continued to stare at her, a dreadful fear began to loom in his
brain.

"My darling, your brain is unhinged!"

He advanced to take her two hands again in his; but, to his unmistakable
distress, she shrank away from him.

"Hereward--don't touch m