e. How is it that I missed you? Why did you not
wait until I came?"

"Wait until you came?"

The duke's bewilderment increased.

"Surely, if your injuries turned out, after all, to be slight, that was
all the more reason why you should have waited, after sending for me like
that."

"I sent for you--I?" The duke's tone was grave. "My darling, perhaps you
had better come upstairs."

"Not until we have had an explanation. You must have known that I should
come. Why did you not wait for me after you had sent me that?"

The duchess held out something to the duke. He took it. It was a card--his
own visiting card. Something was written on the back of it. He read aloud
what was written.

"Mabel, come to me at once with the bearer. They tell me that they cannot
take me home." It looks like my own writing."

"Looks like it! It is your writing."

"It looks like it--and written with a shaky pen."

"My dear child, one's hand would shake at such a moment as that."

"Mabel, where did you get this?"

"It was brought to me in Cane and Wilson's."

"Who brought it?"

"Who brought it? Why, the man you sent."

"The man I sent!" A light burst upon the duke's brain. He fell back a
pace. "It's the decoy!"

Her grace echoed the words:

"The decoy?"

"The scoundrel! To set a trap with such a bait! My poor innocent darling,
did you think it came from me? Tell me, Mabel, where did he cut off your
hair?"

"Cut off my hair?"

Her grace put her hand to her head as if to make sure that her hair was
there.

"Where did he take you to?"

"He took me to Draper's Buildings."

"Draper's Buildings?"

"I have never been in the City before, but he told me it was Draper's
Buildings. Isn't that near the Stock Exchange?"

"Near the Stock Exchange?"

It seemed rather a curious place to which to take a kidnaped victim. The
man's audacity!

"He told me that you were coming out of the Stock Exchange when a van
knocked you over. He said that he thought it was a Pickford's van--was it
a Pickford's van?"

"No, it was not a Pickford's van. Mabel, were you in Draper's Buildings
when you wrote that letter?"

"Wrote what letter?"

"Have you forgotten it already? I do not believe that there is a word in
it which will not be branded on my brain until I die."

"Hereward! What do you mean?"

"Surely you cannot have written me such a letter as that, and then have
forgotten it already?"

He handed her the letter which had arrived in