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“A hit!” The younger man unsmilingly gesticulated like one who has been touched in sword-play. “Behold now, as the populace in their blunt way would phrase it, I am squelched.”

“And so the usurping duke was married and lived happily ever afterward.” Georges Desmarets continued: “I repeat to you there is only the choice between declaring yourself and being–we will say, removed. Your cousin is deeply in love with the Princess Sophia, and thanks to me, has now no chance of marrying her until his title has been secured by your–removal. Do not deceive yourself. High interests are involved. You are the grain of sand between big wheels. I iterate that the footpad who attacked you last night was merely a prologue. I happen to know your cousin has entrusted the affair to Heinrich Obendorf, his foster-brother, who, as you will remember, is not particularly squeamish.”

Paul Vanderhoffen thought a while. “Desmarets,” he said at last, “it is no use. I scorn your pribbles and your prabbles. I bargained with Augustus. I traded a duchy for my personal liberty. Frankly, I would be sorry to connect a sharer of my blood with the assault of yesterday. To be unpardonably candid, I have not ever found that your assertion of an event quite proved it had gone through the formality of occurring. And so I shall hold to my bargain.”

“The night brings counsel,” Desmarets returned. “It hardly needs a night, I think, to demonstrate that all I say is true.”

And so they parted.

Having thus dismissed such trifles as statecraft and the well-being of empires, Paul Vanderhoffen turned toward consideration of the one really serious subject in the universe, which was of course the bright, miraculous and incredible perfection of Mildred Claridge.

“I wonder what you think of me? I wonder if you ever think of me?” The thought careered like a caged squirrel, now that he walked through autumn woods toward her home.

“I wish that you were not so sensible. I wish your mother were not even more so. The woman reeks with common-sense, and knows that to be common is to be unanswerable. I wish that a dispute with her were not upon a par with remonstrance against an earthquake.”

He lighted a fresh cheroot. “And so you are to marry the Brudenel title and bank account, with this particular Heleigh thrown in as a dividend. And why not? the estate is considerable; the man who encumbers it is sincere in his adoration of you; and, chief of all, Lady John Claridge has decreed it. And your decision in any matter has always lain between the claws of that steel-armored crocodile who, by some miracle, is your mother. Oh, what a universe! were I of hasty temperament I would cry out, TUT AND GO TO!”

This was the moment which the man hid in the thicket selected as most fit for intervention through the assistance of a dueling pistol. Paul Vanderhoffen reeled, his face bewilderment. His hands clutched toward the sky, as if in anguish he grasped at some invisible support, and he coughed once or twice. It was rather horrible. Then Vanderhoffen shivered as though he were very cold, and tottered and collapsed in the parched roadway.

A slinking man whose lips were gray and could not refrain from twitching came toward the limp heap. “So—-!” said the man. One of his hands went to the tutor’s breast, and in his left hand dangled a second dueling pistol. He had thrown away the other after firing it.

“And so—-!” observed Paul Vanderhoffen. Afterward there was a momentary tussle. Now Paul Vanderhoffen stood erect and flourished the loaded pistol. “If you go on this way,” he said, with some severity, “you will presently be neither loved nor respected. There was a time, though, when you were an excellent shot, Herr Heinrich Obendorf.”