A very curious look came into the lady's face. She glanced at the Duke as if she, all at once, were half afraid of him. She cast at Mr. Dacre what really seemed to be a look of enquiry. 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?"
"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 neighbourhood:
The Duke seemed puzzled. Well he might be:
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 upon his brain:
He advanced to take her two hands again in his; but, to his unmistakable distress, she shrank away from him:
"Hereward--don't touch me. How is it that I missed you? Why did you not wait until I came?"
"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 bearer. They tell me that they cannot take me home.' It looks like my own writing."