The situation was a tragic one. Alicia Terrill trembling with
indignation, a faint flush on her pretty face, and her forehead wrinkled
in an angry frown, kept her voice steady with an effort, and looked down
from the step ladder on which she stood, at the urbane young man on the
other side of the wall.
He stood with his hands respectfully clasped behind his back, balancing
himself on the edge of his tiny lawn, and regarded her without emotion.
The grim evidence of the tragedy was hidden from his view, but he
accepted her estimate of his action with disconcerting calmness.
Hank, discreetly hidden in the conservatory, was an interested
eavesdropper.
The girl had time to notice that the Duke had a pleasant face, burnt and
tanned by sun and wind, that he was clean-shaven, with a square,
determined jaw and clear grey eyes that were steadfastly fixed on hers.
In a way he was good looking, though she was too angry to observe the
fact, and the loose flannel suit he wore did not hide the athletic
construction of the man beneath.
"It is monstrous of you!" she said hotly, "you, a stranger here----"
"I know your cat," he said calmly.
"And very likely it wasn't poor Tibs at all that ate your wretched
flowers."
"Then poor Tibs isn't hurt," said the Duke with a sigh of relief, "for
the cat I shot at was making a hearty meal of my young chrysanthemums
and----"
"How dare you say that!" she demanded wrathfully, "when the poor thing
is flying round the house with a--with a wounded tail?"
The young man grinned.
"If I've only shot a bit off her tail," he said cheerfully, "I am
relieved. I thought she was down and out."
She was too indignant to make any reply.
"After all," mused the Duke with admirable philosophy, "a tail isn't one
thing or another with a cat--now a horse or a cow needs a tail to keep
the flies away, a dog needs a tail to wag when he's happy, but a cat's
tail----"
She stopped him with a majestic gesture. She was still atop of the
ladder, and was too pretty to be ridiculous.
"It is useless arguing with you," she said coldly; "my mother will take
steps to secure us freedom from a repetition of this annoyance."
"Send me a lawyer's letter," he suggested, "that is the thing one does
in the suburbs, isn't it?"
He did not see her when she answered, for she had made a dignified
descent from her shaky perch.
"Our acquaintance with suburban etiquette," said her voice coldly, "is
probably more limited than your own."
"Indeed?" with polite incredulity.
"Even in Brockley," said the angry voice, "one expects to meet
people----"
She broke off abruptly.
"Yes," he suggested with an air of interest. "People----?"
He waited a little for her reply. He heard a smothered exclamation of
annoyance and beckoned Hank. That splendid lieutenant produce a step
ladder and steadied it as the Duke made a rapid ascent.
"You were saying?" he said politely.
She was holding the hem of her dress and examining ruefully the havoc
wrought on a flounce by a projecting nail.
"You were about to say----?"
She looked up at him with an angry frown.
"Even in Brockley it is considered an outrageous piece of bad manners to
thrust oneself upon people who do not wish to know one!"
"Keep to the subject, please," he said severely; "we were discussing the
cat."
She favoured him with the faintest shrug.
"I'm afraid I cannot discuss any matter with you," she said coldly, "you
have taken a most unwarrantable liberty." She turned to walk into the
house.
"You forget," he said gently, "I am a duke. I have certain feudal
privileges, conferred by a grateful dynasty, one of which, I believe, is
to shoot cats."
"I can only regret," she fired back at him, from the door of the little
conservatory that led into the house, "that I cannot accept your
generous estimate of yourself. The ridiculous court that is being paid
to you by the wretched people in this road must have turned your head.
I should prefer the evidence of De Gotha before I even accepted your
miserable title."
Slam!
She had banged the door behind her.
"Here I say!" called the alarmed Duke, "please come back! Aren't I in
De Gotha?"
He looked down on Hank.
"Hank," he said soberly, "did you hear that tremendous charge? She
don't believe there is no Mrs. Harris!"
V
Two days later he ascended the step ladder again.
With leather gloves, a gardening apron, and with the aid of a stick she
was coaxing some drooping Chinese daisies into the upright life.
"Good morning," he said pleasantly, "what extraordinary weather we are
having."
She made the most distant acknowledgment and continued in her attentions
to the flowers.
"And how is the cat?" he asked with all the bland benevolence of an
Episcopalian bench. She made no reply.
"Poor Tibby," he said with gentle melancholy--
"Poor quiet soul, poor modest lass,
Thine is a tale that shall not pass."
The girl made no response.
"On the subject of De Gotha," he went on with an apologetic hesitation,
"I----"
The girl straightened her back and turned a flushed face towards him. A
strand of hair had loosened and hung limply over her forehead, and this
she brushed back quickly.
"As you insist upon humiliating me," she said, "let me add to my self
abasement by apologizing for the injustice I did you. My copy of the
Almanac De Gotha is an old one and the page on which your name occurs
has been torn out evidently by one of my maids----"
"For curling paper, I'll be bound," he wagged his head wisely.
"Immortal Caesar, dead and turned to clay,
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away;
The Duke's ancestral records well may share
The curly splendours of the housemaid's hair."
As he improvised she turned impatiently to the flower bed.
"Miss Terrill!" he called, and when she looked up with a resigned air,
he said--
"Cannot we be friends?"
Her glance was withering.
"Don't sniff," he entreated earnestly, "don't despise me because I'm a
duke. Whatever I am, I am a gentleman."
"You're a most pertinacious and impertinent person," said the
exasperated girl.
"Alliteration's artful aid," quoth the Duke admiringly. "Listen----"
He was standing on the top step of the ladder balancing himself rather
cleverly, for Hank was away shopping.
"Miss Terrill," he began. There was no mistaking the earnestness of his
voice, and the girl listened in spite of herself.
"Miss Terrill, will you marry me?"
The shock of the proposal took away her breath.
"I am young and of good family; fairly good looking and sound in limb.
I have a steady income of L1,200 a year and a silver property in Nevada
that may very easily bring in ten thousand a year more. Also," he
added, "I love you."
No woman can receive a proposal of marriage, even from an eccentric
young man perched on the top of a step ladder, without the tremor of
agitation peculiar to the occasion.
Alicia Terrill went hot and cold, flushed and paled with the intensity
of her various emotions, but made no reply.
"Very well then!" said the triumphant Duke, "we will take it as settled.
I will call----"
"Stop!" She had found her voice. Sifting her emotions indignation had
bulked overwhelmingly and she faced him with flaming cheek and the
lightning of scorn in her eyes.
"Did you dare think that your impudent proposal had met with any other
success than the success it deserved?" she blazed. "Did you imagine
because you are so lost to decency, and persecute a girl into listening
to your odious offer, that you could bully her into acceptance?"
"Yes," he confessed without shame.
"If you were the last man in the world," she stormed, "I would not
accept you. If you were a prince of the blood royal instead of being a
wretched little continental duke with a purchased title"--she permitted
herself the inaccuracy--"if you were a millionaire twenty times over, I
would not marry you!"
"Thank you," said the Duke politely.
"You come here with your egotism and your braggadocio to play triton to
our minnows, but I for one do not intend to be bullied into grovelling
to your dukeship."
"Thank you," said the Duke again.
"But for the fact that I think you have been led away by your conceit
into making this proposal, and that you did not intend it to be the
insult that it is, I would make you pay dearly for your impertinence."
The Duke straightened himself.
"Do I understand that you will not marry me?" he demanded.
"You may most emphatically understand that," she almost snapped.
"Then," said the Duke bitterly, "perhaps if you cannot love me you can
be neighbourly enough to recommend me a good laundry."
This was too much for the girl. She collapsed on to the lawn, and,
sitting with her face in her hands, she rocked in a paroxysm of
uncontrollable laughter.
The Duke, after a glance at her, descended the steps in his stateliest
manner.