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                           MY LORD DUKE

                         BY E. W. HORNUNG


    NEW YORK
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
    1897

    COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY
    CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

    Norwood Press
    J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith
    Norwood Mass. U.S.A.




CONTENTS


       I. THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY                     1

      II. "HAPPY JACK"                              16

     III. A CHANCE LOST                             31

      IV. NOT IN THE PROGRAMME                      44

       V. WITH THE ELECT                            63

      VI. A NEW LEAF                                77

     VII. THE DUKE'S PROGRESS                       90

    VIII. THE OLD ADAM                             105

      IX. AN ANONYMOUS LETTER                      122

       X. "DEAD NUTS"                              137

      XI. THE NIGHT OF THE TWENTIETH               151

     XII. THE WRONG MAN                            163

    XIII. THE INTERREGNUM                          180

     XIV. JACK AND HIS MASTER                      189

      XV. END OF THE INTERREGNUM                   199

     XVI. "LOVE THE GIFT"                          215

    XVII. AN ANTI-TOXINE                           223

   XVIII. HECKLING A MINISTER                      233

     XIX. THE CAT AND THE MOUSE                    244

      XX. "LOVE THE DEBT"                          257

     XXI. THE BAR SINISTER                         266

    XXII. DE MORTUIS                               282




MY LORD DUKE




CHAPTER I

THE HEAD OF THE FAMILY


The Home Secretary leant his golf-clubs against a chair. His was the
longest face of all.

"I am only sorry it should have come now," said Claude apologetically.

"Just as we were starting for the links! Our first day, too!" muttered
the Home Secretary.

"_I_ think of Claude," remarked his wife. "I can never tell you, Claude,
how much I feel for you! We shall miss you dreadfully, of course; but we
couldn't expect to enjoy ourselves after this; and I think, in the
circumstances, that you are quite right to go up to town at once."

"Why?" cried the Home Secretary warmly. "What good can he do in the
Easter holidays? Everybody will be away; he'd much better come with me
and fill his lungs with fresh air."

"I can never tell you how much I feel for you," repeated Lady Caroline
to Claude Lafont.

"Nor I," said Olivia. "It's too horrible! I don't believe it. To think
of their finding him after all! I don't believe they _have_ found him.
You've made some mistake, Claude. You've forgotten your code; the cable
really means that they've _not_ found him, and are giving up the
search!"

Claude Lafont shook his head.

"There may be something in what Olivia says," remarked the Home
Secretary. "The mistake may have been made at the other end. It would
bear talking over on the links."

Claude shook his head again.

"We have no reason to suppose there has been a mistake at all, Mr.
Sellwood. Cripps is not the kind of man to make mistakes; and I can
swear to my code. The word means, 'Duke found--I sail with him at
once.'"

"An Australian Duke!" exclaimed Olivia.

"A blackamoor, no doubt," said Lady Caroline with conviction.

"Your kinsman, in any case," said Claude Lafont, laughing; "and my
cousin; and the head of the family from this day forth."

"It was madness!" cried Lady Caroline softly. "Simple madness--but then
all you poets _are_ mad! Excuse me, Claude, but you remind me of the
Lafont blood in my own veins--you make it boil. I feel as if I never
could forgive you! To turn up your nose at one of the oldest titles in
the three kingdoms; to think twice about a purely hypothetical heir at
the antipodes; and actually to send out your solicitor to hunt him up!
If that was not Quixotic lunacy, I should like to know what is?"

The Right Honourable George Sellwood took a new golf-ball from his
pocket, and bowed his white head mournfully as he stripped off the
tissue paper.

"My dear Lady Caroline, _noblesse oblige_--and a man must do his obvious
duty," he heard Claude saying, in his slightly pedantic fashion.
"Besides, I should have cut a very sorry figure had I jumped at the
throne, as it were, and sat there until I was turned out. One knew there
_had_ been an heir in Australia; the only thing was to find out if he
was still alive; and Cripps has done so. I'm bound to say I had given
him up. Cripps has written quite hopelessly of late. He must have found
the scent and followed it up during the last six weeks; but in another
six he will be here to tell us all about it--and we shall see the Duke.
Meanwhile, pray don't waste your sympathies upon _me_. To be perfectly
frank, this is in many ways a relief to me--I am only sorry it has come
now. You know my tastes; but I have hitherto found it expedient to make
a little secret of my opinions. Now, however, there can be no harm in my
saying that they are not entirely in harmony with the hereditary
principle. You hold up your hands, dear Lady Caroline, but I assure you
that my seat in the Upper Chamber would have been a seat of
conscientious thorns. In fact I have been in a difficulty, ever since my
grandfather's death, which I am very thankful to have removed. On the
other hand, I love my--may I say my art? And luckily I have enough to
cultivate the muse on, at all events, the best of oatmeal; so I am not
to be pitied. A good quatrain, Olivia, is more to me than coronets; and
the society of my literary friends is dearer to my heart than that of
all the peers in Christendom."

Claude was a poet; when he forgot this fact he was also an excellent
fellow. His affectations ended with his talk. In appearance he was
distinctly desirable. He had long, clean limbs, a handsome, shaven,
mild-eyed face, and dark hair as short as another's. He would have made
an admirable Duke.

Mr. Sellwood looked up a little sharply from his dazzling new golf-ball.

"Why go to town at all?" said he.

"Well, the truth is, I have been in a false position all these months,"
replied Claude, forgetting his poetry and becoming natural at once. "I
want to get out of it without a day's unnecessary delay. This thing must
be made public."

The statesman considered.

"I suppose it must," said he, judicially.

"Undoubtedly," said Lady Caroline, looking from Olivia to Claude. "The
sooner the better."

"Not at all," said the Home Secretary. "It has kept nearly a year.
Surely it can keep another week? Look here, my good fellow. I come down
here expressly to play golf with you, and you want to bunker me in the
very house! I take it for the week for nothing else, and you want to
desert me the very first morning. You shan't do either, so that's all
about it."

"You're a perfect tyrant!" cried Lady Caroline. "I'm ashamed of you,
George; and I hope Claude will do exactly as he likes. _I_ shall be
sorry enough to lose him, goodness knows!"

"So shall I," said Olivia simply.

Lady Caroline shuddered.

"Look at the day!" cried Mr. Sellwood, jumping up with his pink face
glowing beneath his virile silver hair. "Look at the sea! Look at the
sand! Look at the sea-breeze lifting the very carpet under our feet! Was
there ever such a day for golf?"

Claude wavered visibly.

"Come on," said Mr. Sellwood, catching up his clubs. "I'm awfully sorry
for you, my boy. But come on!"

"You will have to give in, Claude," said Olivia, who loved her father.

Lady Caroline shrugged her shoulders.

"Of course," said she, "I hope he will; still I don't think our own
selfish considerations should detain him against his better judgment."

"I am eager to see Cripps's partners," said Claude vacillating. "They
may know more about it."

"And solicitors are such trying people," remarked Lady Caroline
sympathetically; "one always does want to see them personally, to know
what they really mean."

"That's what I feel," said Claude.

"But what on earth has he to