When Cheyne returned to the hotel, he found clues had accumulated during his absence, but that nothing more important than clues had turned up. He wrote a brief note to Miss Traynor, saying they had certain intelligence of Marion; that he had been to a house in which she had sought lodgings last night; and that there could now be no doubt Marion would be restored to her friends in a very short time. He did not name any exact hour, or even day, for her return; for, warned by his hasty prophecy of the night before, he did not care to risk another disappointment. In avoiding prophecy, he did not wholly, or even to any large extent, consider Miss Traynor's ease of mind, for, from what he had seen of her since Marion's flight, he did not think theory or hope likely to be of any great good. "Nothing," he said to himself, "but the sight of Marion, and the touch of her hand, will rouse the poor old lady from her lethargy." But he forbore to prophesy, because he did not wish to be again mistaken to himself. He would admit no sentimental thoughts into his mind until the mere business of the case had been discharged--until Marion was once more under the protection of her aunt; and in the meantime he must not exhaust his hope or energy by placing limits to her absence, only to find these limits overpassed.

It was past ten o'clock when Cheyne got back to his hotel. He had two great desires in this unhappy affair. One was that his own rank should not ooze out, and the other that the utmost possible secrecy should be observed. These two wishes were indeed only two parts of the one, for, if it were known that the Duke of Shropshire had a case in the hands of the detectives, it would be sure to get into the papers; and, if anyone knew that Miss Durrant had left her home alone without consulting her friends or guardians, it would very soon be known the relation in which she stood to him. Accordingly, he telegraphed to Miss Traynor's servant that she was not to open the door that day to any one whatsoever until he saw her; for he very well knew that if Anne allowed an acquaintance of either of the ladies in, or even if she stood talking for a few seconds at the open door, the secret would be over the whole district in an hour. Having despatched the telegram, he adopted another precaution. He sent down one of the private-inquiry men to Tenby Terrace with instructions that he was to stay in the house, to open the side-door as far as was absolutely necessary, and to see that no one went into or came out of the house. Of course Anne was in the secret, and might tell at some later day, even though a curb was now placed on her natural loquacity; still, sufficient for the day is the evil thereof, and later on he could devise means of insuring her permanent silence. In order most effectually to guard against the danger of his rank being discovered, he thought the best thing for him to do would be to retire from the active conduct of the search. He therefore resolved to place it in the hands of Macklin and Dowell, and at about eleven o'clock he found himself detailing the facts of the evening and night to Mr. Macklin, who promised to do all he could, and undertook to say that there was no doubt whatever that the young lady would be discovered that day before set of sun.

Mr. Macklin was very unlike the typical family London lawyer. He was low of stature, well-proportioned, fresh-complexioned, and abrupt and forcible in speech. He had a decidedly horsey appearance, although, as a matter of fact, he took as little interest in horses as any man within the sound of Big Ben. Although he was a solicitor, he hated law, and left all the legal elements of the firm to his partner. But he had a taste for business which did not wear a strictly legal aspect, and he entered into the ordinary and extraordinary affairs of the clients with a zest which made him cheering to his own side and irresistible against those on the other. Cheyne had known him, and liked him, before the great change had taken place in his fortunes; and one of the chief pleasures he had in contemplating his good luck was that by means of it he could do a service to Macklin by appointing his firm law-agents to the Shropshire property. Macklin was the quickest and most ready of men. When a thing was proposed to him he never made a difficulty. He either instantly declared the thing to be impossible, or he went about doing it with all his heart and soul, and with such a manner of conviction he was right that it seemed an outrage on common sense to oppose him.

Cheyne asked the lawyer if there was anything more he would recommend to be done.

"No," said Macklin, "leave it all in the hands of Bracken now. You could not possibly have done better. There is not a more intelligent, conscientious, and painstaking man in the Yard. You may do what you like, go where you please. Take my word for it, things will turn out as I say, and before dark you will be at rest."

"And now," said Cheyne, "I want you to do something for me. I told you of the way in which we heard of her?"

"Yes, yes, of course, through the old widow lady; of course. Somewhere in Kennington. I wonder you found a lady keeping lodgings there. My impression was, and is still, that with the one exception you met, every lodging-house is kept by a retired upper servant. But you were about to say----?"

"The house is No. 8, Garthorne Road, Kennington, and I want you, if you can, to buy it for me. I know this is rather a strange thing to ask you, for of course the house may not be for sale."

"Any limit as to price, your grace."

"No; no limit."

"Then if the house is not in the market, we must put it in the market."

"How can you manage that?"

"We will put golden rollers under it, and roll it into the market. If the house is one the market valued at five hundred pounds, we will pay down the five hundred. If, being worth five hundred pounds, it is not in the market, we give a thousand, that's the only difference. You cannot get everything you want in this world, your grace, unless you have plenty of money, and are willing to give your money for what you want."

"Then I may look on that thing as settled?"

"Oh, yes, practically settled. Of course, if a miracle should occur against us, there would be a hitch."

"And suppose a miracle did occur against us, what then?" asked Cheyne.

"Why, then the purchase-money would be two thousand pounds, instead of only one."

Then Cheyne explained to the lawyer his wishes with regard to secrecy, and her name and his being kept out of people's mouths, and most particularly out of the newspapers.

"Last night," said he, "when the first fresh anxiety was upon me, I thought of going to the newspapers and inserting advertisements for this morning; but it was too late, and now I am glad it was too late; for while there would be hardly a likelihood of her seeing any of the advertisements, and less of her acting on them, there would be reason to fear someone else might see and understand to whom they referred. I wish you to take the whole thing up for me, and act for me now until the end. Of course, last night I had to do what I could myself. I did not know where to find you. You will, I am sure, do all you can for me."

"You may rely on my thinking of nothing else until the young lady is restored to her friends."

When he asked himself the question, had his love for May altered with his altered fortune? he smiled, but would not deign any other reply. He was not insensible to the enormous advantages attending his new position. To be a duke of England was to be one of the first subjects of the first country in the world; and then to have that great honour; coupled with an income which exceeded that of many European sovereigns, were circumstances which impressed him profoundly. Although he moved and acted as though he believed all that had happened, when he was alone he always tried to shake off what he could not help regarding as a delusion. At times it seemed to him as though he was but playing a part, into which he had entered so thoroughly that he could not at ordinary moments divest his mind of the character he had temporarily assumed. This was a very unpleasant feeling; he would have given a great deal to be rid of it, but nothing he could do would drive it away. When people came up to him and called him "your grace" he always felt inclined to laugh, but refrained from doing so, lest it might spoil the play.

He had talked to May about taking the oath and his seat; but although his manner may have been serious, he spoke more as one continuing the play than as one uttering serious words of measured import.

He had called her Duchess, but he had done it in jest, or at least half jest, or as another portion of the play, but not as a part of their own real life. Women are much more literal than men. She had taken all his words literally, and been affrighted by them. Besides, it was much more easy for her than for him to realise the fact that he was a duke. She was a woman; he was her lover, her hero, and, to her mind, worthy of being anything and everything good on earth. But he knew the stuff he was made of, the thoughts that had been in his mind; and to himself the notion of his wearing a coronet was mostly comic. Still, carrying out the conceit of the play, he had indulged his imagination with comic scenes in the House of Lords, between him and others of the hereditary members until he had to shout out laughing. He had had even the irreverence to picture a full sitting of the House of Lords as a transformation scene, in which all the noble lords wore their robes and coronets until the red fire was turned on, and he, playing harlequin, jumped in, and with one blow of his lath sword turned all the noble lords into his old intimate friends of Fleet Street.

In the other days, when he lived in Long Acre and earned a few pounds a week, he had indulged his imagination with lordly company. He had written about lords and ladies, dukes and fine associates; he had described palaces beside which the Escurial was but a simple manor-house; he had lavished riches, and bestowed whole countries, on his heroes. Moreover, he had taken these lords and ladies out of the frame of fiction, and set their portraits round his simple table, making believe that he was the wisest, the richest, and the most puissant of all. He had acted as one of the commissioners in opening Parliament, and crowned monarchs in Westminster Abbey; he had been received with regal honours at foreign courts; had danced with Princesses of the Blood, and been minister in attendance at Osborne. In all these romances and dreams he had been awake. Then into his sleep his splendid surroundings had followed him; the mere dross of authorship he left behind when he slept, but he could not, if he would, shake off the phantoms aristocracy; they followed him into sleep with the easy familiarity of friends whom he could not deny. The shadowy duke who by day graced his garret breakfast by night sent him presents of game or wine or jewels. In his waking and his sleeping dreams he was always rich beyond measurement by number. All the wealth of the world was at his feet, and he scattered it with a liberal hand. The affluence of his imagination was never checked by the emptiness of his purse. He had led a double life--the one of iron poverty, the other of golden visions. So much had his dreams become a portion of his inner life that they often overflowed into his talk. When he dreamed he had been on a visit to the Marquis of Thanet, and came to tell of his dream, he forgot to put in the words "I dreamt." What difference did those two words make? No one was the richer or the poorer for leaving the words out, and the anecdote was all the shorter.

Now reality had exceeded in his own person any dignity or wealth he had ever enjoyed in the realm of shadows. It was one of his great difficulties to persuade himself all was not the pure creation of the brain. He had never, after waking, believed in the reality of those dreams. He had never been at a loss to know whether the Long Acre rooms or the marquis's castles were the reality when he was awake in the Long Acre rooms; but in his sleep he was confident the castles were substantial. When he slept now, he lived in the Long Acre rooms; when he woke, then he dwelt in the marquis's castles. The real and the imaginary had been interchanged, and although he felt, in talking to men who knew of the great change, that he should act as the Duke of Shropshire, he was always prepared to awake and find himself in bed at the top of Mr. Whiteshaw's carriage-manufactory, and, hear the noise of Mrs. Ward in the outer room, busy getting his breakfast ready.

But in the old time and the new there was one thing that never changed--he was always May's lover. In the old time, when he was at the marquis's castles, he thought how he should bring May there when they were married. In the old time, in the Long Acre rooms, he thought how he should go away from them for ever when May was his. In the new time May would enjoy the Long Acre rooms, and how she would enjoy the marquis's castles! Thus she was more with him at this time than ever. Her image was never from his side; her voice was always in his ear. And now she had gone away from him.

Where was she now? Good God, if anything had happened to her!