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It was a huge room splendidly panelled with dark, carved boiserie Louis XV, the most beautiful of its kind I had ever seen--only it was so dimly lit with the same shaded lamps one could hardly see into the corners

The duke was crouching in a chair and looked fearfully pale and ill, and had an inscrutable expression on his face Fancy aeven Robert's half-brother

I came forward--he rose with difficulty, and this is the conversation we had

"Please don't get up," I said "If I may sit down opposite you"

"Excuseto a chair; "but reat pain to-day"

He looked such a poor,touched

"Oh, I am so sorry!" I said "If I had known you were ill I would not have troubled you now"

"Justice had better not wait," he replied, with a whimsical, cynical, sour smile "State your case"

Then he suddenly turned on an electric laht in ood nerves

"My case is this: To begin with, I love your brother better than anything else in the world"

"Possibly--a number of women have done so," he interrupted "Well?"