Deppingham needed the money, but he was a whole day in grasping the fact
that his wife could not have it and him at the same time. The beautiful
and fashionable Lady Deppingham, once little Agnes Ruthven, came as near
to having hysteria as Englishwomen ever do, but she called in a lawyer
instead of a doctor. For three days she neglected her social duties (and
they were many), ignored her gallant admirers (and they were many), and
hurried back and forth between home and chambers so vigorously that his
lordship was seldom closer than a day behind in anything she did.

There was a great rattling of trunks, a jangling of keys, a thousand
good-byes, a cast-off season, and the Deppinghams were racing away for
the island of Japat somewhere in the far South Seas.




CHAPTER III

INTRODUCING HOLLINGSWORTH CHASE


While all this was being threshed out by the persons most vitally
interested in the affairs of Taswell Skaggs and John Wyckholme, events
of a most unusual character were happening to one who not only had no
interest in the aforesaid heritage, but no knowledge whatever of its
existence. The excitement attending the Skaggs-Wyckholme revelations had
not yet spread to the Grand Duchy of Rapp-Thorberg, apparently lost as
it was in the cluster of small units which went to make up a certain
empire: one of the world powers. The Grand Duke Michael disdained the
world at large; he had but little in common with anything that moved