not speak of payment, the reason is that I know you would not have me
bankrupt.'

The remainder of the colloquy of the duke and Mr. Beamish referred
to the date of her Grace's coming to the Wells, the lodgement she was to
receive, and other minor arrangements bearing upon her state and comfort;
the duke perpetually observing, 'But I leave it all to you, Beamish,'
when he had laid down precise instructions in these respects, even to the
specification of the shopkeepers, the confectioner and the apothecary,
who were to balance or cancel one another in the opposite nature of their
supplies, and the haberdasher and the jeweller, with whom she was to make
her purchases. For the duke had a recollection of giddy shops, and of
giddy shopmen too; and it was by serving as one for a day that a certain
great nobleman came to victory with a jealously guarded dame beautiful as
Venus. 'I would have challenged the goddess!' he cried, and subsided
from his enthusiasm plaintively, like a weak wind instrument. 'So there
you see the prudence of a choice of shops. But I leave it to you,
Beamish.' Similarly the great military commander, having done whatsoever
a careful prevision may suggest to insure him victory, casts himself upon
Providence, with the hope of propitiating the unanticipated and darkly
possible.




CHAPTER III

The splendid equipage of a coach and six, with footmen in scarlet and
green, carried Beau Beamish five miles along the road on a sunny day to
meet the young duchess at the boundary of his territory, and conduct her