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44 presenting George Sampson’s rather obtrusive garments (which I took the liberty of regarding as a perquisite) to Jean, who received them gladly. I felt at once a different being—so true it is that the tailor makes the man.

“You are well out of that,” grunted old Jean. “If he’d discovered you, he’d have had you out and shot you!”

“He is a good shot?”

“Mon Dieu!” said Jean with an expressiveness which was a little disquieting; for it was on the cards that the duke might still find me out. And I was not a practiced shot—not at my fellow-men, I mean. Suddenly I leaped up.

“Good Heavens!” I cried. “I forgot! The duchess wanted me. Stop, stop!”

With a jerk Jean pulled up his horse, and gazed at me.

“You can’t go back like that,” he said, with a grin. “You’ll have to put on these clothes again,” and he pointed to the discarded suit.

“I very nearly forgot the duchess,” said I. To tell the truth, I was at first rather proud of my forgetfulness; it argued a complete triumph over that unruly impulse at which I have hinted. But it also smote me with remorse. I leaped to the ground.

“You must wait while I run back.”

“He will shoot you after all,” grinned Jean.

“The devil take him!” said I, picturing the poor duchess utterly forsaken—at the mercy of Delhasses, husband, and what not.

I declare, as my deliberate opinion, that there is nothing more dangerous than for a man