me sixty pounds, then it is a duke's school, and it lasts as long as the duke is pleased. And if the duke marries, or tires of it, or goes abroad, it is gone, and eleven children go back to sitting in the corner of the chandler's shop. And besides — " she lowered her voice, though nobody in Fleet Street was listening to anything but themselves — "you know what they would say. A young lady, unmarried, and a duke's money, and a room in Red Lion Court. They wouldn't say it was a school."
His face was quite still. "No," he said. "No, I suppose they wouldn't."
"It must be mine. It must be made out of shillings, out of things I wrote and things I did. Then nobody can take it away." She lifted her chin. "I'll get there. It may take me two years, but I'll get there."
"I don't doubt it," said the Duke of Calderwood. He looked at her for a long moment, there under Temple Bar, as if she were a line of print he was reading for the second time and finding that it said something different than he had thought. Then he put his hat back on and bowed, and said, "Thursday, then, Miss Ivers," and went away west, and she stood under the Bar and watched him go until a carter swore at her.
At Lady Cressingham's on the following Wednesday — her second ball of the Season, and the last before the town began to thin for the summer — he danced with her twice, which was the most a gentleman could decently do; and between the dances he sat beside her, in the chair next to the gold damask one by the Chinese jar, and she did for him across the ballroom what she had done for herself for three Seasons, only now she did it aloud, in a murmur, turned toward him, so that he could read her as she read the room. Lord Dunstable has given up on the sea and is trying stars. Mrs. Pelling is telling Lady Fenn that I have a squint. I haven't. The man by the door in the blue coat says the lobster patties are worse than ever. And there — by the card room — that is your cousin, I think. Lord Selby. He is saying, "Calderwood seems uncommonly attentive." And the gentleman with him is saying, "He's uncommonly something."
The Duke did not turn his head to look. He did not need to. He only said, very low, "You are better than spectacles, Miss Ivers."
"I'm a great deal more trouble than spectacles."
"Yes," he said. "That's one of the things I like about you." And then he stood, and held out his hand for the second dance, and she took it, and for the length of a waltz — it was a waltz, this time, and her mother nearly fainted with joy — she forgot that she had ever sat in a chair by a jar and picked at a darn.