As if I did not know--it's too bad, upon my word!" And the ducal forehead reddened angrily.

The fact was that both he and his sister had taken an unaccountable fancy to this strange Northman, with his quiet ways and his unaffected courtesy, and at the present moment they would have quarrelled with their best friends rather than hear a word against him.

"My guest, too, and on my yacht," he went on; and it did his sister good to see him angry--"it's true he brought him, and introduced him to me." Then a bright idea struck him.
"And if Claudius were not a gentleman, what the deuce right had Barker to bring him to me at all, eh?
Wasn't it his business to find out?
My word! I would like to ask him that, and if I find him I will." Lady Victoria had no intention of making mischief between her brother and Mr.
Barker.

But she did not like the American, and she thought Barker was turning the Duke into a miner, or a farmer, or a greengrocer, or something--it was not quite clear.

But she wished him out of the way, and fate had given her a powerful weapon.