“Well, Vick,” said her brother good-naturedly, “I daresay you are right.  But he amuses me, and he is very square on settling days.”

* * * * *

Meanwhile Lady Victoria was not mistaken—­Mr. Barker was spiteful; but she did not know that she was the only member of the party to whom he ventured to show it, because he thought she was stupid, and because it was such a relief to say a vicious thing now and then.  He devoted himself most assiduously to Miss Skeat, since Margaret would not accept his devotion to her, and indeed had given him little chance to show that he would offer it.  The days sped fast for some of the party, slowly for others, and pretty much as they did anywhere else for the Duke, who was in no especial hurry to arrive in New York.  His affairs were large enough to keep, and he had given himself plenty of time.  But nevertheless his affairs were the object in view; and though he did not like to talk about those things, even with Barker, the fate of Claudius and Margaret as compared with the larger destinies of the Green Swash Mining Company were as the humble and unadorned mole-hill to the glories of the Himalaya.  People had criticised the Duke’s financial career in England.  Why had he sold that snuffbox that Marie Therese gave to his ancestor when—­well, you know when?  Why had he converted those worm-eaten manuscripts, whereon were traced many valuable things in a variety of ancient tongues, into coin of the realm?  And why had he turned his Irish estates into pounds, into shillings, yea, and into pence.  Pence—­just think of it!  He had sold his ancestral lands for pence; that was what it came to.  These and many other things the scoffers scoffed, with a right good-will.  But none save the Duke could tell how many broad fields of ripening grain, and vine-clad hills, and clean glistening miles of bright rail, and fat ore lands sodden with wealth of gold and silver and luscious sulphurets—­none save the Duke could tell how much of these good things the Duke possessed in that great land beyond the sea, upon which if England were bodily set down it would be as hard to find as a threepenny bit in a ten-acre field.  But the Duke never told.  He went about his business quietly, for he said in his heart, “Tush!  I have children to be provided for; and if anything happens to the old country, I will save some bacon for them in the new, and they may call themselves dukes or farmers as far as I am concerned; but they shall not lack a few hundred thousand acres of homestead in the hour of need, neither a cow or two or a pig.”