One day he decides to set out to discover whether he is "a man, or only a Duke."Beginning with an incognito journey into the countryside to confront a blackmailer, he encounters a runaway school boy, a beautiful but airheaded orphan, one of literature's most appealing and well-spoken comic villains, and a series of alarming and even life threatening events from which he can extricate himself only with the help of his shy and lovely fiancé…

    Assuming that he is too late for dinner, he stops at an inn, whereupon he stumbles across a man drinking heavily and sad about his upcoming elopement with an heiress. It appears the heiress' papa has set her up with a, assumed, fat old fella, and the heiress wants nothing to do with that.