e incarnation of strength as he
sat with folded hands and earnest face, awaiting her reply. His words
were not eloquent, but they were plain and true, and he meant them.
Something in the suppressed power of his tone drove away the smile from
Margaret's face, and she looked toward him.

"Could you?" she asked. But the door opened, and Lady Victoria entered
with her book.

"Oh!" said Lady Victoria.

"I must go and dress," said Claudius.

"We will go on with the book to-morrow," said the Countess. And he bore
away a light heart.

On the following day the Duke began to take care of the Countess, as he
had done yesterday, and Barker turned on the fireworks of his
conversation for the amusement of Claudius. Claudius sat quite still for
an hour or more, perhaps enjoying the surprise he was going to give the
Duke and Barker. As the latter finished a brilliant tale, for the
veracity of which he vouched in every particular, Claudius calmly rose
and threw away his cigarette.

"That is a very good story," he said. "Good-bye for the present. I am
going to read with the Countess." Barker was nearly "taken off his
feet."

"Why--" he began, but stopped short. "Oh, very well. She is on deck. I
saw the Duke bring up her rugs and things." His heavy moustache seemed
to uncurl itself nervously, and his jaw dropped slowly, as he watched
Claudius leave the deck-cabin.

"I wonder when they got a chance," he said to himself.

But Barker was not nearly so much astonished as the Duke. The latter was
sitting by Margaret's side, near the wheel, making conversation. He was
telling her such a good story about a mutual friend--the son of a great
chancellor of the great empire of Kakotopia--who had gambled away his
wife at cards with another mutual friend.

"And the point of the story," said the Duke, "is that the lady did not
object in the least. Just fancy, you know, we all knew her, and now she
is married again to--" At this point Claudius strode up, and Margaret,
who did not care to hear any more, interrupted the Duke.

"Dr. Claudius, I have our book here. Shall we read?" The Doctor's face
flushed with pleasure. The Duke stared.

"I will get a chair," he said; and his long legs made short work of it.

"Well, if you will believe it," said the Duke, who meant to finish his
story, "it was not even the man who won her at cards that she married
when she was divorced. It was a man you never met; and they are living
in some place in Italy