and Margaret
lingered one moment in their corner, standing.

"Has it been a happy day for you?" he asked, as she gave her hand.

"Yes, it has been happy. May there be many like it!" she answered.

"There shall be," said Claudius; "good-night, Countess."

"Good-night--good-night, Claudius."

The Duke waited fully ten minutes for the Doctor. It was the second time
she had spoken his name without the formality of a prefix, and Claudius
stood where she left him, thinking. There was nothing so very
extraordinary in it, after all, he thought. Foreign women, especially
Russians, are accustomed to omit any title or prefix, and to call their
intimate friends by their simple names, and it means nothing. But her
voice was so wonderful. He never knew his name sounded so sweet
before--the consonants and vowels, like the swing and fall of a deep
silver bell in perfect cadence. "A little longer," thought Claudius,
"and it shall be hers as well as mine." He took a book from the table
absently, and had opened it when he suddenly recollected the Duke, put
it down and left the room.

Soon a noiseless individual in a white waistcoat and a dress-coat put
his head in at the door, advanced, straightened the chairs, closed the
book the Doctor had opened, put the gas out and went away, shutting the
door for the night, and leaving the room to its recollections. What
sleepless nights the chairs and heavy-gilt glasses and gorgeous carpets
of a hotel must pass, puzzling over the fragments of history that are
enacted in their presence!

CHAPTER XI.

Mr. Barker's urgent engagement up town that evening must have been to
meet some one; but considering that the individual he might be supposed
to be awaiting did not come, he showed a remarkable degree of patience.
He went to a certain quiet club and ordered, with the utmost care, a
meal after his own heart--for one; and though several members hailed him
and greeted him on his return, he did not seem particularly interested
in what they had to say, but sat solitary at his small square table with
its exquisite service; and when he had eaten, and had finished his
modest pint of Pommery Sec, he drank his coffee and smoked his own
cigars in undisturbed contemplation of the soft-tinted wall-paper, and
in calm, though apparently melancholy, enjoyment of the gentle light
that pervaded the room, and of the sweet evening breeze that blew in
from the trees of Madison Square, so restful after the d