e Claudius
comes over, I should think."

"And when do you go?"

"Next week, I think."

"I wish you were going to stay," said Margaret simply, "or Lady
Victoria. I shall be so lonely."

"You will have Miss Skeat," suggested his Grace.

"Oh, it's not that," said she. "I shall not be alone altogether, for
there is poor Nicholas, you know. I must take care of him; and then I
suppose some of these people will want to amuse me, or entertain me--not
that they are very entertaining; but they mean well. Besides, my being
mixed up in a Nihilist persecution adds to my social value." The Duke,
however, was not listening, his mind being full of other things--what
there was of it, and his heart had long determined to sympathise with
Margaret in her troubles; so there was nothing more to be said.

"Dear me," thought Miss Skeat, "what a pity! They say she might have had
the Duke when she was a mere child--and to think that she should have
refused him! So admirably suited to each other!" But Miss Skeat, as she
sat at the other end of the room trying to find "what it was that people
saw so funny" in the _Tramp Abroad_, was mistaken about her patroness
and the very high and mighty personage from the aristocracy. The Duke
was much older than Margaret, and had been married before he had ever
seen her. It was only because they were such good friends that the
busybodies said they had just missed being man and wife.

But when the Duke was gone, Margaret and Miss Skeat were left alone, and
they drew near each other and sat by the table, the elder lady reading
aloud from a very modern novel. The Countess paid little attention to
what she heard, for she was weary, and it seemed as though the evening
would never end. Miss Skeat's even and somewhat monotonous voice
produced no sensation of drowsiness to-night, as it often did, though
Margaret's eyes were half-closed and her fingers idle. She needed rest,
but it would not come, and still her brain went whirling through the
scenes of the past twenty-four hours, again and again recurring to the
question "Why is he gone?" unanswered and yet ever repeated, as the
dreadful wake-song of the wild Irish, the "Why did he die?" that haunts
the ear that has once heard it for weeks afterwards.

She tried to reason, but there was no reason. Why, why, why? He was gone
with her kiss on his lips and her breath in his. She should have waited
till he came back from over the sea before giving him what was so