es my meals regular."

The Duchess had obviously forgotten all about dinner. There was a
spinning-wheel in the room, and she sat and span like an elderly Fate.
When dinner was announced at last, I began to fear it would never end.
The menu covered _both sides_ of the card. The Duchess ate little, and
"hardly anything was drunk." At last the ladies left us, about one in
the morning. I saw my chance, and began judiciously to "draw" the
chaplain. It appeared that the Duchess did not always dine at half-past
eleven. The feast was a movable one, from eight o'clock onwards. The
Duchess and the establishment had got into these habits during the old
Duke's time. A very strange man the old Duke; rarely got up till eight
in the evening, often prolonged breakfast till next day.

"But I need not tell _you_ all this, Percy, my old pupil," said the
chaplain; and he winked as a clergyman ought not to wink.

"My dear sir," cried I, encouraged by this performance, "for Heaven's
sake tell me what all this means? In this so-called nineteenth century,
in our boasted age of progress, what _does_ the Duchess mean by her
invitation to me, and by her conduct at large? Indeed, why is _she_ at
large?"

The chaplain drew closer to me. "Did ye ever hear of a duchess in a
madhouse?" said he; and I owned that I never had met with such an
incident in my reading (unless there is one in Webster's plays,
somewhere).

"Well, then, who is to make a beginning?" asked the priest. "The Duchess
has not a relation in the world but Miss Birkenhead, the only daughter of
a son of the last Duke but one. The late Duke was a dreadful man, and he
turned the poor Duchess's head with the life he led her. The drowning of
her only son in the Jingo finished the business. She has got that story
about"--(here he touched the decanter of sherry: I nodded)--"she has got
that story into her head, and she believes her son is alive; otherwise
she is as sane and unimaginative as--as--as Mr. Chaplin," said he, with a
flash of inspiration. "Happily you are an honest man, or you seem like
one, and won't take advantage of her delusion."

This was all I could get out of the chaplain; indeed, there was no more
to be got. I went to bed, but not to sleep. Next day, and many other
days, I spent wrestling in argument with the Duchess. I brought her my
certificate of baptism, my testamurs in Smalls and Greats, an old
passport, a bill of Poole's, anything I could thin