“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 very precious.  More than once, as she repeated the words he had spoken at parting, she asked herself whether she doubted him after all, and whether it would not be wiser to speak to the Duke.  But then, the latter so evidently believed in Claudius that it comforted her to think of his honest faith, and she would dismiss every doubt again as vain and wearying.  But still the eternal question rang loudly in her soul’s ears, and the din of the inquisitive devil that would not be satisfied deafened her so that she could not hear Miss Skeat.  Once or twice she moved her head nervously from side to side, as it rested on the back of the chair, and her face was drawn and pale, so that Miss Skeat anxiously asked whether she were in any pain, but Margaret merely motioned to her companion to continue reading, and was silent.  But Miss Skeat grew uneasy, feeling sure that something was the matter.

“Dear Countess,” she said, “will you not retire to rest?  I fear that this horrid accident has shaken you.  Do go to bed, and I will come and read you to sleep.”  Her voice sounded kindly, and Margaret’s fingers stole out till they covered Miss Skeat’s bony white ones, with the green veins and the yellowish lights between the knuckles.

Miss Skeat, at this unusual manifestation of feeling, laid down the book she held in her other hand, and settled her gold-rimmed glasses over her long nose.  Then her eyes beamed across at Margaret, and a kindly, old-fashioned smile came into her face that was good to see, and as she pressed the hot young hand in hers there was a suspicion of motherliness in her expression that would have surprised a stranger.  For Miss Skeat did not look motherly at ordinary times.