One evening before dinner Vladimir brought Margaret a telegram.  She was seated by the fire as usual and Miss Skeat, who had been reading aloud until it grew too dark, was by her side warming her thin hands, which always looked cold, and bending forward towards the fire as she listened to Margaret’s somewhat random remarks about the book in hand.  Margaret had long since talked with Miss Skeat about her disturbed affairs, and concerning the prospect that was before her of being comparatively poor.  And Miss Skeat, in her high-bred old-fashioned way, had laid her hand gently on the Countess’s arm in token of sympathy.

“Dear Countess,” she had said, “please remember that it will not make any difference to me, and that I will never leave you.  Poverty is not a new thing to me, my dear.”  The tears came into Margaret’s eyes as she pressed the elder lady’s hand in silence.  These passages of feeling were rare between them, but they understood each other, for all that.  And now Margaret was speaking despondently of the future.  A few days before she had made up her mind at last to write the necessary letters to Russia, and she had now despatched them on their errand.  Not that she had any real hope of bettering things, but a visit from Nicholas had roused her to the fact that it was a duty she owed to him as well as to herself to endeavour to recover what was possible of her jointure.

At last she opened the telegram and uttered an exclamation of surprise.

“What in the world does it mean?” she cried, and gave it to Miss Skeat, who held it close to the firelight.

The message was from Lord Fitzdoggin, Her British Majesty’s Ambassador at St. Petersburg, and was an informal statement to the effect that his Excellency was happy to communicate to the Countess Margaret the intelligence that, by the untiring efforts and great skill of a personal friend, the full payment of her jointure was now secured to her in perpetuity.  It stated, moreover, that she would shortly receive official information of the fact through the usual channels.

Miss Skeat beamed with pleasure; for though she had been willing to make any sacrifice for Margaret, it would not have been an agreeable thing to be so very poor again.

“I never met Lord Fitzdoggin,” said Margaret, “and I do not understand in the least.  Why should he, of all people, inform me of this, if it is really true?”

“The Duke must have written to him,” said Miss Skeat, still beaming, and reading the message over again.

Margaret paused a moment in thought, then lighting the gas herself, she wrote a note and despatched Vladimir in hot haste.

“I have asked Mr. Bellingham to dine,” she said, in answer to Miss Skeat’s inquiring look.  “He will go to the party with me afterwards, if he is free.”

It chanced that Mr. Bellingham was in his rooms when Margaret’s note came, and he immediately threw over an engagement he had previously made, and sent word he would be at the Countess’s disposal.  Punctual to the minute he appeared.  Margaret showed him the telegram.