To tell the truth, the Duke firmly expected to receive the news of the ship’s arrival during the night, and so great was his anxiety to relieve Margaret that he insisted upon Willis and Vladimir sitting up all night, so as to be sure of having the message delivered the moment it arrived.  The Russian and the English servants hated each other, and he was certain they would not give each other any rest.  But the Duke slept soundly, and waking at daybreak yelled viciously for Willis.

“Well?” he said, “I suppose you went to sleep.  Where is the telegram?”

“There’s no telegraph been yet, your Grace;” said the gray man-servant, who looked as though he had been up several nights instead of one.

“Oh!” said the Duke with a change of voice.  He was not given to bullying his servants, and always regretted being hasty with them, but his conviction had been strong that the message ought to have come in the night.

Having spent the day previous in the office, he felt in duty bound not to relinquish his post until the Countess’s doubts were set at rest.  So he got into a cab; for, like many foreigners, he hated the Elevated Road, and was driven down town to the Bowling-Green.

It rained heavily all the morning, and the Duke, who, as may be imagined, was not generally given to spending his days in steamboat offices, was wonderfully and horribly bored.  He smoked and kicked the chairs and read his novel, and was generally extremely uneasy, so that the clerks began to find him a nuisance, not having any idea that he was a real living swell.  And still it rained, and the newspaper vendors looked in, all drizzly and wet, and the gay feathers of New York business seemed draggled.

Suddenly—­it might have been at two o’clock—­there was a stir in the office, a rattling of feet on the board floor, and a sort of general revival.

“She’s in sight,” a clerk called out to the Duke.  His Grace stretched himself and departed.  He had ascertained that the Custom-House tug did not start for two hours after the ship was sighted.  So he sent a telegram to Margaret to announce that her waiting was over, and then, to pass the time, he went, and got something to eat.  In due season he was seated in the single cabin of the little high-pressure boat, as it ploughed its way bravely through the waves and the rain to meet the great ocean monster.  The Custom-House officials, cheery well-fed men, who know the green side of a XX[4], and are seldom troubled with gloomy forebodings, chatted and chaffed merrily together.  One of them was very bald, and appeared to be a perpetual laughing-stock for the rest.

[Footnote 4:  Twenty dollars.]

“Well, Ike,” shouted one of his companions between two pulls of a small black bottle, “you hev got a skatin’ rink on to the top of your head, and no mistake”.  The other grinned, and retorted to the effect that it was better to have the outside smooth than the inside soft.