“As he is not going, it does not make any difference, of course, and so I forgive you.”

Considering that Barker had suggested the party, that it was Barker whom the Duke especially wanted to amuse him on the trip, that Barker had proposed Margaret and Claudius, and that, finally, the whole affair was a horrid mess, the Duke did not see what he could have done.  But he knew it was good form to be penitent whenever it seemed to be expected, and he liked Margaret well enough to hope that she would go.  He did not care very much for the society of women at any time.  He was more or less married when he was at home, which was never for long together, and when he was away he preferred the untrammelled conversational delights of a foreign green-room to the twaddle of the embassies or to the mingled snobbery and philistinism produced by the modern fusion of the almighty dollar and the ancienne noblesse.

And so he was in trouble just now, and his one idea was to submit to everything the Countess might say, and then to go and “give it” to Mr. Barker for producing so much complication.  But Margaret had nothing more to say about the party, and launched out into a discussion of the voyage.  She introduced a cautious “if” in most of her sentences. “If I go I would like to see Madeira,” and “if we join you, you must take care of Miss Skeat, and give her the best cabin,” etc. etc.  The Duke wisely abstained from pressing his cause, or asking why she qualified her plans.  At last he got away, after promising to do every conceivable and inconceivable thing which she should now or at any future time evolve from the depths of her inventive feminine consciousness.

“By the way, Duke,” she called after him, as he went over the, lawn, “may I take old Vladimir if I go?”

“If you go,” he answered, moving back a step or two, “you may bring all the Imperial Guards if you choose, and I will provide transports for those that the yacht won’t hold.”

“Thanks; that is all,” she said laughing, and the stalwart peer vanished through the house.  The moment he was gone Margaret dropped her work and lay back in her long chair to think.  The heavy lids half closed over her dark eyes, and the fingers of her right hand slowly turned round and round the ring she wore upon her left.  Miss Skeat was upstairs reading Lord Byron’s Corsair in anticipation of the voyage.  Margaret did not know this, or the thought of the angular and well-bred Scotchwoman bounding over the glad waters of the dark blue sea would have made her smile.  As it was, she looked serious.

“I am sorry,” she thought to herself.  “It was nice of him to say he would not go.”