“Very much,” said she.  “By the by, I am glad you have been able to arrange to go with us.  I thought your engagements were going to prevent you.”

Claudius looked at her, trying to read her thoughts, in which he failed.  He might have been satisfied, but he was not.  There was a short silence, and then he closed the book over his hand and spoke.

“Countess, do you wish me to go or not?”

Margaret raised her dark eyebrows.  He had never seen her do that before.  But then he had never said anything so clumsy before in his whole life, and he knew it the moment the words were out of his mouth, and his face was white in sunshine.  She looked at him suddenly, a slight smile on her lips, and her eyes just the least contracted, as if she were going to say something sarcastic.  But his face was so pitifully pale.  She saw how his hand trembled.  A great wave of womanly compassion welled up in her soul, and the smile faded and softened away as she said one word.

“Yes.”  It came from the heart, and she could not help it if it sounded kindly.

“Then I will go,” said Claudius, hardly knowing what he said, for the blood came quickly back to his face.

“Of course you will, I could have told you that ever so long ago,” chirped a little bullfinch in the tree overhead.

A couple of weeks or more after the events last chronicled, the steam yacht Streak was two days out on the Atlantic, with a goodly party on board.  There were three ladies—­the Duke’s sister, the Countess, and Miss Skeat, the latter looking very nautical in blue serge, which sat tightly over her, like the canvas cover sewn round a bicycle when it is sent by rail.  Of men there were also three—­to wit, the owner of the yacht, Mr. Barker, and Dr. Claudius.

The sea has many kinds of fish.  Some swim on their sides, some swim straight, some come up to take a sniff of air, and some stay below.  It is just the same with people who go to sea.  Take half a dozen individuals who are all more or less used to the water, and they will behave in half a dozen different ways.  One will become encrusted to the deck like a barnacle, another will sit in the cabin playing cards; a third will spend his time spinning yarns with the ship’s company, and a fourth will rush madly up and down the deck from morning till night in the pursuit of an appetite which shall leave no feat of marine digestion untried or unaccomplished.  Are they not all stamped on the memory of them that go down to the sea in yachts?  The little card-box and the scoring-book of the players, the deck chair and rugs of the inveterate reader, the hurried tread and irascible eye of the carnivorous passenger, and the everlasting pipe of the ocean talker, who feels time before him and the world at his feet wherein to spin yarns—­has any one not seen them?