Claudius moved nearer to her.

“I have been pent up in the Duke’s tabagie for at least two hours,” he said, “and I am perfectly suffocated.”

“How can you sit in that atmosphere?  Why don’t you come and smoke on deck?”

“Oh! it was not only the tobacco that suffocated me to-night, it was the ideas.”

“What ideas?” asked Margaret.

“You have known the Duke a long time,” said he, “and of course you can judge.  Or rather, you know.  But to hear those two men talk is enough to make one think there is neither heaven above nor hell beneath.”  He was rather incoherent.

“Have they been attacking your favourite theories,” Margaret asked, and she smiled behind her veil; but he could not see that, and her voice sounded somewhat indifferent.

“Oh!  I don’t know,” he said, as if not wanting to continue the subject; and he turned round so as to rest his elbows on the taffrail.  So he stood, bent over and looking away astern at the dancing starlight on the water.  There was a moment’s silence.

“Tell me,” said Margaret at last.

“What shall I tell you, Countess?” asked Claudius.

“Tell me what it was you did not like about their talk.”

“It is hard to say, exactly.  They were talking about women, and American marriages; and I did not like it, that is all.”  Claudius straightened himself again and turned towards his companion.  The screw below them rushed round, worming its angry way through the long quiet waves.

“Barker,” said Claudius, “was saying that he supposed he would be married some day—­delivered up to torture, as he expressed it—­and the Duke undertook to prophesy and draw a picture of Barker’s future spouse.  The picture was not attractive.”

“Did Mr. Barker think so too?”

“Yes.  He seemed to regard the prospects of matrimony from a resigned and melancholy point of view.  I suppose he might marry any one he chose in his own country, might he not?”

“In the usual sense, yes,” answered Margaret.

“What is the ’usual sense’?” asked the Doctor.

“He might marry beauty, wealth, and position.  That is the usual meaning of marrying whom you please.”

“Oh! then it does not mean any individual he pleases?”

“Certainly not.  It means that out of half a dozen beautiful, rich, and accomplished girls it is morally certain that one, at least, would take him for his money, his manners, and his accomplishments.”

“Then he would go from one to the other until he was accepted?  A charming way of doing things, upon my word!” And Claudius sniffed the night air discontentedly.

“Oh no,” said Margaret.  “He will be thrown into the society of all six, and one of them will marry him, that will be the way of it.”

“I cannot say I discover great beauty in that social arrangement either, except that it gives the woman the choice.”