The duchess turned:  her head as the door opened slowly, but made no movement, although her heart suddenly quickened its beat.

“Yes?” she said quietly.

Hobson walked up to the bed and took one of the little old hands between her own powerful ones.

“Miss Damaris wants you, ma’am.”  She spoke with certain conviction; then added, “I’ve had a dream, ma’am.  I saw nothing, but I heard Miss Damaris calling you.  It woke me up. ‘Marraine,’ she said, ’I want you.’  That was all.  And she does, ma’am.”

She stood patting the hand of her mistress, who lay for a moment quite still; then the faithful creature put a Shetland shawl round the bent shoulders as the old lady sat straight up in bed.

“Would you please find Miss Jill’s maid,” (she used the term of the past, when Jill Carden had stayed at the Castle and had teased Hobson to death) “and ask her to tell her mistress that I should be pleased if she could find it convenient to come to my room for a moment.”

Hobson found the aged body-servant lying asleep outside her mistress’s door.

Ameena had learned a few words of the English language in the last twenty years, but not enough to allow her to understand the terrifying person who stood over her; so that she shook her head whilst Hobson repeated her request over and over again, and ever more distinctly, until it ended at last in a veritable shout which brought Jill, who had not slept for the ache in her mother-heart, to the door.

For a moment she stood, a beautiful picture, with big questioning eyes and two great plaits of auburn hair hanging down over her satin wrap; then she ran down the corridor and into her godmother’s bedroom.

In an hour those two forceful women had made their plans, acting without hesitation upon what might so easily have been the outcome of digestive trouble on Maria Hobson’s part.

Fully clothed, the two maids entered her grace’s bedroom, the one carrying the tea-tray and the other a plate of biscuits.

“Ameena,” said Jill, who was sitting on the end of the bed, “please go and find Mustapha.  Tell him to go to the station, find the station-master and give him this letter.  We want a special train as soon as possible.  Mustapha is to bring me a written reply from the station-master.”

She spoke with the authority of the Eastern potentate and took no notice of the maid when she knelt and kissed the hem of her satin wrap.

“Give me a cigarette, Hobson,” said her grace, in the depths of whose eyes twinkled the star of humour.  “We shall be starting as soon as possible, maybe directly after breakfast, for Luxor.”

“Yes, your grace.  I will begin the packing,” said the imperturbable Hobson, placing the tray on the table beside the bed.  “And when you have had your tea, ma’am, will you try and get a little sleep?  You can leave everything safely to me.”