creature.  And I see you’re a lady born; I know in a minute.  You’re dark, I’m fair; we shall suit.  And tell me—­ hush!—­what dreadful long eyes he has!  I shall ask you presently what you think of me.  I was never at the Wells before.  Dear me! the coach has turned.  How far off shall we hear the bells to say I’m coming?  I know I’m to have bells.  Mr. Beamish, Mr. Beamish!  I must have a chatter with a woman, and I’m in awe of you, sir, that I am, but men and men I see to talk to for a lift of my finger, by the dozen, in my duke’s palace—­though they’re old ones, that’s true—­but a woman who’s a lady, and kind enough to be my maid, I haven’t met yet since I had the right to wear a coronet.  There, I’ll hold Chloe’s hand, and that’ll do.  You would tell me at once, Chloe, if I was not dressed to your taste; now, wouldn’t you?  As for talkative, that’s a sign with me of my liking people.  I really don’t know what to say to my duke sometimes.  I sit and think it so funny to be having a duke instead of a husband.  You’re off!’

The duchess laughed at Chloe’s laughter.  Chloe excused herself, but was informed by her mistress that it was what she liked.

‘For the first two years,’ she resumed, ’I could hardly speak a syllable.  I stammered, I reddened, I longed to be up in my room brushing and curling my hair, and was ready to curtsey to everybody.  Now I’m quite at home, for I’ve plenty of courage—­except about death, and I’m worse about death than I was when I was a simple body with a gawk’s “lawks!” in her round eyes and mouth for an egg.  I wonder why that is?  But isn’t death horrible?  And skeletons!’ The duchess shuddered.

‘It depends upon the skeleton,’ said Beau Beamish, who had joined the conversation.  ’Yours, madam, I would rather not meet, because she would precipitate me into transports of regret for the loss of the flesh.  I have, however, met mine own and had reason for satisfaction with the interview.’

‘Your own skeleton, sir!’ said the duchess wonderingly and appalled.

‘Unmistakably mine.  I will call you to witness by an account of him.’

Duchess Susan gaped, and, ‘Oh, don’t!’ she cried out; but added, ’It ’s broad day, and I’ve got some one to sleep anigh me after dark’; with which she smiled on Chloe, who promised her there was no matter for alarm.

‘I encountered my gentleman as I was proceeding to my room at night,’ said the beau, ’along a narrow corridor, where it was imperative that one of us should yield the ‘pas;’ and, I must confess it, we are all so amazingly alike in our bones, that I stood prepared to demand place of him.  For indubitably the fellow was an obstruction, and at the first glance repulsive.  I took him for anybody’s skeleton, Death’s ensign, with his cachinnatory skull, and the numbered ribs, and the extraordinary splay feet—­in fact, the whole ungainly and shaky hobbledehoy which man is built on, and by whose image in his weaker moments