"_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.