person they had destined
to slip on it. You must not imagine that they think out and appoint
everything that is to befall us, down to the smallest detail. Generally,
they just draw a sort of broad outline, and leave us to fill it in
according to our taste. Thus, in the matters of which this book is
record, it was they who made the Warden invite his grand-daughter to
Oxford, and invite the Duke to meet her on the evening of her arrival.
And it was they who prompted the Duke to die for her on the following
(Tuesday) afternoon. They had intended that he should execute his
resolve after, or before, the boat-race of that evening. But an
oversight upset this plan. They had forgotten on Monday night to uncage
the two black owls; and so it was necessary that the Duke's death should
be postponed. They accordingly prompted Zuleika to save him. For the
rest, they let the tragedy run its own course--merely putting in a
felicitous touch here and there, or vetoing a superfluity, such as that
Katie should open Zuleika's letter. It was no part of their scheme that
the Duke should mistake Melisande for her mistress, or that he should
run away from her, and they were genuinely sorry when he, instead of the
Master of Balliol, came to grief over the orange-peel.

Them, however, the Duke cursed as he fell; them again as he raised
himself on one elbow, giddy and sore; and when he found that the woman
bending over him was not she whom he dreaded, but her innocent maid, it
was against them that he almost foamed at the mouth.

"Monsieur le Duc has done himself harm--no?" panted Melisande. "Here is
a letter from Miss Dobson's part. She say to me 'Give it him with your
own hand.'"

The Duke received the letter and, sitting upright, tore it to shreds,
thus confirming a suspicion which Melisande had conceived at the moment
when he took to his heels, that all English noblemen are mad, but mad,
and of a madness.

"Nom de Dieu," she cried, wringing her hands, "what shall I tell to
Mademoiselle?"

"Tell her--" the Duke choked back a phrase of which the memory would
have shamed his last hours. "Tell her," he substituted, "that you have
seen Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage," and limped quickly
away down the Turl.

Both his hands had been abraded by the fall. He tended them angrily
with his handkerchief. Mr. Druce, the chemist, had anon the privilege of
bathing and plastering them, also of balming and binding the right knee
and the left