Dinner is ready, Your Grace."

Her mistress did not answer, but lay there, looking through the open
window and shivering.

"Your Grace will catch cold by that open window. I had better close it."

"It's stifling--stifling."

"Will you have dinner now?"

"No--no. Why do you worry me? I can eat nothing."

Dorchester was seriously alarmed; an evening like this might very
easily.... She determined to send word round to Dr. Christopher.

She went away, gave directions about the dinner, saw that her mistress's
bedroom was warm and comfortable.

She came back. The Duchess was sitting up, colour in her cheeks and her
eyes sparkling. On her lap lay a note.

"I've had a dream, Dorchester--a horrid dream. I was disturbed for a
moment. I think I will eat something after all."

"The way she goes up and down!" thought Dorchester. "Must say I don't
like the look of her--not knowing her own mind, so unlike her--Who's the
letter from, I wonder?"

It was the letter, plainly, that had done it. Sitting up and enjoying
her soup, forgetting that black sky and the Dragon's scaly menace, the
Duchess knew that that dream--that dream about God--had been as silly,
as futile as dreams always are.

The note, brought to her by Norris and lying now beside her plate, had
told her so. The note of course had been from Roddy. It said:

"DEAR DUCHESS,

I don't want to ask anything impossible of you, but, encouraged
by your coming to me the other day and hearing that you took no
harm from your expedition, I am wondering whether to-morrow
afternoon about five you could come again and have tea with me.
There is something about which you can help me--only you in all
the world. If I don't hear from you I will conclude that you
can come--five o'clock.

Your affectionate friend,

RODDY."

That letter showed the perfection of his tactful understanding....

No absurd talk about her age, her feebleness, the weather, but simply it
was taken for granted that of course she would be there. Well, of
course, she _would_ be there--nothing should stop her. She was aware
that Christopher, hearing that to-night she had not been so well, would
certainly forbid her to move. He should, therefore, know nothing about
it, nothing at all. His visit would be paid in the morning--she would
have the afternoon to herself--Norris and Dorchester should help her to
the carriage.

Christopher expected, on his arriva