ed. "Ay, 'twas the first thing
I heard when I landed here, me that he come all these thousand miles
to see him, if so be he was alive." Just then he caught sight of Kate
Heaver climbing the stair to the deck where they were. His face flushed;
he hurried forward and gripped her by the arm, as her feet touched the
upper deck. "Kate-ay, 'tis Kate!" he cried. Then he let go her arm and
caught a hand in both of his and fondled it. "Ay, ay, 'tis Kate!" "What
is it brings you, Soolsby?" Kate asked anxiously.

"'Tis not Jasper, and 'tis not the drink-ay, I've been sober since, ever
since, Kate, lass," he answered stoutly. "Quick, quick, tell me what it
is!" she said, frowning. "You've not come here for naught, Soolsby."

Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. For an
instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious muffled
cry, broke away from him and turned to go below.

"Keep your mouth shut, lass, till proper time," he called after her, as
she descended the steps hastily again. Then he came slowly back to the
Duchess.

He looked her in the face--he was so little like a peasant, so much more
like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing. "Your
grace is a good friend to her ladyship," he said at last deliberately,
"and 'tis well that you tell her ladyship. As good a friend to her
you've been, I doubt not, as that I've been to him that's coming from
beyond and away."

"Go on, man, go on. I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you
have come to say."

"I beg pardon, your grace. One doesn't keep good news waiting, and
'tis not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge
Pasha, for there was no love lost 'twixt him and second-best lordship
that's gone."

"Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles," she interrupted
sharply.

"Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign--he is dead," he
said slowly.

The Duchess fell back in her chair. For an instant the desert, the
temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle
world, in which Soolsby's voice seemed coming muffled and deep across
a dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not
unlike that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly
of relief.

"Ay, he's dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard. Miss
Claridge would have it so. And none in Hamley said nay, not one."

The Duchess murmured to herself. E