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."