My lord Duke turned and looked at her.  Their eyes rested on each other and spoke.

“I thank your Ladyship,” he said, “that you so understood.  I pray you let him not think I could at any time feel less tender of his goodness.”

But what his whole being impelled him to, was to throw himself upon his knees before her like a boy, to lay his face upon her little hands which rested open upon her lap, and to cry to her that there were hours when he could bear no more.  And could it have been that if he had so done she would have bent her dear head and wept—­for her voice, when she answered him, had surely tears in it.

“I will not let him think so,” she said.  “A heart as full of gentleness and warmth as his must not be chilled.  I will use all my power.  Your Grace has much to do about the Queen at this time of disturbance and cabal.  Her Grace of Marlborough’s angers, the intrigues of Harley and St. John, the quarrels of Mrs. Masham, make such a turmoil that you, whom her Majesty loves, must be preoccupied.”  She laid a hand softly upon her breast.  “He will believe all that I say,” she said.  “His kindness is so great to me.”

“He loves you,” said my lord Duke, his voice low and grave.  “You are so generous and noble a lady to him.”

“He is so generous and noble a husband,” my Lady Dunstanwolde answered.  “He thinks I need but ask a favour to find it granted.  ’Twas because he thinks so that he begged me to myself speak with you, to ask you to come to Warwickshire next week when we go there.  I—­have asked you.”

“With most sweet graciousness,” my lord Duke answered her.  “That I myself will tell him.”  And then he stepped to her side and lifted the fair hand and kissed it very reverently, and without either speaking another word he turned and went away.

“But I do no wrong,” he groaned to himself as he walked in a private room of his own house afterwards.  “I do no wrong if I go not near her—­if I have no speech with her that is not formal courtesy—­if I only look on her when she does not know that I am near.  And in seeing her, in the mere beholding of her dear face, there is a poor comfort which may hold a man from madness—­as a prisoner shut in a dungeon to perish of thirst, might save himself from death if he found somewhere in the blackness a rare falling drop and could catch it as it fell.”

So it befel that many a time he saw her when she was in nowise aware of his nearness.  All her incomings and outgoings he found a way to learn, when she left town for the country, and when she returned, what fetes and assemblies she would attend, at what Court gathering she would shine, at which places it would be possible that he might mingle with the crowd and seem to be but where ’twas natural he should appear, if his presence was observed.  To behold her sweep by in her chariot, to feel the heart leap which announced her coming, to catch a view of her crimson cheek, a fleeting glance and bow as she passed by, was at least to feel her in the same world with himself, to know that her pulse was beating still, her deep eyes still alight, her voice still music, and she a creature of love, though not for himself.