“’Tis a thing perhaps none but a woman could understand,” he said to himself in quiet thought.

The clock began to strike twelve.  One—­two—­three—­four—­five—­six—­

But the rest he did not hear.  The coach-wheels were to be heard rolling into the courtyard.  His Grace was returning.  Mr. Hammond rose from his work, prepared to answer a summons should he hear one.  In but a few minutes he was called and entered the adjoining room.

My lord Duke was standing in the centre of the apartment.  He looked like a man who had met with a shock.  The colour had fled from his countenance, and his eyes were full of pain.

“Hammond,” he said, “a great and sudden calamity has taken place.  An hour ago my Lord Dunstanwolde was struck down—­in the midst of his company—­by a fatal seizure of the heart.”

“Fatal, your Grace?” Mr. Hammond ejaculated.

“He did not breathe after he fell,” was my lord Duke’s answer, and his pallor became even more marble-like than before, as if an added coldness had struck him.  “He was a dead man when I laid my hand upon his heart.”

CHAPTER XXIII

Her Ladyship Returns to Town

Upon the awful occasion of his kinsman’s sudden death in the midst of the glittering throng of his guests, my lord Duke had spoken for the first time to her ladyship of Dunstanwolde’s sister, the gentle Mistress Anne.  His Grace had chanced to encounter this lady under such circumstances as naturally led them to address each other, and he being glad to have speech with her on whom his thoughts had dwelt so kindly, had remained in attendance upon her, escorting her through the crowd of celebrities and leading her to the supper-room for refreshment.  Had she been wholly a stranger to him, she was one who would have appealed to his heart and touched it, she was so slight and modest a creature, her eyes so soft and loving and her low voice so timid.  Such women always moved him and awakened in him that tenderness the weak should always waken in the strong.  But Mistress Anne did more; seeming to him, when she spoke of her sister or looked at her, surely the fondest creature Nature had ever made.

“I understand now,” his Grace had said to her as they talked, “why her ladyship says that ’twas you who first taught her what love meant.”

A soft colour flooded Mistress Anne’s whole face as she lifted it to look at him who stood so tall above her smallness.

“Did she so?” she exclaimed.  “Did she so?” And her soft dull eyes seemed about to fill with tears.

“Truly she did, madam,” he answered with warm feeling, “and added, too, that until you taught her she had never before beheld it.”

“I—­oh, I am grateful!” said Mistress Anne.  “I never dreamed that I—­But in these days, she hath a way of always saying that which makes one happy.”

“She loves and leans on you,” my lord Duke said, and there was sudden emotion in his voice.