Yorke walked straight out of the club, leaving the two men staring at each other in amazement.
"Good Lord! poor Auchester is clean off his balance. Do you think it is the shock—that it was because we did not break it gently enough?"
The other man shook his head.
"N-o, I don't think so. He's been very queer in his manner lately, and—But who the devil did he mean when he said, 'She might have been a duchess?'"
Yorke strode along Pall Mall bewildered and stunned. At first he was too confused to feel anything; then regret and grief came uppermost. He was genuinely sorry. You may dislike your uncle and cousins, and yet be far from wishing them dead; and Yorke's eyes were moist, and there was a lump in his throat as he thought of his three kinsmen lying at the bottom of the Mediterranean.
Then he began to realize what their unexpected and tragic death meant to him. There was only Dolph between him and the dukedom, and poor Dolph could not make old bones, and as it bore down upon him with its full significance, the terrible bitterness which had overwhelmed him at the club recurred. The turn of the wheel of fortune had come too late. If it had happened a month—five weeks earlier, he would not have been driven into a corner, the only way out of which was by a marriage with Eleanor Dallas.
"Too late!" he muttered. "Yes! if it had come sooner I might have kept Leslie;" but his heart revolted against his thought, and he swore under his breath, "No, no! It was the title she wanted, not me. It is better that she has gone!"
He went home and saw by Fleming's face that he had heard the sad news. Poor Fleming tried to look cut up, but it was hard work, seeing that he had been saying to himself since the moment he had read the paragraph, "My master will be a duke!"
"Dreadful news, my lord," he said, in the tone proper to the occasion.
"Yes, yes, Fleming," said Yorke, gravely.