Grey hesitated.
"About as well as usual, I hope, my lord," he said, quietly. "This sad affair has upset him, of course, and—and he hasn't been very strong lately—not since we left England, indeed, my lord. Your lordship will find him looking thinner," he added, as if to warn Yorke.
Yorke quickened his pace, and Grey led him to the duke's room.
The room was darkened by the drawn blinds, and Yorke, coming out of the sunlight saw but indistinctly for a moment; then, as the duke raised himself on the couch, he started and found speech difficult. The duke was but a shadow of even his former self, and the hand which he extended was so thin that Yorke was afraid to press it.
"Why, Dolph," he said, with forced cheerfulness, "this is a surprise! How did you come here?"
"We have been traveling night and day, as you have no doubt," said the duke, and his voice sounded much thinner and more feeble than when Yorke had last heard it. "Pull up an inch or two of one of the blinds and let me look at you."
Yorke did so, and came back to the couch, and the duke, after scanning his face, fell back with a faint sigh.
"And so you are going to be the next duke, after all. How you and I have fretted—No, I don't know that you ever cared much, but I did—and it has all come right at last! The Providence that 'shapes our ends, rough-hew them as we will,' has decreed that poor Eustace and his boys should go down there in the bay and that you should reign in his place!"
"I wish they were all alive still," said Yorke, with sincerity.
"I know you do," responded the duke. "But I can't help thinking, as I have always thought, that you will make a good duke, Yorke. You have the presence and the moral strength, and a better temper than poor Eustace. He was too fond of his money. But of the dead let us speak nothing but good. And now about yourself. Why did you not write and tell me of your engagement? Never mind; I understand. And if I did not write and tell you I was glad, you knew it without any epistolatory assurance from me. You have done wisely, Yorke, very wisely. Eleanor has everything that a man wants in a wife—youth, beauty, wealth and station. She will make a splendid duchess, Yorke."