"How can you sit in that atmosphere? Why don't you come and smoke on deck?"
"Oh! it was not only the tobacco that suffocated me to-night, it was the ideas."
"What ideas?" asked Margaret.
"You have known the Duke a long time," said he, "and of course you can judge. Or rather, you know. But to hear those two men talk is enough to make one think there is neither heaven above nor hell beneath." He was rather incoherent.
"Have they been attacking your favourite theories," Margaret asked, and she smiled behind her veil; but he could not see that, and her voice sounded somewhat indifferent.
"Oh! I don't know," he said, as if not wanting to continue the subject; and he turned round so as to rest his elbows on the taffrail. So he stood, bent over and looking away astern at the dancing starlight on the water. There was a moment's silence.
"Tell me," said Margaret at last.
"What shall I tell you, Countess?" asked Claudius.
"Tell me what it was you did not like about their talk."
"It is hard to say, exactly. They were talking about women, and American marriages; and I did not like it, that is all." Claudius straightened himself again and turned towards his companion. The screw below them rushed round, worming its angry way through the long quiet waves.