"Of course, there are lots of good people in Sweden," said the Duke; "but they all have titles, just as they do in Germany. And Claudius has no title."
"No," said Barker pensively, "I never heard him say he had a title."
"I don't know anything about it," answered the Duke. "But I have been a good deal about Sweden, and he is not in the least like a respectable Swedish burgher. Did you not tell me that his uncle, who left him all that money, was your father's partner in business?"
"Yes, I remember once or twice hearing the old gentleman say he had a nephew. But he was a silent man, though he piled up the dollars."
"Claudius is a silent man too," said the Duke.
"And he has sailed into the dollars ready piled."
But this was before the eventful day just described; and the Duke had forgotten the conversation, though he had repeated the reflections to himself, and found them true. To tell the truth, Claudius looked more like a duke than his host, for the sea air had blown away the professorial cobwebs; and, after all, it did not seem so very incongruous in the Englishman's eyes that his handsome guest should fall in love with the Countess Margaret. Only, it was very uncomfortable; and he did not know exactly what he should do with them for the next ten days. Perhaps he ought to devote himself to the Countess, and thus effectually prevent any approaches that Claudius might meditate. Yes—that was probably his duty. He wished he might ask counsel of his sister; but then she did not know, and it seemed unfair, and altogether rather a betrayal of confidence or something—at all events, it was not right, and he would not do it. Barker might be wrong too. And so the poor Duke, muddle-headed and weary with this storm in his tea-cup, and with having his tea-cup come to grief in a real storm into the bargain, turned into his deck-cabin to "sleep on it," thinking the morning would bring counsel.
Claudius had many things to think of too; but he was weary, for he had slept little of late, and not at all the night before; so he lay down and went over the scenes of the evening; but soon he fell asleep, and dreamed of her all the night long.
But the good yacht Streak held on her course bravely, quivering in the joy of her new-spread wings. For what hulk is so dull and pitifully modern as not to feel how much gladder a thing it is to bound along with straining shrouds and singing sails and lifting keel to the fierce music of the wind than to be ever conscious of a burning sullenly-thudding power, put in her bosom by the unartistic beast, man, to make her grind her breathless way whither he would, and whither she would not? Not the meanest mud-scow or harbour tug but would rather have a little mast and a bit of canvas in the fresh salt breeze than all the hundreds of land-born horse-powers and fire-driven cranks and rods that a haste-loving generation can cram into the belly of the poor craft. How much more, then, must the beautiful clean-built Streak have rejoiced on that night when she felt the throbbing, gnashing pain of the engines stop suddenly in her breast, and was allowed to spread her beautiful wings out to be kissed and caressed all over by her old lover, the north-east wind?
And the grand crested waves came creeping up, curling over their dark heads till they bristled with phosphorescent foam; and some of them broke angrily upward, jealous that the wind alone might touch those gleaming sails. But the wind roared at them in his wrath and drove them away, so that they sank back, afraid to fight with him; and he took the ship in his strong arms, and bore her fast and far that night, through many a heaving billow, and past many a breaking crest—far over the untrodden paths, where footsteps are not, neither the defiling hand of man.