Still holding her hand, he leaned over and whispered in her ear. For an instant she stood as though transfixed, and then, with a curious muffled cry, broke away from him and turned to go below.
“Keep your mouth shut, lass, till proper time,” he called after her, as she descended the steps hastily again. Then he came slowly back to the Duchess.
He looked her in the face—he was so little like a peasant, so much more like a sailor here with his feet on the deck of a floating thing. “Your grace is a good friend to her ladyship,” he said at last deliberately, “and ‘tis well that you tell her ladyship. As good a friend to her you’ve been, I doubt not, as that I’ve been to him that’s coming from beyond and away.”
“Go on, man, go on. I want to know what startled Heaver yonder, what you have come to say.”
“I beg pardon, your grace. One doesn’t keep good news waiting, and ‘tis not good news for her ladyship I bring, even if it be for Claridge Pasha, for there was no love lost ‘twixt him and second-best lordship that’s gone.”
“Speak, man, speak it out, and no more riddles,” she interrupted sharply.
“Then, he that was my Lord Eglington is gone foreign—he is dead,” he said slowly.
The Duchess fell back in her chair. For an instant the desert, the temples, the palms, the Nile waters faded, and she was in some middle world, in which Soolsby’s voice seemed coming muffled and deep across a dark flood; then she recovered herself, and gave a little cry, not unlike that which Kate gave a few moments before, partly of pain, partly of relief.
“Ay, he’s dead and buried, too, and in the Quaker churchyard. Miss Claridge would have it so. And none in Hamley said nay, not one.”
The Duchess murmured to herself. Eglington was dead—Eglington was dead—Eglington was dead! And David Claridge was coming out of the desert, was coming to-day-now!