Frances, hastening mechanically toward her office, found relief from the oppressive confusion of her thoughts in the fortuitous spectacle of two small newsboys fighting in the gutter just at the end of the Temple Gardens. For the first time in her life, the sight aroused nothing within her save a pleased if unscientific interest. She paused, and almost smilingly observed the contest. She found something amusingly grotesque in the pseudo-Titanic rage on these baby faces. The dramatic fury of the embattled infants was in such ridiculous disproportion to the feather-weight blows they exchanged! She found herself chuckling aloud at some incongruous comparison which rose in her mind.
Then, as the combatants parted, apparently for no better reason than the general volatility of youth, she remembered that she had it in mind to look at the “Star.” One of her friends, Mary Leach, had sent to that paper some days before an article on “Shopgirls’ Dormitories,” and she was interested in watching for its appearance. It happened that one of the boys had a “Star.” Acting upon some obscure whim, she gave them each a penny, quite in the manner of a distributor of prizes for conspicuous merit—and grinned to herself at the thought when she had turned her back on them and moved on.
There was no sign of what she sought on the front page. Opening the sheet, her eye fell, as it were, upon a news paragraph in a middle column:
“Death of the Oldest Duke.—The Shrewsbury correspondent of the ‘Exchange Telegraph’ announces the death at Caermere Castle, at an early hour this morning, of the Duke of Glastonbury. His Grace, who was in his ninetieth year, had until last summer enjoyed the most vigorous health, and only now succumbs to the prostration then occasioned by the group of domestic bereavements which at the time created such a sensation. The deceased nobleman, who for the great part of his prolonged life, was one of the best known sportsmen in Shropshire, succeeded his father as eighth duke in his minority, and had been in possession of the title for no less than seventeen years when Her Majesty ascended the throne, thus constituting a record which is believed to be without parallel in the annals of the peerage. His successor is stated by Whitaker’s Almanac to be his grandson, Mr. Christian Tower, but the current editions of Burke, Debrett and others do not mention this gentleman, whose claims, it would appear, have but recently been admitted by the family.”
Frances read it all, as she stood at the corner, with a curious sense of mental sluggishness. Her attention failing to follow one of the sentences, she went back, and laboriously traced its entire tortuous course, only to find that it meant no more than it had at first.
It seemed a long time before she connected the intelligence on the printed page with the realities of actual life. Then she turned swiftly, and strained her eyes in the wild hope of discovering Christian still on the Embankment. She even took a few hurried steps, as if to follow and overtake him—but stopped short, confronted by the utter futility of such an enterprise.
Then, walking slowly, her mind a maze of wondering thoughts, she went her way.