I shall be so lonely." "You will have Miss Skeat," suggested his Grace.
"Oh, it's not that," said she.

"I shall not be alone altogether, for there is poor Nicholas, you know.

I must take care of him; and then I suppose some of these people will want to amuse me, or entertain me--not that they are very entertaining; but they mean well.

Besides, my being mixed up in a Nihilist persecution adds to my social value." The Duke, however, was not listening, his mind being full of other things--what there was of it, and his heart had long determined to sympathise with Margaret in her troubles; so there was nothing more to be said.
"Dear me," thought Miss Skeat, "what a pity! They say she might have had the Duke when she was a mere child--and to think that she should have refused him! So admirably suited to each other!" But Miss Skeat, as she sat at the other end of the room trying to find "what it was that people saw so funny" in the _Tramp Abroad_, was mistaken about her patroness and the very high and mighty personage from the aristocracy.

The Duke was much older than Margaret, and had been married before he had ever seen her.