Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

Them, however, the Duke cursed as he fell; them again as he raised himself on one elbow, giddy and sore; and when he found that the woman bending over him was not she whom he dreaded, but her innocent maid, it was against them that he almost foamed at the mouth. “Monsieur le Duc has done himself harm--no?” panted Melisande. “Here is a letter from Miss Dobson’s part. She say to me ‘Give it him with your own hand.’” The Duke received the letter and, sitting upright, tore it to shreds, thus confirming a suspicion which Melisande had conceived at the moment when he took to his heels, that all English noblemen are mad, but mad, and of a madness. “Nom de Dieu,” she cried, wringing her hands, “what shall I tell to Mademoiselle?” “Tell her--” the Duke choked back a phrase of which the memory would have shamed his last hours. “Tell her,” he substituted, “that you have seen Marius sitting among the ruins of Carthage,” and limped quickly away down the Turl. Both his hands had been abraded by the fall. He tended them angrily with his handkerchief. Mr. Druce, the chemist, had anon the privilege of bathing and plastering them, also of balming and binding the right knee and the left shin. “Might have been a very nasty accident, your Grace,” he said. “It was,” said the Duke. Mr. Druce concurred. Nevertheless, Mr. Druce’s remark sank deep. The Duke thought it quite likely that the gods had intended the accident to be fatal, and that only by his own skill and lightness in falling had he escaped the ignominy of dying in full flight from a lady’s-maid. He had not, you see, lost all sense of free-will. While Mr. Druce put the finishing touches to his shin, “I am utterly purposed,” he said to himself, “that for this death of mine I will choose my own manner and my own--well, not ‘time’ exactly, but whatever moment within my brief span of life shall seem aptest to me. Unberufen,” he added, lightly tapping Mr. Druce’s counter.