Zuleika Dobson; Or, An Oxford Love Story

The Duke was dead. This was the stupendous outline she had grasped: now let it be filled in. She had been stricken: now let her be racked. Soon after her daughter had moved away, Mrs. Batch dried her eyes, and bade Clarence tell just what had happened. She did not flinch. Modern Katie did. Such had ever been the Duke’s magic in the household that Clarence had at first forgotten to mention that any one else was dead. Of this omission he was glad. It promised him a new lease of importance. Meanwhile, he described in greater detail the Duke’s plunge. Mrs. Batch’s mind, while she listened, ran ahead, dog-like, into the immediate future, ranging around: “the family” would all be here to-morrow, the Duke’s own room must be “put straight” to-night, “I was of speaking”... Katie’s mind harked back to the immediate past--to the tone of that voice, to that hand which she had kissed, to the touch of those lips on her brow, to the door-step she had made so white for him, day by day... The sound of the rain had long ceased. There was the noise of a gathering wind. “Then in went a lot of others,” Clarence was saying. “And they all shouted out ‘Zuleika!’ just like he did. Then a lot more went in. First I thought it was some sort of fun. Not it!” And he told how, by inquiries further down the river, he had learned the extent of the disaster. “Hundreds and hundreds of them--ALL of them,” he summed up. “And all for the love of HER,” he added, as with a sulky salute to Romance.