the duchess that I am very sorry," he said. "Ask her if there is anything that I can do, and if I shall come to see her before dinner. And, Rosina, see that the doctor speaks to me before he goes away."
The girl hastened away with her message, and her master, sighing, went into the house to dress for dinner. "I don't know but I prefer that way," he said, with an anxious, studious look, as he tied his cravat before the dressing-glass. "Some of them go off driving and flirting when they are angry, some fly at you, some hang about and sulk. I think I prefer the kind that goes to bed and cries. It shows that they want to be coaxed and are willing to make up." He sighed, and took a fresh pocket-handkerchief. "And, besides," he added, "in that way you get rid of them for a little while."
And with this ungallant but consoling reflection the Duke of Cagliostro went down to dinner.
CHAPTER VI.
SEPARATION.
When she started to her feet and called her husband a brute, on being reminded of the irregular origin of their courtship, the Duchess of Cagliostro upset the tea-table at her elbow. It could not be said that she had shaken her fist at him, because her raised hand was open and suggested an imminent feminine slap, rather than the more masculine form of chastisement.
Such a beginning required a strong support, and, had the duke replied in kind, either a very lively scene might have followed, or the lady might have regained, by a lofty assumption of disdainful silence, that dignity which she instantly regretted having lost. When he failed her, nothing was left but hysterics, last inviolate refuge of ill-used womanhood. Madama sank back, gasping, into the chair from which she had just risen.
Giacomo, an old servant of the former Cagliostro, was aware that he had made a mistake in entering on the scene, and was determined not to make another. He therefore did not call his master back nor take the responsibility of calling help of any sort. He placed himself before the patient in a stooping position, with his hands braced on his knees, and begged her to tell him what he should do,—if he should call the duke, if he should call Rosina, if he should bring her a glass of water or of wine, or what he should do,—to none of which inquiries did he receive any reply. Growing desperate presently, he ran toward the house to call for help, when a still louder gasp, intended to hasten his progress, had the contrary effect of recalling him. He ran back, resumed his absurd position of sitting on air, and again inquired, with anxious distress, what he should do.
This time the patient raised her foot slightly, and sent it with such a sudden vigor against the hand-capped knees that the poor old man rolled over on the grass.
The sight of him there, and of his efforts to get up, decided the struggle between hysterical tears and hysterical laughter, which had been, as it were, locked together in madam a's throat and nearly suffocating her. She burst into screams of laughter and grew purple in the face.
Fortunately, Rosina had seen that something was the matter, and came running out. Mariù, hearing a disturbance in the garden, came with a hot smoothing-iron in her hand to look out of the window, and instantly rushed to the aid of her mistress with a smelling-bottle. Michele, whose master had passed without seeing him, and with evident signs of agitation, took a distant view of the scene and hastened to alarm the house. His first thought was that the colonel had murdered his wife.
In a few minutes a dozen retainers were gathered about the lady, and she was borne into the house in triumph, reclining in her arm-chair in a fainting condition, with Rosina weeping at her right hand and holding the vinaigrette
