Thatmorning, Winton went with his heart beating to Grosvenor Square. He was not overawed by the stately stillness of the place, the imposing dim vacancy of the suite of rooms through which he was led to the Duchess’s boudoir. He had a fine house himself, and everything handsome about him, and he did not feel that Lady Jane would make any marked descent either in comfort or luxury should she abandon these gilded halls for his. To tell the truth, he thought the gilding was overdone, not to say a little tarnished andin questionable taste; but that was the fault of the time in which it was executed. He was so little alarmed that he could notice all this. He had seen those rooms before only in the evening, when they were full of company, and looked very different from now, when they lay, in the freshness of the morning, all empty and silent, the windows open, and the sun-blinds down, and nobody visible. Naturally the lover looked, as he passed through the apartment in which his lady lived, for some trace of her habitual occupation. Was that hers, that little chair by the window, the table with work on it, and some books, and a single rose in a glass? He would have taken the rose on the chance, if that solemn personage in front of him had not kept within arm’s length. There was a portrait of her on the wall; but it did not, of course, do her justice, indeed was an unworthy daub, as anybody could see. Thus he steppedthrough one room after another, treading on air, his heart beating, not with apprehension, but with soft excitement and happiness. She should have a better lodging than this, rooms decorated expressly for her, pictures of a very different kind; her home should be worthy of her, if any mortal habitation could ever be worthy of such a beautiful soul. In his progress across the ante-room and the two great drawing-rooms, all this went through his mind. Thoughts go so quickly. He even arranged the pictures, selected with lightning-speed what would suit her best, decided that a Raphael—it must be a Raphael—should hang upon the walls of the shrine in which his saint was to be specially set: while he walked on, glancing with a half-smile of contempt at the Duke of Billingsgate, K.G., in his peer’s robes, on one side, and a Duchess-Dowager in a turban, on the other. Good heavens! tothink of such hideous daubs surrounding Jane! But in the new home all should be altered. His heart had palpitated with anxiety yesterday before he knew how she would receive his suit—but to-day! To-day he had no anxiety at all, only an eager desire to get the preliminaries over, and to see her, and make her decide when It was to be. There was no reason why they should wait. He was not a young barrister (as he might have been but for that uncle—bless him!—whose goodness he had never duly appreciated till now) waiting for an income. He was rich, and ready to sign the settlements to-morrow. At the end of the season, just long enough to be clear of St George’s, and make sure of a pretty quiet country church to be married in, time enough by turning half the best workmen in London into it, and devoting himself tobric-a-bracwith all his energies, to turn his little house at Wintoninto a lady’s bower. What more was wanted? He had everything arranged in his mind before the groom of the chambers, entering on noiseless feet, and with a voice like velvet, informed her Grace that “Mr Winton” was about to enter. The Duchess received him with benignity just terminated with stateliness. She had never, he thought, been so beautiful as Jane. Perhaps in the majority of cases it is difficult to believe that a woman of fifty has been as beautiful as her daughter of twenty-eight. And it was true enough in this case. But nobody could deny that she had a face full of fine sense and feeling. It looked somewhat troubled as well as very serious to-day. Winton, however, was ready to allow that his gain would be this lady’s loss, and that perhaps the Duchess was not so anxious to get rid of her only daughter as parents generally are understood to be.
“Sit down, Mr Winton,” she said. She had not risen from her own chair, but sat behind her writing-table, which was laden with papers, and across this barrier held out her hand to him, and gave him a benign but somewhat distant smile. “I ought to apologise,” she added after a moment, “for giving you the trouble of coming to me.”
“The trouble! but it is my business. I should have asked to see the Duke if you had not so kindly given me this opportunity—first. I hope I may speak to the Duke afterwards if I have the happiness to satisfy you. You may be sure I can think of nothing else till this is all settled.”
“All settled?” she said, with a little shake of her head. “You are young and confident, Mr Winton; you think things settle themselves so easily as this. But I fear the preliminaries will be more lengthened than you suppose. Do you know, Iwish very much you had consulted me before speaking to Jane.”
“Why?” he asked, fixing his eyes upon her with an astonished gaze. Then he added, “I know Lady Jane is a great lady, a princess royal. She is like that. I am a little democratic myself, but I acknowledge in her everything that is beautiful in rank. She should be approached like a crowned head.”
“Not quite that perhaps,” said the Duchess, smiling.
“With every observance, every ceremony; but then,” he added, “that is not the English fashion, you know, to ask others first. One thinks of her, herself as the only judge.”
The Duchess continued to shake her head. “That is all very well with ordinary girls, but Jane’s position is so exceptional. Mr Winton, I hope you will not be disappointed or annoyed by what I tell you.Had you asked me, I should have said to you, No.”
“No!” he repeated vaguely, looking into her face. He could not even realise what her meaning was.
“I should have said, Don’t do it, Mr Winton, for your own sake.”
Winton rose up in the excitement of the moment and stood before her like a man petrified. “Don’t do it! Do you mean—— Pardon me if I am slow of understanding.”
“I mean, seeing it had unfortunately come about that, without being able to help it, you had fallen in love with Jane——”
“Unfortunately!”
“You do nothing but repeat my words,” the Duchess cried in a plaintive tone. “Itisunfortunately—but hear me out first. If you had spoken to me I should have said, Try and get over it, MrWinton; don’t disturb her, poor girl, by telling her. Try if a little trip to America, or tiger-shooting, or to be a ‘Times’ correspondent, or some other of those exciting things which you young men do nowadays, will not cure you. I should have said, You have not known her very long, it cannot have gone very deep. I tell you this to show you what my advice would have been had you asked me before speaking to Jane.”
“But it is of no use speculating upon what we should have done in an imaginary case,” said Winton. He had awoke from his first bewilderment, and began to understand vaguely that everything was not going to be easy for him as he had once thought. “You see Ihavespoken to her,” he said. “You frighten me horribly; but then it is of no use considering what you would have done in a totally different case.”
The Duchess sighed and shook her head. “That is what I should have thought it my duty to say, in view of all the pain and confusion that are sure to follow. Do you know, Mr Winton, that her father will never listen to you—never!” she said, with a sudden change of tone.
Winton dropped upon his chair again and stared at her with an anxious countenance. “I knew—I was told—that the Duke would not be easy to please. And quite right! I agree with his Grace. I am not half good enough for her; but then,” he added after a pause, “nobody is. If there is one man in the world as worthy as she is, neither the Duke nor any one knows where to find him; and then,” he continued, in tones more insinuating still, “it would not matter now. If that hero were found to-morrow, she would not have him, for—she has chosen me! I allowthat it is the most wonderful thing in the world!” said the lover, in a rapture which became him; “but you will find it is true. She has chosen me!”
“It may be very true,” said the Duchess, shaking her head more and more, “but the Duke will not pay much attention to that. I am afraid it is not moral excellence he is thinking of. It would be hard, I allow, to find anybody as good as Jane. Probably if we did, he would turn out to be some poor old missionary or quite impossible person. I am afraid that is not at all what her father is thinking of.”
“Then tell me what it is. I am not Prince Charming—but the Wintons have been settled at Winton since the Conquest, and I am very well off. The settlements should be—whatever you wish.”
“Don’t promise too much,” said the Duchess, with a smile, “for no doubt youhave got a family lawyer who will be of a very different opinion; indeed I hope you have, if that is your way of doing business. But, alas! the Duke will not be satisfied, I fear, even with that.”
“Then what, in the name of heaven!—I beg you a thousand pardons, Duchess. I don’t know what I am saying. I have no title, to be sure. Is it a title that is necessary?”
“I can’t tell you what is necessary,” said the Duchess, with a tone of impatience. “The Duke is—well, the Duke is her father; that is all that is to be said. He will never listen to your proposal—never! That is why I should have said to you, Don’t make it. Leave her in her tranquillity, poor girl.”
“But——” Winton cried. He did not know what more to say—a protest of all his being, that was the only thing of which he was capable.
“But——” the Duchess repeated. “Yes, Mr Winton, there is always a but. To tell the truth, I am not so very sorry that you did not ask me after all. I should have been obliged to tell you what I have now told you. But since you have taken it into your own hands, I am rather glad. If her father had his way, Jane would never be married at all. Oh, don’t be so enthusiastic; don’t thank me so warmly! I have done nothing for you, and I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“Everything!” said Winton. “With you to back us, it is impossible that anything can prevail against us. The Duke’s heart will melt; he will hear reason.”
A faintly satirical smile came upon the mouth of the Duke’s wife, who knew better than anybody how much was practicable in the way of making him hear reason. But she did not say anything.She let the lover talk. He went on with the conviction natural to his generation—that all these medieval prejudices were fictitious, and paternal tyranny a thing of the past.
“Cruel fathers,” said Winton, “are things of the middle ages. I am not afraid of them any more than I am of the Castle Spectre. The Duke will rightly think that I am a poor sort of a fellow to ask his daughter from him. I ought to have been something very different—better, handsomer, cleverer.”
“You are not at all amiss, Mr Winton,” said the Duchess, with a gracious smile.
He made her a bow of acknowledgment, and his gratification was great—for who does not like to be told that he is considered a fine fellow? But he went on. “All this I feel quite as much as his Grace can do. The thing in my favour is that Jane——” the colour flew over hisface as he called her so, and her mother, though she started slightly, acknowledged his rights by a little bow of assent, somewhat solemnly made,—“that Jane——” he went on repeating the sweet monosyllable, “does not mind my inferiority—is satisfied, the darling——” Here his happiness got into his voice as if it had been tears, and choked him. The Duchess bent her head again,
“To me that is everything,” she said.
“How could it be otherwise?” cried the young man; “itiseverything. I have no standing-ground, of course, of my own; but Jane—loves me! It is far too good to be true, and yet it is true. The Duke will not like it, let us allow; but when he sees that, and that she will not give up, but be faithful—faithful to the end of our lives—— Dear Duchess, I have the greatest veneration for your Grace’s judgment, but in this point onemust go by reason. Life is not a melodrama. So long as the daughter is firm the father must yield.”
He gave forth this dogma with a little excitement, almost with a peremptory tone, smiling a little in spite of himself at the tradition in which even this most sensible of duchesses believed. Perhaps a great lady of that elevated description is more liable than others to believe that the current of events and the progress of opinion have little or no effect upon the race, and that dukes and fathers are still what they were in the fifteenth century. He, this fine production of the nineteenth, was so certain of his opinion, that he could not feel anything but a smiling indulgence for hers. On the other side, the Duchess was more tolerant even than Winton. His certainty gave her a faint amusement—his gentle disdain of her a lively sense of ridicule; but this was softened by hersympathy for him, and profound and tender interest in the man whom Jane loved. She was a little astonished, indeed—as what parent is not?—that Jane should have loved this man precisely, and no other; but as the event called forth all her affection for her woman-child, it threw also a beautifying reflection upon Jane’s lover. On the whole, she was satisfied with his demeanour personally. It is not every man who will show his sentiments in a way which satisfies an anxious mother. The Duchess, however, was pleased with Winton. His look and tone when he spoke of her daughter satisfied her. He was fond enough, adoring enough, reverential enough to content her; and how much this was to say!
“Well,” she said, “we will hope you may be right, Mr Winton. You know men and human nature, no doubt, betterthan I do, who am only about twice your age,” she added, with a soft little laugh. “Anyhow, I wish with my whole heart that you may prove to be right. The only thing is, that it will be prudent not to speak to the Duke now. Don’t cry out—I know I am right in this. In town he is never quite happy; there are many things that rub him the wrong way. He sees men advanced whom he thinks unworthy of it, and others left out. And he thinks society is out of joint, and cannot quite divest himself of the idea that he, or rather we, were born to set it right.” All this the Duchess said with a little half-sigh between the sentences, and yet a faint sense of humour, which gave a light to her countenance. “But in the country things go better. If he is ever to be moved, as you say, by love and faithfulness, and such beautiful things, it will be in his own kingdom, wherenobody thwarts him and he has everything his own way.”
Winton’s countenance fell at every word. What! he who had come hither with the intention of persuading Jane to decide when it should be, was he to go away without a word—to be hung up indefinitely, to be no farther advanced than yesterday? His whole heart cried out against it, and his pride and all that was in him. He grew faint, he grew sick with anger, and disappointment, and dismay. “That means,” he said, “complete postponement; that means endless suspense. I think you want me to give up altogether; you want to crush the life out of us altogether!”
“Of course you will be unjust,” said the Duchess—“I was prepared for that; and ungrateful. I am advising what is best for you. The Duke, I believe, is in the library. He is the pink of politeness; he will see you at once, I feel sure, if you ask for an interview; but in that case you will never darken these doors again. You will be shut out from all intercourse with Jane. The whole matter will be ended as abruptly and conclusively as possible. I know my husband; you will not have time to say a word for yourself. You can take what course you think best, Mr Winton. What I say to you is for your good; and in the meantime, if you do as I wish, everything that I can do for you I will do.”
The young man sat and listened to these words in mingled exasperation and dismay. As she spoke of the Duke in his library, Winton’s heart jumped up and began to thump against his side. Oh yes, it might be decided fast enough. Evidently he could have an answer without fail or suspense on the spot. He sat and gazed at her blankly in such a dilemma as he had never known before. Whatwould Jane think of him if he submitted? What would she say if he insisted, and got only failure and prohibition for his pains? The Duchess, it was evident, was not speaking lightly. She knew what she was talking about. She wished him well—too well to let him go on to his destruction. But, on the other hand, there was the postponement of all his hopes, a sickening pause and uncertainty, a blank quenching of expectation. He could do nothing but stare at the Duchess while she spoke, and for some time after. What was he to answer her? How calmly these old people sit on their height of experience, and look down half smiling upon the frets and agitation of the young ones! What was it to her that he—even that Jane, who naturally was of far more importance—should suffer all these pangs of suspense? Probably she would smile, and say that life was long, and what did itmatter for a month or two? A month or two! It would be like a century or two to them. Sometimes Winton resolved that he would not be silenced; that he would go and have it out with the Duke, who, after all, was Jane’s father, and could not wish his child to be unhappy. And then again, as she went on laying the alternative before him, his heart would fail him. He changed his mind a hundred times while she was speaking, and after she had ended, still gazed on her, with his heart in his mouth.
“I don’t wish,” he said at last, “to do anything rash. I will submit to anything rather than run any risks. But how are we to bear the delay? How am I to bear it? and it will be deception as well! I don’t see how I am to do it. Do you mean me to give her up all the time—go tiger-shooting, as you were good enough to suggest?”
“Well—there would be no harm in that,” said the Duchess, with a smile; “but I did not suggest it in the present circumstances. I said, if you had spoken to me first—I ask you to wait a month—perhaps two” (this addition, made as it seemed ingaieté de cœur, with rather a pleasant sense of the exasperation it would produce in him, called forth a muttered exclamation, a groan from the victim)—“or perhaps two at the most,” the Duchess repeated; “whereas tiger-shooting would take six at least. But, Mr Winton, I repeat, I force you to nothing. There is the bell, and the Duke is in the library. Ring it if you will, and ask him to see you; he will not refuse.”
Winton rose slowly and went towards the bell. But he had not the courage to take this extreme step. “I suppose I may see her sometimes?” he said; “but it will be a kind of treachery.”
“Her mother does not object; the case is an extreme one,” said the Duchess, though she blushed a little at her own sophistry. “What he does not know will not do him any harm.”
“It will be deception,” said Winton, shaking his head, and he made another step towards the bell. Then he turned back again. “How often may I see her? If we take your way, you will not be hard upon us?” he said.
“But it will be deception,” said the Duchess, solemnly.
“I know that; that is what revolts me. Still, as you say, what he does not know will not do him any harm.”
The Duchess laughed, and then she grew grave suddenly. “Mr Winton, I feel as if I were betraying my husband; but at the present moment my child has the first claim upon me. It is her happiness that is at stake. I will not prevent you from meeting—you are both old enough to know your own minds. I will do nothing to put off Jane from a woman’s natural career. It is doing evil, perhaps, that good may come; but we must risk it. Come here, but not too often: I will take the responsibility; and when we go to Billings, Lady Germaine will invite you, and you can try your fortune then. I will prepare the way as much as I can. I don’t give you great hopes when all is done,” she said, shaking her head.
“And after?” said Winton, turning once more with a kind of desperation towards the bell.
“Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof,” said the Duchess, piously.
But oh, the difference when he walked out crestfallen through all the big drawing-rooms! Not a word about when It was to be. No sort of arrangement, consultation, possible. Everything had seemed so near when he came—so near that he could almost touch it. Now everything had been pushed far off into the vague. He had seen Jane indeed, but in her mother’s presence, which made her happy enough, but him only partly happy. Was this how it was to be? The Duchess indeed was writing at her table, taking no notice of them. But still it was very different from what he had hoped. He did not perceive the bad pictures or the over-gilding as he went away. The place looked like a prison to him, and was dark and stifling. Lady Jane indeed accompanied him through the rooms. She gave him the rose which he had thought of stealing as he came, and told him all their engagements for a week in advance.“You will be sure to go wherever we are going,” she said, and called him Reginald with a blush and a tone of sweetness that went straight to his heart. But nevertheless his disappointment, he thought, was almost more than he could bear.
Lady Jane, it will easily be understood, did not look upon the matter at all from the same point of view. A girl, however much she may be in love, is seldom anxious for a peremptory marriage such as—when there is no great sacrifice involved—suits the bolder sex. She loves to play with her happiness, to prolong the sweet time when, without any violent breach of other habits, even any change of name, she can enjoy the added glory of this crown of life. She accompanied Winton through the great silent rooms,with a sense of perfect, quiet happiness which was exactly in accordance with the summer morning—the fresh soft air in which there was no sunshine, but a flood of subdued light, and in which every sound had a tone of enchantment, though not music. It suited her gentle nature to dwell in such an atmosphere of delicate delight, which had no fact to vulgarise it, but only an ecstasy of feeling. She was disappointed to find that he was less satisfied, less happy. And he would have been angry to see that she was so happy. Such are the differences between those most near to each other. He kissed the rosebud and her hands as, with a sense of daring beyond words, she put it into his coat; but he wanted something more. Yes, he could have been angry with her; he felt a desire to say something brutal. “How can you be satisfied to deceive your father?” he asked. “It will beclandestine——” He had the cruelty to say this, though next moment he was horrified, and begged her pardon, metaphorically on his knees.
“Clandestine!” she said, with a little surprise—she made allowance for a man’s rough way of speaking—“oh no; my father has never entered into all the circumstances. So long as my mother approves——”
“But,” Winton cried, in his ferocity, “suppose he refuses his consent at last, as the Duchess thinks, will you venture to oppose him then, or will you send me away?”
“Ah, never that!” said Lady Jane, looking at him with her soft eyes. They were not brilliant eyes, but when she looked at him there came over them a certain liquid light, a melting radiance such as no words could describe. The light was love, and may be seen glorifying many an unremarkable orb. It made hers so exquisite that they dazzled the beholder, especially the happy beholder who knew this was for him. But he was not satisfied even with that.
“Suppose,” he went on, “that the Duke were to open that door and walk in now—as he has a good right to do, into his own drawing-room—what would come of it? Would you take your hand out of mine, and bid me good-bye like a stranger?”
Her hand indeed slid out of his at the suggestion, and a little tremor ran through her frame; but the next moment she raised her head and put her hand lightly within his arm. “If you think I am without courage!” she said—then added with a smile, “when it is necessary; but at present it is not necessary.”
“Then you will not, whatever happens, give me up?—not even if the foundations of the earth are shaken, not even if the Duke says ‘No’?” he cried, partly furious, partly satirical, catching at the hand which was on his arm.
His violence gave her a little shock, and the savage satire of the tone in which he named her father distressed Lady Jane. “You must not speak so,” she said, with her soft dignity: “the Duke is my father. But you do not know me if you think that anything will change me.” Then indeed Winton felt a little ashamed of himself, and began to realise that he did not yet know all of this gentle creature who was going to be his wife. She parted with him at the door of the ante-room, and went back through her mother’s boudoir to her own retirement. Next to being with theobjet aimé, being alone is the purest happiness at this stage. She kissed her mother, who was busy at her writing-table, in passing. The Duchess was deep in calculation, not how she should make her ends meet, which was impossible, but how near she could draw them together, so that the gap might be small. It is a sad and harassing business. She paused only a moment to pat her child on her soft cheek, and reflect within herself how beautifying was this love which in youth is full of enchantment and illusion, and then returned to her figures. When the ends will meet, what pleasure there is even in the pain of drawing them together! but when no miracle will do this, when there must always remain a horrible chasm between! Fifty remained thus at work in the finance department, while Twenty-eight went lightly away to think over her happiness. It must be allowed that Lady Jane was not quite young enough—she ought to have been but twenty, by rights; but her maturity only added to the exceeding fulness of her enjoyment. Thereis something sweet in being awakened late; it prolongs the morning, it keeps the “vision splendid” a little longer in one’s eyes. The unfulfilled even has a glory of its own, which people who are bigoted in belief of the ordinary canons of romance are slow to perceive. This preserved to Lady Jane, at an age when girlhood is over, its most perfect fragrance and charm.
Presently, however, the sweet vagueness of her anticipations began to open into other thoughts. She had been so preserved by her stately upbringing and the traditions which she had felt to centre in her, from knowledge of fact and the world, that she knew little at all about money, or the power it has to bridge over social differences. When she allowed her heart to go out to Reginald Winton, she did so with the most absolute conviction that it involved a great descentin rank and abandonment of luxury. She would have to put off the coronet from her head, she believed, the princess royal’s myrtle crown. She would have to learn a great many things, both to do and to do without. She had heard of Winton House, which was a small place; and probably she had heard of the house in town. But the latter had altogether dropped out of her mind, and she knew very well that a squire’s little manor would be very different from Billings, and would require from its mistress an existence of a kind unknown to all her previous experiences. She would have to superintend her own household; if not to make her maids spin, according to the usage of old times, at least to direct the housemaids, and know how things ought to be done. Though her father was in reality much less rich than the man whom she had chosen for her husband, she was entirely in the dark on this point, and her mind awoke to a sense of a hundred requirements of which she knew nothing. She had been like a star, and dwelt apart (if it is not profane to apply such words to a young lady of the nineteenth century) as much as any poet. But now love and duty bade her come down from these heights, and learn how people walk along the common ways. She addressed herself to this task without a grudge, with glad alacrity and readiness; but she was a little puzzled, it must be admitted, to know how to begin. The first person to whom she addressed herself (for naturally Lady Jane was shy of betraying her motive, or letting it be known that the inquiries she made were for her own benefit) was her maid, who was as superior a young person and as much like a waiting gentlewoman as it was possibleto find. Lady Jane was aware, of course, that Arabella’s family (for this was the distinguished name she bore) were not in the same position as Mr Winton. But in that sad deficiency of perspective which we have already noted as one of the drawbacks of rank, she felt it possible that Arabella’s knowledge of how life was conducted at her end of the social circle would be more useful than her own to Reginald Winton’s wife. She opened the subject in, it must be avowed, a very uncompromising and artless way one evening, while Arabella stood behind her, partially visible in the large mirror before which she sat, brushing out her long and abundant hair. It was very fine and silky, and made very little appearance when smoothly wound round the back of her head; but when it was being brushed out it was like a veil, soft and dreamy and illimitable, spreading outalmost as far as the operator chose in a cloud of soft darkness—“like twilight, too, her dusky hair.” A lady’s-maid is very much wanting in the spirit of her profession if she is indifferent to the fact that her mistress has fine hair. Generally it is the thing of which she is most proud. And Arabella held this sentiment in the warmest way. Her scorn of chignons and of frizzing was indescribable. “You should just see my lady’s hair when it is down,” she would say, almost crying over the fact which she could not ignore, that the hair of many other ladies, when it was up, greatly exceeded in appearance and volume the soft locks of Lady Jane. It was while Arabella was employed in this way that her mistress, looking at her in the glass, said suddenly, “If you were going to be married, Arabella, what should you do to prepare for it? I want very much to know.”
“My lady!” cried the girl, with a violent start. She let the brush fall from her hand with the fright it gave her, and then without any warning she began to cry. “Indeed, indeed, I never could make up my mind to leave your ladyship—not in a hurry like he wants me to—never! never! at least till you were suited,” Arabella said.
“Oh!” cried Lady Jane, turning round, “then you really were thinking! I did not know of that, I assure you; I never thought of it. Are you really going to be married, Arabella?”
“It is none of my doing,” the girl said; “indeed I told him I couldn’t make up my mind to leave; but he says—you know, my lady, men find always a deal to say——”
“Do they?” said Lady Jane, with a soft laugh of sympathy. Yes, it was true—they had a deal to say: and then sometimeswhen they were silent, that said still more. She paused upon this recollection, with a soft wave of pleasure going over her; and then—perhaps not so anxious to understand Arabella as to follow out her own thoughts—“Tell me,” she said, “when you go away from me, Arabella—out of Billings and out of Grosvenor Square—into a little small house, how does it feel to you? Do you dislike it very much? Is it very wretched? I should like to know how you feel about it. One day here in these large rooms—and the next in a tiny little place, without servants, without any conveniences. It is only lately that I have thought about this, but I want to know. Nobody can tell me so well as you.”
“Oh, my lady,” cried Arabella, “don’t you know without telling? Why, it’s home! That makes all the difference; though it’s a little place, yet it’s your own.”
Lady Jane’s eyes still remained unsatisfied, though she said “To be sure” vaguely. “To be sure,” she repeated; “but then here you have everything done for you, and everything is nice. You cannot have the same at home.”
“No, my lady; but it’s so nice and fresh there: no carpets or things to catch the dust—except in the parlour, but that is only for Sundays. The floors all so white and fresh; the plates and the dishes shining; the fire so cheerful. I can’t deny,” said Arabella, her tone of delight sinking to one of candid avowal, “that the parlour is—well, my lady, it is a dreadful little place; and poor mother is so proud of it!—it is not so nice as the room the under-housemaids have their tea in. I feel just as if I were one of the inferior servants when I sit there. But the kitchen: if your ladyship took a fancy to playing at being poor—like theFrench queen did, you know, my lady—it would be quite nice enough even for you.”
“You should not say ‘like the French queen did’; that is bad grammar,” said Lady Jane, softly. “I shan’t play at being poor, Arabella, but perhaps some day—— All this you have been saying is about your home, but that was not what I asked. If you were going to be married, what would you do? You could not keep any servants; you would have to do all sorts of things yourself. Do you think it will be a dreadful sacrifice to make?”
Arabella gave her lady’s hair a few tugs, perhaps unconsciously to hide a little emotion, perhaps with a little gentle indignation at her mistress’s humble estimate of her prospects. “It is not so low as you think, my lady,” she said. “He is a careful young man that has saved a little, and can give me a nice home andkeep me a servant. I’ll have no dirty work to do nor need to soil my fingers. He thinks, like your ladyship, that it will be a great sacrifice; but what can a girl have better, mother says, than a good steady husband and a nice home? and I think so too.”
Lady Jane smiled with gentle sympathy. “And so do I, Arabella. Still that is not the question I was asking. It will be a small house, I suppose, and one little maid? And I suppose you will have many things to do, and to live with——” Here she paused, blushing for her own want of perception. “You are accustomed to things very much the same as mine,” she continued softly, “and it must be different. How will you put up with it—or shall you not mind? Only a few little rooms, perhaps, to live in.”
“Oh, my lady,” said Arabella, “a few! We shall have a little parlour, where Ican sit in the afternoons. What could any one wish for more? Your ladyship yourself, or even the Duchess, though you have all the castle to choose from, you can’t sit in more than one room at a time. And it has often surprised me, my lady, to see how, with all those beautiful drawing-rooms and all their grand furniture, your ladyship and the Duchess will prefer quite a little bit of a place to sit in. Look at the morning-room at the castle!—and her Grace’s boudoir here is quite small in comparison. I can’t see that it will make much difference to me.”
“That is a very just observation, Arabella,” said Lady Jane; “I wonder I never thought of it before. Nobody can sit in more than one room at a time, it is quite true; that is all one really needs. I am very much obliged to you for putting it so clearly.”
“Yes, my lady,” said Arabella, with a little curtsey of acknowledgment. She was pleased, but not so much surprised as might have been expected. She was fond of her mistress, and had a great reverence for her in her way, but she was aware that in practical matters she herself was far more likely to be right than Lady Jane. And then she proceeded on her own account to give many particulars which were very satisfactory to herself, and inspired her mistress with great interest, but threw no further light upon the point which occupied her mind. She smiled to herself afterwards, with a mixture of sympathy and amusement, to think that Arabella was going to be marriedtoo. But in the meantime this new view as to the number of rooms which were indispensable, did her a great deal of good, and threw much light upon the chief subject of her thoughts.
Her next inquiries were addressed to a very different kind of counsellor. It was well for Lady Jane that she was not on womanly confidential terms with her sister-in-law, or it would have been very difficult to keep the secret of her love from that acute observer; as it was, the curiosity of Susan was much awakened by some of her questions. She asked her, “What do girls in the other classes do when they are preparing for their marriage?” Lady Jane would not say the lower classes, partly lest she might offend Lady Hungerford, partly because of a delicate sense she had that deficiency of any kind should not be made a mark for those who suffered under it. Lady Jane’s politeness was such that among blind people she would have thought it right to assume that blindness was the common rule of life, and to suppress in her talk any invidious distinction of herself as a person who saw.
“What do they do when they are preparing for their marriage? Why, dear, they generally spend most of their time, and far too much of their thoughts, in buying their wedding clothes.”
“That is so in all classes,” said Lady Jane; “but still that cannot be everything. Some must be bent upon doing their best in their new life. Those, for instance, who have not much money.”
“I am afraid I cannot tell you,” said Susan, “for I never was in that predicament. My people, you know, were vulgar, and it was a great rise in the world for me, of course, to marry Hungerford.”
“I do not think you have ever thought it that,” said Lady Jane.
“Haven’t I? I ought to have, then. Itwasa great rise; but my people were never poor. A good girl who is going to marry a clerk, or that sort of thing, buys a cookery-book, I believe, and hasher husband’s slippers warmed for him when he comes home. She finds out all the cheap shops, and puts down her expenses every day in a book. That is all I know.”
“I was not thinking of a clerk’s wife. I was thinking rather of a gentleman—in the country, for instance—not great people, but perfectlynice, and as—as good as ourselves, you know. If a girl wanted very much to do her duty, I wonder what she would do?”
“It would depend very much upon her husband’s requirements, I should say. If he was a fox-hunter, she would probably ride a great deal, and find out all about horses and dogs; if he was studious, she would pay a little attention to books. All that wears off after a little time,” said Lady Hungerford. “But at the beginning, when a girl is not used to it, and is making experiments, she takes up all her husband’s fads, and attempts to humour him. By-and-by, of course, everything finds its level, and she lets him alone and follows her own way.”
“You think, then, that it does not make much difference what one does,” said Lady Jane.
“What one does! You do not mean yourself, I suppose? Crown princesses are above all that sort of thing; they are too magnificent for human nature’s daily food. You will be married by proxy, no doubt, when the time comes, in Westminster Abbey.”
“Which means I shall never be married at all,” said Lady Jane, with subdued pleasure and a delightful sense of her own superior knowledge. She smiled with such a tender softness that her lively sister-in-law, who, if not formed in a very delicate mould, was yet capable of kindimpulse, and clever enough to understand the superiority of the spotless creature beside her, had a moment of shame and self-reproach.
“If you are not, it will be all the worse for somebody,” she said. “When I was married I used to watch Hungerford to find out what he wanted me to do; but I soon tired of that, for he never wanted me to do anything. Most men like you to strike out your own line, and never mind them. That is why I say everything finds its level. The most dreadful thing in the world is a woman who is always studying to do her duty, and watching her husband to anticipate his wishes. They don’t like to have their wishes anticipated. They like to state them honestly, and have the satisfaction of getting what they want. They are strange creatures, men. The best thing is to strike out your own line, and never interfere with theirs.It is always most satisfactory in the end.”
Lady Jane made no answer to this, except by a little sigh, in which Lady Hungerford, to her great astonishment, noticed an impatient sound. “What is it you want to know?” she said. “Why are you asking me such questions?” But Lady Jane made no reply. She had got a little enlightenment from Arabella, but none from this woman of the world. How to manage her husband was not a question which disturbed her. The clerk’s wife studying the cookery-book pleased her more than the lady who first tried to humour her husband’s fads, and then struck out her own line. In such a person the sweet and true but not too lively intelligence of Lady Jane had little interest. She dwelt on the other with a tender sympathy. After all, it was not entirely in the light of the husband thatshe regarded this new life. She wanted to put herself in tone with it, to understand its requirements for herself as well as for him. She retired into her own chamber and thought it out in the quiet which, even in London, is possible in a great house. It would not be possible, perhaps, to have every room cushioned and every noise stopped before it reached her, as here. Lady Jane imagined herself stepping down into a world of noise and bustle, and duties quite unknown to her. It would be her business to bring harmony out of that; not to confront the guillotine, as she once thought, but perhaps to do something even harder, to overcome the petty and small, even the sordid perhaps, and show what her order was capable of, and what a thing it was to be a woman. A soft enthusiasm filled her for those unknown, humble duties. As for giving up, what was there to giveup? Arabella’s philosophy gave her a shield against every suggestion of loss. You can’t sit in more than one room at a time, if you have a hundred to choose from. To think that a girl like that should find the true solution of the parable without knowing anything about it, which the wisest shook their heads over! Lady Jane, with that enlightenment, did not feel the least fear. Next time she was out without supervision, she drove to a bookseller’s and bought all the books she could find upon household economy. ‘How to Live on Three Hundred a-Year’ was one of these volumes. With this she did not quite sympathise, feeling it too fine and elaborate. Her instinct told her that domestic economy, to be beautiful, must be more spontaneous and not so laboured, and that some things were tawdry, and some sordid, in the arrangements laid down. Shethought over the problems in these books with great conscientiousness. She thought a French cook would be much the best to start with, for they were so economical. She thought plate would be the cheapest thing to use, since it never breaks. But with a few mistakes of this kind, which were inevitable, and which experience would set right in three months, Lady Jane made herself out a beautiful programme for her behaviour as a poor man’s wife. It gave her a sense of elation to feel that at the least she could do something, and qualify herself for fulfilling a heroic destiny. She was quite unconscious of either downfall or humiliation.
Butthe Duchess’s thoughts were of a more serious kind, and it was she who through all had the most difficult part to play.
Perhaps five or six years before, when Lady Jane was in the first bloom of womanhood, her mother would have thought but little of Reginald Winton as a husband for her child. She would have preferred, need it be said, another set of strawberry-leaves; or even an earl with a good estate would have seemed to her a more suitable match. But as the yearswent on, and it became apparent to her that what with Lady Jane’s own visionary stateliness, and the known folly of her father, it was quite possible that there might be no match for her daughter at all, her ideas were sensibly modified. It did not seem to her at all desirable that Lady Jane should remain Lady Jane for ever. The Duchess had experienced no absolute blessedness in life. Her husband had given her infinite trouble, her son had by no means realised her ideal, and her daughter had gone beyond it, and sometimes vexed her as much by very excellence as Hungerford did by his commonplace nature. But still she thought it better to be thwarted and disappointed at the head of a family, than to sicken of solitude and pine out of it. She thought the same for her daughter; though indeed Lady Jane’s character would have lent itself much better to themaiden state than that of her more practical and active-minded mother. She had, too, a still more stringent reason, not of an abstract character at all. She knew that some time or other a crash must come. The Duke had never denied himself in his life, and he was not likely, of his own free will, to begin now. But as everything has to be paid for sooner or later, one way or another, she knew very well the time was coming when their fictitious fortunes would collapse, and it would be known to all the world that their income was not enough to support them, and that they were burdened with debts which they could not pay. And indeed it often seemed to her that she would be glad when the crash came—except for Jane. Notwithstanding her desire that it should come and be done with, she was ready to fight with all her strength to keep it off till Jane shouldbe out of its reach. And Winton, she felt, had stepped in in the very nick of time. She was under no delusion such as filled the mind of her daughter about Winton’s poverty. She knew exactly what his standing was, and that though he was not a brilliant match, he was good enough for any girl, however exalted, who had no fortune to speak of, of her own. He was more satisfactory in appearance, and manners, and character, than three-fourths of the eligible men in England, and in fact he was himself eminently eligible, a man whom no parent (in full possession of his senses) could possibly despise. The Duke was not in full possession of his senses on this point, but his wife could not see the justice of allowing her daughter’s future to be spoiled by this partial insanity on the part of her husband. It is a fine thing for a wife to obey her husband, but the Duchesswas perhaps a little impatient of the yoke. She had never gone against him, save for his good. She had submitted sorrowfully to the consequences of his follies when she found herself powerless to restrain them. But she said to herself almost sternly that she would not allow Jane to be ruined. Let him say what he would, this excellent husband, this good, nice, well-off man should not be repulsed. If she could persuade the Duke to hear reason, so much the better; but if not—— But she did not like domestic dissension and a breach of the decorums of life more than another, and the thought that she might be compelled to place herself in active opposition to her husband distressed her beyond measure.
The Duchess laid her plans with great and anxious care. She invited Winton to the few stately gatherings which were still to be held in Grosvenor Square, andshe threw him in the Duke’s way, prompting him beforehand with subjects such as would please that arbiter of fate. It was no small trial of endurance for both Winton and Lady Jane, but the success of the attempt so far seemed great. The Duke noticed the genial commoner who was so ready to interest himself in his Grace’s favourite subjects. He even asked, “Who is this Mr Winton?” with an interest which made the Duchess’s heart beat. She gave a sketch of herprotégéoffhand, laying great stress upon the antiquity of his lineage. “Ah, oh,” the Duke said indifferently. He was not impressed, nor did it make any difference to him that this gentleman, whose family had been settled for so many hundred years in their manor, had recently had a great accession of wealth. He asked no further questions about him, and yawned when the Duchess saidthat she had thought of inviting him to form one of the usual autumn party at Billings. “Oh no, I have no objections,” his Grace said; “there must always, I suppose, be a few nobodies to fill up the corners.” This, after his transitory show of interest, was like a cold douche to the Duchess. But she did not allow herself to be dismayed. She managed, as a great lady can always manage, to get Winton a great number of invitations to her own magnificent circle, and threw him perpetually in her husband’s way. Some of her friends and contemporaries more than suspected the Duchess’s game. But she kept a brave and cheerful front to them all, and never allowed herself to be found out; and not only had she to contrive all this and baffle all beholders, but she had likewise a struggle to maintain even with the man whose cause she was upholding. He wanted, forsooth, to make quicker progress. He wanted to see more of his betrothed. He wanted to have it announced to all the world. He was more impracticable, more unreasonable than ever man was, although she was wearing herself out in efforts to help him. Lady Jane did not say a word, but she looked at her mother’s proceedings with a gentle surprise, and high, silent wonder, keeping herself aloof from all the plottings, avoiding the subject altogether. It was all done for Jane, but Jane disapproved, and blamed her mother in her heart. This was the unkindest cut of all. Notwithstanding, the Duchess held by her point; there was no other way to do it. When she gave Winton her invitation to Billings, he received it in the most uncomfortable way. He coloured high; he rose up and paced about the room. “If Iam to come as an impostor, I would rather not come at all,” he said; “if I may come as Jane’s affianced——”
“How can that be, Mr Winton, unless her father gives his consent?”
To this Winton made no reply, except a peevish, “I cannot go on false pretences any more.”
“You have met the Duke six times, without rushing at him with a request for his daughter! Is that what you call false pretences? Jacob served for Rachel seven years.”
“Ah! and so would I; but he had it out with her father first. He did not hang about and profess to be there only for Laban’s agreeable conversation; that makes all the difference.”
“I think he could have stood that; he had a robust conscience,” said the Duchess, with a smile. And then she added, “I am trying to do what I canfor you. If you will not agree, I cannot help it.”
“I suppose I must agree. There does not seem anything else for me to do,” he said; which was the most ungracious reply she ever had to that invitation, which was rarely extended to any one of so little importance. At Billings, Lady Germaine’s principle of asking people who would amuse her was never resorted to. The people who were asked were very noble and splendid people, but they were not amusing as a rule. It was such a compliment to Winton as the uninitiated could not understand. But there were, of course, a great many people who knew better than the Duchess herself did the intention with which this invitation was given. Lady Hungerford, for instance, sitting quietly with her husband after dinner, having heard of it that morning, suddenly astonished himby bursting out into a great fit of laughter. As nothing had been said to account for this, and Lord Hungerford’s company of itself was not calculated to produce hilarity, he was much surprised, and at once requested to know what she was laughing about.
“Oh, it is nothing,” she said. “Your mother is asking young Winton—the man, you know, who has that pretty house in Kensington—to go to Billings, for the shooting.”
“Is that so very funny?” said Lord Hungerford.
“Don’t you see, you thickhead?” said his wife, who was not, perhaps, so exquisite in her language as became her present rank; “she has taken it into her head that he will do for Jane, and she thinks by taking him down to Billings that she will get your father to consent.”
“For Jane!” said Hungerford in dismay.
“That is your mother’s little plan. But what amuses me is to see that she thinks she will get your father to consent.”
But it did not appear that Hungerford found the same amusement in the thought. He was slow of intelligence, and took some time to master it. “For Jane!” he said at least half-a-dozen times over during the course of the evening: and when he next met his mother he proceeded at once to investigate the matter.
“What is this I hear about Regy Winton?” he said. “Susan tells me you are thinking of him for Jane.”
“Susan is so well informed——” said the Duchess, with a little redness of indignation. “But I think you know Jane well enough to be aware that thinking of any one for her would not do much good.”
“That is what I thought,” Hungerford said, falling readily into the snare. “Butit wouldn’t be at all a bad thing,” he added, “if it could be brought about. He has plenty of money, and nothing against him; and Jane isn’t quite so young as she was, don’t you know?”
This was true enough; but that such a question should be discussed between her son and his wife made the Duchess’s blood boil. “I am not so clever as Susan and you, Hungerford,” she said, with fine satire. “You will manage your daughter’s marriage, I don’t doubt, a thousand times better than I shall ever manage mine.”
“What has that to do with it?” Hungerford said, surprised, for he was not quick in his intellects. But he added, as he went away, “I should think Regy Winton would be a very good man for Jane.”
The Duchess was very angry, and declined altogether to take her son into her confidence. But yet she was sustainedin her mind by this volunteered opinion, and went on with more boldness. They were all very glad to get out of London, as soon as the Duke thought it right to withdraw that support which he felt himself bound to give to the empire and the constitution by going to town every year. His countenance expanded as they left that limited world in which a duke is almost as a common man, and has to submit to see a simple commoner considered much more important than himself. He preferred the country, if for nothing else, on that score. There was space to move about in, and the whole district bowed down before him. He smoothed out even during the journey, though it was by railway, which is a levelling and impertinent way of travelling. The Duke’s carriage had large labels of “engaged” plastered upon it. But still such a thing had been as thata lawless traveller, a being without veneration or feeling, had seized upon the door-handle and attempted to make an entrance. Nevertheless, even with these drawbacks, the Duke already began to show the genial influence of going out of town. And to think that the wife of his bosom should have taken advantage of this in the disingenuous way she did! It was not absolutely on the journey, but on that first evening at home, when the noble pair took, as had been their habit since before any one could remember, a little stroll together after dinner in the cool of the evening under the ancestral shades; and just when his Grace had looked round him with a sigh of satisfaction, and announced that woods were better than bricks and mortar, which was a remark he made habitually in about the same spot, on about the same day of every year—
“That is very true,” the Duchess said (as she always said on similar occasions), “and there are no trees like our own trees. I hope her native air,” added the crafty woman, “will do something for Jane.”
“For Jane! Is there anything the matter with Jane?” said her august papa.
“I felt sure you must have observed it; you are always so keen-sighted where Jane is concerned. I have thought she looked pale; and she has a little air of—what shall I call it?—preoccupation.”
“I do not see,” said the Duke, half indignantly, “what she can have to be preoccupied about.”
“She has always been so tenderly cared for, that is true. But we must remember that she is no longer a girl, and there are thoughts which come into one’s mind which it is difficult to avoid.”
“What thoughts? A young lady inJane’s position need have no thoughts that can give her any trouble. I hope that even in these revolutionary times, when everything is going to pieces, the house of Billings is still sufficiently secure for that.”
“Yes, yes; there is no doubt on that question. Jane has no doubt,” the Duchess said, correcting herself. “But there are problems, you know, which occupy the mind. It is a revolutionary age, as you say, and even young women are not exempt. Besides, if you will let me say so, by the time a girl has come to be eight-and-twenty, she often begins to feel, you know—that to be only her father’s daughter is not quite enough for her—that she wants some sort of standing of her own.”
“Do you mean to tell me that such thoughts as these have ever entered the mind of Jane?” said the Duke, severely.“My love, I put great faith in you in matters quite within your sphere—— But Jane, my daughter!—--”
“I hope you will allow that she is my daughter as well,” the Duchess said, with the half laugh, half rage natural to a woman long accustomed to deal with an impracticable man. She was obliged to laugh at his serious contempt of her, lest she should do worse.
The Duke waved his hand. “Yes, yes,” he said, in the tone of a man yielding to an unreasonable child. “To be sure, in a way, we do not dispute that. But I am certain,” he added, “that you know better than to resist the claims of race. Jane is not so much your daughter, or even mine, as she is the daughter of the race of Altamonts; and in that capacity you may allow, my love, great as are your claims to respect as her mother, that I may be supposed to understand her best.”
The exasperation with which the Duchess listened to this speech may be understood; but it was not the first by a great many, and she made no revelation of her feelings. On the contrary, she made use of his solemn vanity with a craft which the exigencies of her position had developed in her.
“You must give me the benefit of your superior insight,” she said quite calmly, without any indication of satire in her tone. “Now that you have leisure to give your consideration to family matters, as you could not be expected to do in town:—tell me what you think. My impression is, that she has begun to think of the future. I was her mother when I was her age. She has been very much admired and sought after.”
“Naturally,” the Duke said, with a wave of his hand.
“And I have a feeling that there is a—preference, if I may call it so—an inclination, perhaps—dawning in her mind. To lose her would be a terrible deprivation: still,” the Duchess said, “I do not suppose it is in your mind to prevent her from marrying.”
“To prevent her from—— You surely have the most curious way of putting things. There is nothing I desire more truly—when a suitable match can be found.”
“But don’t you think,” cried the Duchess, “that we are, perhaps, letting the time slip a little? Of course, I would naturally keep my child by me as long as possible, but in her own interests—— Women on the whole are happier to marry, I think,” she said doubtfully.
“Marry! of course they are happier to marry. Can there be any doubt upon that subject? A woman unmarried cannot be said to have any life at all!”
“Yes, I should say there was a doubt,” said his wife, with again that half laugh; “and as I am one of them, I may be allowed an opinion on the subject. But still, in respect to Jane, I could wish my daughter to marry. In her position, to remain unmarried would really be to remain apart from life.”
“It is not to be thought of for a moment; an old maid!” the Duke said, with a quaver of pain in his voice; and he thought of that slight indentation—not a hollow, scarcely more than a dimple, which, however, was not a dimple, on Jane’s cheek. “The truth is,” he said, “that in respect to one’s children one deceives one’s self. I have no feeling that I am myself any older than I was twenty years ago, and therefore I do not notice the difference in her.”
“Hungerford is very old,” said the Duchess. “He is older in many things than either you or I.”
“Ah, Hungerford; what can you expect with that wife?” the Duke said, with a little shudder; and then he added, with inward alarm but outward jauntiness (so far as dukes can be jaunty), as if her opinion was an excellent joke, “By the way, I suppose that she will have something to say on the subject. She generally has something to say.”
“Susan does not conceal her opinion that Jane’s chances are all over,” said the Duchess. “She thinks herpassée. She believes, I understand, that a clergyman—to whom we could give the living of Billings—would be the likely thing for Jane now.”
“A clergyman!” said the Duke, with rage and horror. His wife laughed a little, but there was anger below her laugh. How it was that Susan’s impertinent speeches always came to the ears of her parents-in-law it was difficultto know, but they did so, and they generally had the effect of warming most wholesomely the Duke’s too noble blood.
“It is very well known how difficult you are,” said the Duchess. “I don’t think myself that the clergyman is likely to present himself; but if Jane had a preference, as I suppose, I should, for my part, be very unwilling to thwart her.”
“Jane will have no preference that is not justified by the merit of the object,” cried Jane’s father. “She is too much my child for that. She will never permit her mind to stray out of her own rank. Indeed, it is with difficulty I realise,” he added, with dignity, “the possibility that she can have conceived what you call a preference at all. To me she has always been so completely superior, so serene, so——”
“But not cold,” the Duchess said.
“I don’t know what you mean by cold; yes, cold, certainly, in my sense of the word, as every woman ought to be. I believe that unless I put it before her—or you as my representative—she is far too pure-minded and elevated ever to think of marriage at all.”
“If she were shut up in a tower,” said the Duchess; “but unfortunately there are so many things in this world to force the idea upon her, and if you really wish her to marry——”
“Of course I wish her to marry,” said the Duke, almost angrily; and then he added, “in her own rank in life.”
The Duchess asked herself afterwards whether this had been a wise way of directing her husband’s attention to the subject. She had meant it to be very wise, but conversation is one of those strange things that will manage itself.However closely we may have laid down the lines of what we shall say, it is pretty certain to balk us and direct us in other ways. This had been the case on the present occasion. Instead of directing the Duke’s mind to the possibility of receiving a suitor who should be indispensable to Jane’s happiness, though not of her rank, she had only elicited from him a repetition of his determination that nobody out of her own rank should marry Lady Jane. She thought with a shiver of Winton coming down full of hope with the intention of unfolding his rent-roll, and his statement of the settlements he was able to make, for the Duke’s satisfaction. The Duke was one of the few men remaining in the nineteenth century who was invulnerable to money. Susan Hungerford was enough to give any one a disgust at that manner of filling the household coffers. Perhaps it would havebeen better to say nothing, to let Winton work upon the Duke by that respectful admiration for his opinions which he had already shown. She walked back to the castle with a sense of failure in her mind. For her part, she would not have been at all disinclined towards a clergyman (had he beennice) who would have established her child in the beautiful rectory not a quarter of a mile from the lodge-gates, and kept her constantly, as it were, at home. But there was no clergyman available, and no question of that. Lady Jane gave her a half-timid glance when she went into the drawing-room with the fresh air of the evening about her. She would not inquire whether there had been any talk of herself between her parents; but she could not keep that question out of her eyes. All the Duchess’s reply was to give her a kiss, and ask whether shehad not been out this delicious evening. “This is better than town,” her Grace said. Was it better than town? For the first time, with a soft sigh Lady Jane remained silent and did not echo the sentiment. The country is sweet, and the woods, and fields, and one’s native air, and the silence of nature—but there are other things which perhaps even in smoky London, among the bricks and mortar which his Grace made so little of, were still more sweet. Of all people in the world, Lady Jane was the last to prefer a ball-room, or the jaded and heated crowds at the end of the season. But for the first time in her life she thought of these assemblies with a sigh.