第33章

'As for rank,' continued the Duke energetically, 'I do not think that I am specially wedded to it. I have found myself as willing to associate with those who are without it as with those who have it. But for my child, I would wish her to mate with one of her own class.'

'It would be best.'

'When a young man comes to me, though I believe him to be what is called a gentleman, has neither rank, nor means, nor profession, nor name, and asks for my daughter, surely I am right to say that such a marriage shall not be thought of. Was I not right?' demanded the Duke persistently.

'But it is a pity that it should be so. It is a pity that they should ever have come together.'

'It is indeed, indeed to be lamented,--and I will own at once that the fault was not hers. Though I must be firm in this, you are not to suppose that I am angry with her. I have myself been to blame.'

This he said with a resolution that,--as he and his wife had been one flesh,--all faults committed by her should, now that she was dead, be accepted by him as his faults. 'It had not occurred to me that as yet she would love any man.'

'Has it gone deep with her, Duke?'

'I fear that all things go deep with her.'

'Poor girl!'

'But they shall be kept apart! As long as your great kindness is continued for her they shall be kept apart!'

'I do not think that I should be found good at watching a young lady.'

'She will require no watching.'

'Then of course they will not meet. She had better know that you have told me.'

'She shall know it.'

'And let her know also that anything I can do to make her happy shall be done. But, Duke, there is but one cure.'

'Time you mean.'

'Yes; time; but I did not mean time.' Then she smiled as she went on. 'You must not suppose that I am speaking against my own sex if I say that she will not forget Mr Tregear till someone else has made himself agreeable to her. We must wait till she can go out a little more into society. Then she will find out that there are others in the world besides Mr Tregear. It so often is the case that a girl's love means her sympathy for him who has chanced to be nearest her.'

The Duke as he went away thought very much of what Lady Cantrip had said to him;--particularly of those last words. 'Till some one else has made himself agreeable to her.' Was he to send his girl into the world in order that she might find a lover? There was something in the idea which was thoroughly distasteful to him. He had not given his mind much to the matter, but had felt that a woman should be sought for,--sought for and extracted, cunningly, as it were, from some hiding-place, and not sent out into a market to be exposed as for sale. In his own personal history there had been a misfortune,--a misfortune, the sense of which he could never, at any moment, have expressed to any ears, the memory of which had been always buried deep in his own bosom,--but a misfortune in that no such cunning extraction on his part had won for him the woman to whose hands had been confided the strings of his heart. His wife had undergone that process of extraction before he had seen her, and his marriage with her had been a matter of sagacious bargaining. He was now told that his daughter must be sent out among young men in order that she might become sufficiently fond of some special one to be regardless of Tregear.