Tregear, when he received the note from Mrs. Finn, was staying at the Duke’s house in Carlton Terrace. Silverbridge was there, and, on leaving Matching, had asked the Duke’s permission to have his friend with him. The Duke at that time was not well pleased with his son as to a matter of politics, and gave his son’s friend credit for the evil counsel which had produced this displeasure. But still he had not refused his assent to this proposition. Had he done so, Silverbridge would probably have gone elsewhere; and though there was a matter in respect to Tregear of which the Duke disapproved, it was not a matter, as he thought, which would have justified him in expelling the young man from his house. The young man was a strong Conservative; and now Silverbridge had declared his purpose of entering the House of Commons, if he did enter it, as one of the Conservative party.
This had been a terrible blow to the Duke; and he believed that it all came from this young Tregear. Still he must do his duty, and not more than his duty. He knew nothing against Tregear. That a Tregear should be a Conservative was perhaps natural enough—at any rate, was not disgraceful; that he should have his political creed sufficiently at heart to be able to persuade another man, was to his credit. He was a gentleman, well educated, superior in many things to Silverbridge himself. There were those who said that Silverbridge had redeemed himself from contempt—from that sort of contempt which might be supposed to await a young nobleman who had painted scarlet the residence of the Head of his college—by the fact of his having chosen such a friend. The Duke was essentially a just man; and though, at the very moment in which the request was made, his heart was half crushed by his son’s apostasy, he gave the permission asked.
“You know Mrs. Finn?” Tregear said to his friend one morning at breakfast.
“I remember her all my life. She used to be a great deal with my grandfather. I believe he left her a lot of diamonds and money, and that she wouldn’t have them. I don’t know whether the diamonds are not locked up somewhere now, so that she can take them when she pleases.”
“What a singular woman!”
“It was odd; but she had some fad about it. What makes you ask about Mrs. Finn?”
“She wants me to go and see her.”
“What about?”
“I think I have heard your mother speak of her as though she loved her dearly,” said Tregear.
“I don’t know about loving her dearly. They were intimate, and Mrs. Finn used to be with her very much when she was in the country. She was at Matching just now, when my poor mother died. Why does she want to see you?”
“She has written to me from Matching. She wants to see me—”
“Well?”
“To tell you the truth, I do not know what she has to say to me; though I can guess.”
“What do you guess?”
“It is something about your sister.”
“You will have to give that up, Tregear.”
“I think not.”
“Yes, you will; my father will never stand it.”
“I don’t know what there is to stand. I am not noble, nor am I rich; but I am as good a gentleman as he is.”
“My dear fellow,” said the young lord, “you know very well what I think about all that. A fellow is not any better to me because he has got a title, nor yet because he owns half a county. But men have their ideas and feelings about it. My father is a rich man, and of course he’ll want his daughter to marry a rich man. My father is noble, and he’ll want his daughter to marry a nobleman. You can’t very well marry Mary without his permission, and therefore you had better let it alone.”
“I haven’t even asked his permission as yet.”
“Even my mother was afraid to speak to him about it, and I never knew her to be afraid to say anything else to him.”
“I shall not be afraid,” said Tregear, looking grimly.
“I should. That’s the difference between us.”
“He can’t very well eat me.”
“Nor even bite you;—nor will he abuse you. But he can look at you, and he can say a word or two which you will find it very hard to bear. My governor is the quietest man I know, but he has a way of making himself disagreeable when he wishes, that I never saw equalled.”
“At any rate, I had better go and see your Mrs. Finn.” Then Tregear wrote a line to Mrs. Finn, and made his appointment.
IV
Park Lane
From the beginning of the affair Tregear had found the necessity of bolstering himself up inwardly in his great attempt by mottoes, proverbs, and instigations to courage addressed to himself. “None but the brave deserve the fair.” “De l’audace, et encore de l’audace, et toujours de l’audace.” He was a man naturally of good heart in such matters, who was not afraid of his brother-men, nor yet of women, his sisters. But in this affair he knew very much persistence would be required of him, and that even with such persistence he might probably fail, unless he should find a more than ordinary constancy in the girl. That the Duke could not eat him, indeed that nobody could eat him as long as he carried himself as an honest man and a gentleman, was to him an inward assurance on which he
