On this occasion he travelled down alone, and as he approached the house he, who was not by nature timid, felt himself to be somewhat cowed. That the Duke should not be cold to him was almost impossible. Of course he was there in opposition to the Duke’s wishes. Even Silverbridge had never quite liked the match. Of course he was to have all that he desired. Of course he was the most fortunate of men. Of course no man had ever stronger reason to be contented with the girl he loved. But still his heart was a little low as he was driven up to the door.
The first person whom he saw was the Duke himself, who, as the fly from the station arrived, was returning from his walk. “You are welcome to Matching,” he said, taking off his hat with something of ceremony. This was said before the servants, but Tregear was then led into the study and the door was closed. “I never do anything by halves, Mr. Tregear,” he said. “Since it is to be so you shall be the same to me as though you had come under other auspices. Of yourself personally I hear all that is good. Consider yourself at home here, and in all things use me as your friend.” Tregear endeavoured to make some reply, but could not find words that were fitting. “I think that the young people are out,” continued the Duke. “Mr. Warburton will help you to find them if you like to go upon the search.” The words had been very gracious, but still there was something in the manner of the man which made Tregear find it almost impossible to regard him as he might have regarded another father-in-law. He had often heard the Duke spoken of as a man who could become awful if he pleased, almost without an effort. He had been told of the man’s mingled simplicity, courtesy, and self-assertion against which no impudence or raillery could prevail. And now he seemed to understand it.
He was not driven to go under the private secretary’s escort in quest of the young people. Mary had understood her business much better than that. “If you please, sir, Lady Mary is in the little drawing-room,” said a well-arrayed young girl to him as soon as the Duke’s door was closed. This was Lady Mary’s own maid who had been on the lookout for the fly. Lady Mary had known all details, as to the arrival of the trains and the length of the journey from the station, and had not been walking with the other young people when the Duke had intercepted her lover. Even that delay she had thought was hard. The discreet maid opened the door of the little drawing-room—and discreetly closed it instantly. “At last!” she said, throwing herself into his arms.
“Yes—at last.”
On this occasion time did not envy them. The long afternoons of spring had come, and as Tregear had reached the house between four and five they were able to go out together before the sun set. “No,” she said when he came to inquire as to her life during the last twelve months; “you had not much to be afraid of as to my forgetting.”
“But when everything was against me?”
“One thing was not against you. You ought to have been sure of that.”
“And so I was. And yet I felt that I ought not to have been sure. Sometimes, in my solitude, I used to think that I myself had been wrong. I began to doubt whether under any circumstances I could have been justified in asking your father’s daughter to be my wife.”
“Because of his rank?”
“Not so much his rank as his money.”
“Ought that to be considered?”
“A poor man who marries a rich woman will always be suspected.”
“Because people are so mean and poor-spirited; and because they think that money is more than anything else. It should be nothing at all in such matters. I don’t know how it can be anything. They have been saying that to me all along—as though one were to stop to think whether one was rich or poor.” Tregear, when this was said, could not but remember that at a time not very much prior to that at which Mary had not stopped to think, neither for a while had he and Mabel. “I suppose it was worse for me than for you,” she added.
“I hope not.”
“But it was, Frank; and therefore I ought to have it made up to me now. It was very bad to be alone here, particularly when I felt that papa always looked at me as though I were a sinner. He did not mean it, but he could not help looking at me like that. And there was nobody to whom I could say a word.”
“It was pretty much the same with me.”
“Yes; but you were not offending a father who could not keep himself from looking reproaches at you. I was like a boy at school who had been put into Coventry. And then they sent me to Lady Cantrip!”
“Was that very bad?”
“I do believe that if I were a young woman with a well-ordered mind, I should feel myself very much indebted to Lady Cantrip. She had a terrible task of it. But I could not teach myself to like her. I believe she knew all through that I should get my way at last.”
“That ought to have made you friends.”
“But yet she tried everything she could. And when I told her about that meeting up at Lord Grex’s, she was so shocked! Do you remember that?”
“Do I remember it!”
“Were not you shocked?” This question was not to be answered by any word. “I was,” she continued.
