“I was not thinking of any guidance,” said the Duke.
“Of course not. But with one so young, where there is intimacy there will be guidance. There should be somebody with her. It was almost the last thought that occupied her mother’s mind. I could not tell her, Duke, but I can tell you, that I cannot with advantage to your girl be that somebody.”
“Cora wished it.”
“Her wishes, probably, were sudden and hardly fixed.”
“Who should it be, then?” asked the father, after a pause.
“Who am I, Duke, that I should answer such a question?”
After that there was another pause, and then the conference was ended by a request from the Duke that Mrs. Finn would stay at Matching for yet two days longer. At dinner they all met—the father, the three children, and Mrs. Finn. How far the young people among themselves had been able to throw off something of the gloom of death need not here be asked; but in the presence of their father they were sad and sombre, almost as he was. On the next day, early in the morning, the younger lad returned to his college, and Lord Silverbridge went up to London, where he was supposed to have his home.
“Perhaps you would not mind reading these letters,” the Duke said to Mrs. Finn, when she again went to him, in compliance with a message from him asking for her presence. Then she sat down and read two letters, one from Lady Cantrip, and the other from a Mrs. Jeffrey Palliser, each of which contained an invitation for his daughter, and expressed a hope that Lady Mary would not be unwilling to spend some time with the writer. Lady Cantrip’s letter was long, and went minutely into circumstances. If Lady Mary would come to her, she would abstain from having other company in the house till her young friend’s spirits should have somewhat recovered themselves. Nothing could be more kind, or proposed in a sweeter fashion. There had, however, been present to the Duke’s mind as he read it a feeling that a proposition to a bereaved husband to relieve him of the society of an only daughter, was not one which would usually be made to a father. In such a position a child’s company would probably be his best solace. But he knew—at this moment he painfully remembered—that he was not as are other men. He acknowledged the truth of this, but he was not the less grieved and irritated by the reminder. The letter from Mrs. Jeffrey Palliser was to the same effect, but was much shorter. If it would suit Mary to come to them for a month or six weeks at their place in Gloucestershire, they would both be delighted.
“I should not choose her to go there,” said the Duke, as Mrs. Finn refolded the latter letter. “My cousin’s wife is a very good woman, but Mary would not be happy with her.”
“Lady Cantrip is an excellent friend for her.”
“Excellent. I know no one whom I esteem more than Lady Cantrip.”
“Would you wish her to go there, Duke?”
There came a wistful piteous look over the father’s face. Why should he be treated as no other father would be treated? Why should it be supposed that he would desire to send his girl away from him? But yet he felt that it would be better that she should go. It was his present purpose to remain at Matching through a portion of the summer. What could he do to make a girl happy? What comfort would there be in his companionship?
“I suppose she ought to go somewhere,” he said.
“I had not thought of it,” said Mrs. Finn.
“I understood you to say,” replied the Duke, almost angrily, “that she ought to go to someone who would take care of her.”
“I was thinking of some friend coming to her.”
“Who would come? Who is there that I could possibly ask? You will not stay.”
“I certainly would stay, if it were for her good. I was thinking, Duke, that perhaps you might ask the Greys to come to you.”
“They would not come,” he said, after a pause.
“When she was told that it was for her sake, she would come, I think.”
Then there was another pause. “I could not ask them,” he said; “for his sake I could not have it put to her in that way. Perhaps Mary had better go to Lady Cantrip. Perhaps I had better be alone here for a time. I do not think that I am fit to have any human being here with me in my sorrow.”
II
Lady Mary Palliser
It may as well be said at once that Mrs. Finn knew something of Lady Mary which was not known to the father, and which she was not yet prepared to make known to him. The last winter abroad had been passed at Rome, and there Lady Mary Palliser had become acquainted with a certain Mr. Tregear—Francis Oliphant Tregear. The Duchess, who had been in constant correspondence with her friend, had asked questions by letter as to Mr. Tregear, of whom she had only known that he was the younger son of a Cornish gentleman, who had become Lord Silverbridge’s friend at Oxford. In this there had certainly been but little to recommend him to the intimacy of such a girl as Lady Mary Palliser. Nor had the Duchess, when writing, ever spoken of him as a probable suitor for her daughter’s hand. She had never connected the two names together. But Mrs. Finn had been clever enough to perceive that the Duchess had become fond of Mr. Tregear, and would willingly have heard something to his advantage. And she did hear something to his advantage—something also to his disadvantage. At his mother’s death this young man would inherit a property amounting to about fifteen hundred a year. “And I
