“You understand a great deal—but not quite all. You may at any rate understand this—that our troubles are at an end. You were saying but the other day that the labours of being a Prime Minister’s wife had been almost too many for you.”
“I never said so. As long as you didn’t give way no labour was too much for me. I would have done anything—slaved morning and night—so that we might have succeeded. I hate being beat. I’d sooner be cut in pieces.”
“There is no help for it now, Cora. The Lord Mayor, you know, is only Lord Mayor for one year, and must then go back to private life.”
“But men have been Prime Ministers for ten years at a time. If you have made up your mind, I suppose we may as well give up. I shall always think it your own fault.” He still smiled. “I shall,” she said.
“Oh, Cora!”
“I can only speak as I feel.”
“I don’t think you would speak as you do, if you knew how much your words hurt me. In such a matter as this I should not be justified in allowing your opinions to have weight with me. But your sympathy would be so much to me!”
“When I thought it was making you ill, I wished that you might be spared.”
“My illness would be nothing, but my honour is everything. I, too, have something to bear as well as you, and if you cannot approve of what I do, at any rate be silent.”
“Yes;—I can be silent.” Then he slowly left her. As he went she was almost tempted to yield, and to throw herself into his arms, and to promise that she would be soft to him, and to say that she was sure that all he did was for the best. But she could not bring herself as yet to be good-humoured. If he had only been a little stronger, a little thicker-skinned, made of clay a little coarser, a little other than he was, it might all have been so different!
Early on that Sunday afternoon she had herself driven to Mrs. Finn’s house in Park Lane, instead of waiting for her friend. Latterly she had but seldom done this, finding that her presence at home was much wanted. She had been filled with, perhaps, foolish ideas of the necessity of doing something—of adding something to the strength of her husband’s position—and had certainly been diligent in her work. But now she might run about like any other woman. “This is an honour, Duchess,” said Mrs. Finn.
“Don’t be sarcastic, Marie. We have nothing further to do with the bestowal of honours. Why didn’t he make everybody a peer or a baronet while he was about it? Lord Finn! I don’t see why he shouldn’t have been Lord Finn. I’m sure he deserved it for the way in which he attacked Sir Timothy Beeswax.”
“I don’t think he’d like it.”
“They all say so, but I suppose they do like it, or they wouldn’t take it. And I’d have made Locock a knight;—Sir James Locock. He’d make a more knightly knight than Sir Timothy. When a man has power he ought to use it. It makes people respect him. Mr. Daubeny made a duke, and people think more of that than anything he did. Is Mr. Finn going to join the new ministry?”
“If you can tell me, Duchess, who is to be the new minister, I can give a guess.”
“Mr. Monk.”
“Then he certainly will.”
“Or Mr. Daubeny.”
“Then he certainly won’t.”
“Or Mr. Gresham.”
“That I could not answer.”
“Or the Duke of Omnium.”
“That would depend upon his Grace. If the Duke came back, Mr. Finn’s services would be at his disposal, whether in or out of office.”
“Very prettily said, my dear. I never look round this room without thinking of the first time I came here. Do you remember, when I found the old man sitting there?” The old man alluded to was the late Duke.
“I am not likely to forget it, Duchess.”
“How I hated you when I saw you! What a fright I thought you were! I pictured you to myself as a sort of ogre, willing to eat up everybody for the gratification of your own vanity.”
“I was very vain, but there was a little pride with it.”
“And now it has come to pass that I can’t very well live without you. How he did love you!”
“His Grace was very good to me.”
“It would have done no great harm, after all, if he had made you Duchess of Omnium.”
“Very great harm to me, Lady Glen. As it is I got a friend that I loved dearly, and a husband that I love dearly too. In the other case I should have had neither. Perhaps I may say, that in that other case my life would not have been brightened by the affection of the present Duchess.”
“One can’t tell how it would have gone, but I well remember the state I was in then.” The door was opened and Phineas Finn entered the room. “What, Mr. Finn, are you at home? I thought everybody was crowding down at the clubs, to know who is to be what. We are settled. We are quiet. We have nothing to do to disturb ourselves. But you ought to be in all the flutter of renewed expectation.”
“I am waiting my destiny in calm seclusion. I hope the Duke is well?”
“As well as can be expected. He doesn’t walk about his room with a poniard in his hand—ready for himself or Sir Orlando; nor is he sitting crowned like Bacchus, drinking the health of the new Ministry with Lord Drummond and Sir Timothy. He is probably sipping a cup of coffee over a blue-book in dignified retirement. You should go and see him.”
“I should be unwilling to trouble him when he is so much occupied.”
“That is just what has done him all the harm in the world. Everybody presumes that he has so much to think of that nobody goes near
