“Of course I was joking; but others will, and he will be spoilt. I wonder whether he will live to be a Grand Lama or a popular Minister. There cannot be two positions further apart. My husband, no doubt, thinks a good deal of himself as a statesman and a clever politician—at least I suppose he does; but he has not the slightest reverence for himself as a nobleman. If the dear old Duke were hobbling along Piccadilly, he was conscious that Piccadilly was graced by his presence, and never moved without being aware that people looked at him, and whispered to each other—‘There goes the Duke of Omnium.’ Plantagenet considers himself inferior to a sweeper while on the crossing, and never feels any pride of place unless he is sitting on the Treasury Bench with his hat over his eyes.”
“He’ll never sit on the Treasury Bench again.”
“No;—poor dear. He’s an Othello now with a vengeance, for his occupation is gone. I spoke to him about your friend and the foxes, and he told me to write to Mr. Fothergill. I will as soon as it’s decent. I fancy a new duchess shouldn’t write letters about foxes till the old Duke is buried. I wonder what sort of a will he’ll have made. There’s nothing I care twopence for except his pearls. No man in England had such a collection of precious stones. They’d been yours, my dear, if you had consented to be Mrs. O.”
The Duke was buried and the will was read, and Plantagenet Palliser was addressed as Duke of Omnium by all the tenantry and retainers of the family in the great hall of Gatherum Castle. Mr. Fothergill, who had upon occasion in former days been driven by his duty to remonstrate with the heir, was all submission. Planty Pall had come to the throne, and half a county was ready to worship him. But he did not know how to endure worship, and the half county declared that he was stern and proud, and more haughty even than his uncle. At every “Grace” that was flung at him he winced and was miserable, and declared to himself that he should never become accustomed to his new life. So he sat all alone, and meditated how he might best reconcile the forty-eight farthings which go to a shilling with that thoroughgoing useful decimal, fifty.
But his meditations did not prevent him from writing to his wife, and on the following morning, Lady Glencora—as she shall be called now for the last time—received a letter from him which disturbed her a good deal. She was in her room when it was brought to her, and for an hour after reading it hardly knew how to see her guest and friend, Madame Goesler. The passage in the letter which produced this dismay was as follows:—“He has left to Madame Goesler twenty thousand pounds and all his jewels. The money may be very well, but I think he has been wrong about the jewellery. As to myself I do not care a straw, but you will be sorry; and then people will talk. The lawyers will, of course, write to her, but I suppose you had better tell her. They seem to think that the stones are worth a great deal of money; but I have long learned never to believe any statement that is made to me. They are all here, and I suppose she will have to send some authorised person to have them packed. There is a regular inventory, of which a copy shall be sent to her by post as soon as it can be prepared.” Now it must be owned that the duchess did begrudge her friend the duke’s collection of pearls and diamonds.
About noon they met. “My dear,” she said, “you had better hear your good fortune at once. Read that—just that side. Plantagenet is wrong in saying that I shall regret it. I don’t care a bit about it. If I want a ring or a brooch he can buy me one. But I never did care about such things, and I don’t now. The money is all just as it should be.” Madame Goesler read the passage, and the blood mounted up into her face. She read it very slowly, and when she had finished reading it she was for a moment or two at a loss for her words to express herself. “You had better send one of Garnett’s people,” said the Duchess, naming the house of a distinguished jeweller and goldsmith in London.
“It will hardly need,” said Madame Goesler.
“You had better be careful. There is no knowing what they are worth. He spent half his income on them, I believe, during part of his life.” There was a roughness about the Duchess of which she was herself conscious, but which she could not restrain, though she knew that it betrayed her chagrin.
Madame Goesler came gently up to her and touched her arm caressingly. “Do you remember,” said Madame Goesler, “a small ring with a black diamond—I suppose it was a diamond—which he always wore?”
“I remember that he always did wear such a ring.”
“I should like to have that,” said Madame Goesler.
“You have them all—everything. He makes no distinction.”
“I should like to have that, Lady Glen—for the sake of the hand that wore it. But, as God is great above us, I will never take aught else that has belonged to the Duke.”
“Not take them!”
“Not a gem; not a stone; not a shilling.”
“But you must.”
“I rather think that I can be under no such obligation,” she said, laughing. “Will you write to Mr. Palliser—or I should say, to the Duke—tonight, and tell him that my mind is absolutely made up?”
“I certainly shall not do that.”
“Then I must. As it is, I shall have pleasant memories of his Grace. According to my ability I have endeavoured to be good to him, and I have no stain on my conscience because of his friendship.
