"You will have to talk to her," said the Duchess.
"I will do my best," said the Duke.
Lady Rosina came and no doubt did think it odd. But she did not say so, and it really did seem to the Duchess as though all her vengeance had been blown away by the winds. And she too laughed at the matter—to herself, and began to feel less cross and less perverse. The world did not come to an end because she and her husband with Lady Rosina and her boy and the private Secretary sat down to dinner every day together. The parish clergyman with the neighbouring squire and his wife and daughter did come one day,—to the relief of M. Millepois, who had begun to feel that the world had collapsed. And every day at a certain hour the Duke and Lady Rosina walked together for an hour and a half in the park. The Duchess would have enjoyed it, instead of suffering, could she only have had her friend, Mrs. Finn, to hear her jokes. "Now, Plantagenet," she said, "do tell me one thing. What does she talk about?"
"The troubles of her family generally, I think."
"That can't last for ever."
"She wears cork soles to her boots and she thinks a good deal about them."
"And you listen to her?"
"Why not? I can talk about cork soles as well as anything else. Anything that may do material good to the world at large, or even to yourself privately, is a fit subject for conversation to rational people."
"I suppose I never was one of them."
"But I can talk upon anything," continued the Duke, "as long as the talker talks in good faith and does not say things that should not be said, or deal with matters that are offensive. I could talk for an hour about bankers' accounts, but I should not expect a stranger to ask me the state of my own. She has almost persuaded me to send to Mr. Sprout of Silverbridge and get some cork soles myself."