"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 him. Then he is left to boody over everything by himself till he becomes a sort of political hermit, or ministerial Lama, whom human eyes are not to look upon. It doesn't matter now; does it?" Visitor after visitor came in, and the Duchess chatted to them all, leaving the impression on everybody that heard her that she at least was not sorry to be relieved from the troubles attending her husband's late position.
She sat there over an hour, and as she was taking her leave she had a few words to whisper to Mrs. Finn. "When this is all over," she said, "I mean to call on that Mrs. Lopez."
"I thought you did go there."
"That was soon after the poor man had killed himself,—when she was going away. Of course I only left a card. But I shall see her now if I can. We want to get her out of her melancholy if possible. I have a sort of feeling, you know, that among us we made the train run over him."
"I don't think that."
"He got so horribly abused for what he did at Silverbridge; and I really don't see why he wasn't to have his money. It was I that made him spend it."