“Then what, in the name of heaven!—I beg you a thousand pardons, Duchess. I don’t know what I am saying. I have no title, to be sure. Is it a title that is necessary?”
“I can’t tell you what is necessary,” said the Duchess, with a tone of impatience. “The Duke is—well, the Duke is her father; that is all that is to be said. He will never listen to your proposal—never! That is why I should have said to you, Don’t make it. Leave her in her tranquillity, poor girl.”
“But——” Winton cried. He did not know what more to say—a protest of all his being, that was the only thing of which he was capable.
“But——” the Duchess repeated. “Yes, Mr Winton, there is always a but. To tell the truth, I am not so very sorry that you did not ask me after all. I should have been obliged to tell you what I have now told you. But since you have taken it into your own hands, I am rather glad. If her father had his way, Jane would never be married at all. Oh, don’t be so enthusiastic; don’t thank me so warmly! I have done nothing for you, and I don’t know what I can do for you.”
“Everything!” said Winton. “With you to back us, it is impossible that anything can prevail against us. The Duke’s heart will melt; he will hear reason.”
A faintly satirical smile came upon the mouth of the Duke’s wife, who knew better than anybody how much was practicable in the way of making him hear reason. But she did not say anything. She let the lover talk. He went on with the conviction natural to his generation—that all these medieval prejudices were fictitious, and paternal tyranny a thing of the past.
“Cruel fathers,” said Winton, “are things of the middle ages. I am not afraid of them any more than I am of the Castle Spectre. The Duke will rightly think that I am a poor sort of a fellow to ask his daughter from him. I ought to have been something very different—better, handsomer, cleverer.”
“You are not at all amiss, Mr Winton,” said the Duchess, with a gracious smile.
He made her a bow of acknowledgment, and his gratification was great—for who does not like to be told that he is considered a fine fellow? But he went on. “All this I feel quite as much as his Grace can do. The thing in my favour is that Jane——” the colour flew over his face as he called her so, and her mother, though she started slightly, acknowledged his rights by a little bow of assent, somewhat solemnly made,—“that Jane——” he went on repeating the sweet monosyllable, “does not mind my inferiority—is satisfied, the darling——” Here his happiness got into his voice as if it had been tears, and choked him. The Duchess bent her head again,
“To me that is everything,” she said.