“Susan is so well informed——” said the Duchess, with a little redness of indignation. “But I think you know Jane well enough to be aware that thinking of any one for her would not do much good.”
“That is what I thought,” Hungerford said, falling readily into the snare. “But it wouldn’t be at all a bad thing,” he added, “if it could be brought about. He has plenty of money, and nothing against him; and Jane isn’t quite so young as she was, don’t you know?”
This was true enough; but that such a question should be discussed between her son and his wife made the Duchess’s blood boil. “I am not so clever as Susan and you, Hungerford,” she said, with fine satire. “You will manage your daughter’s marriage, I don’t doubt, a thousand times better than I shall ever manage mine.”
“What has that to do with it?” Hungerford said, surprised, for he was not quick in his intellects. But he added, as he went away, “I should think Regy Winton would be a very good man for Jane.”
The Duchess was very angry, and declined altogether to take her son into her confidence. But yet she was sustained in her mind by this volunteered opinion, and went on with more boldness. They were all very glad to get out of London, as soon as the Duke thought it right to withdraw that support which he felt himself bound to give to the empire and the constitution by going to town every year. His countenance expanded as they left that limited world in which a duke is almost as a common man, and has to submit to see a simple commoner considered much more important than himself. He preferred the country, if for nothing else, on that score. There was space to move about in, and the whole district bowed down before him. He smoothed out even during the journey, though it was by railway, which is a levelling and impertinent way of travelling. The Duke’s carriage had large labels of “engaged” plastered upon it. But still such a thing had been as that a lawless traveller, a being without veneration or feeling, had seized upon the door-handle and attempted to make an entrance. Nevertheless, even with these drawbacks, the Duke already began to show the genial influence of going out of town. And to think that the wife of his bosom should have taken advantage of this in the disingenuous way she did! It was not absolutely on the journey, but on that first evening at home, when the noble pair took, as had been their habit since before any one could remember, a little stroll together after dinner in the cool of the evening under the ancestral shades; and just when his Grace had looked round him with a sigh of satisfaction, and announced that woods were better than bricks and mortar, which was a remark he made habitually in about the same spot, on about the same day of every year—
“That is very true,” the Duchess said (as she always said on similar occasions), “and there are no trees like our own trees. I hope her native air,” added the crafty woman, “will do something for Jane.”
“For Jane! Is there anything the matter with Jane?” said her august papa.
“I felt sure you must have observed it; you are always so keen-sighted where Jane is concerned. I have thought she looked pale; and she has a little air of—what shall I call it?—preoccupation.”
“I do not see,” said the Duke, half indignantly, “what she can have to be preoccupied about.”
“She has always been so tenderly cared for, that is true. But we must remember that she is no longer a girl, and there are thoughts which come into one’s mind which it is difficult to avoid.”