The Duke was so much excited that for one moment he failed in politeness towards the princess royal. “You!” he cried, with something of that intonation of supreme surprise and horror, with which he had said Sir to her lover. But he paused, and a better inspiration returned to him. A spasmodic sort of smile came over his face. “Ah, Jane!” he said, and put out his hand. “You want to speak to me? This is an unusual visit—and perhaps it is rather an unfortunate moment, if you have much to say.”
“Not very much, papa,” Jane answered, with an agitated smile. She took his hand, though he had not meant this, and held it, as she closed the door behind her. He would not have allowed her to do as much as this herself, had he noted what she meant, but he was agitated too in spite of himself. He recovered, however, and shut the door, then led his daughter to a chair and placed her in it. It was—but he noticed that only after it was beyond mending—the very chair in which her presumptuous suitor had placed himself yesterday. The Duke stood up before her in front of the fireplace exactly as he had done with Winton. The coincidence alarmed him, but now he could not help it. “Well, my love?” he said. He put on an air which was jaunty and light-hearted, the false gaiety with which a frightened man faces unknown danger. “Well, my love! I have just found Whitaker out in some serious miscalculations. I am robbed on all hands by my servants. It is one of the penalties of our position. But I warn you I have my head full of this and will be a poor listener. Whitaker, you see——”
“What I have to say will not take much time, papa. But it is very important to me.”
“Ah, ah!” said the Duke, with a laugh. “Chiffons, eh? Money wanted? You must talk that over with your mother. I am not rich, but whatever my Jane may require, were it to the half of my kingdom——”
He made her a bow full of that deference and almost reverential respect with which it was one of the Duke’s best points to have surrounded his only daughter—with a smile in which there was more tenderness than his Grace was capable of showing to any other creature. He loved his daughter, and he venerated her as a sort of flower of humanity and of the Altamonts, who were the best that humanity could produce.
“I will not ask so much as that,” said Lady Jane, tremulous, yet firm; “and yet I have come to ask you for something, father. I am older than girls are usually when they—marry.”
“Older, nonsense! Who has told you that?” cried the Duke, his veins beginning to swell, and his heart to thump with rising excitement. “You are in the bloom of your youth. I have never seen a girl look sweeter, or fairer, or younger, for that matter, than my child has been looking. Who has put such folly into your head?”
“It is not folly, it is true; and no matter—that is nothing; but only to show you that I am serious. I am no longer a girl, papa. Ah! do not interrupt; I shall always be a girl to you. I am a woman. I have had a great many thoughts before I came to speak—for myself. That is the last thing one wishes to do. To have others do it is so much the easier. But one must at last. I have come to speak to you for myself.”
“Jane, you had better pause and think,” said the Duke, with threatening looks.
“What can you have to say about yourself? Don’t bring down my respect for my daughter. We are driven out of our respect for women in most cases early in our career; but most men have a prejudice in favour of their daughters. Don’t force me to think that you are just like all the rest.”