’No, I wouldn’t.  Tifto is not all a pleasant companion, though he understands horses.  You’re going in for heavy politics, I suppose.’

‘Not particularly heavy.’

’If not, why on earth does the governor take you up?  You won’t mind my smoking I dare say.’  After this there was no conversation between them.

CHAPTER 35

‘Don’t You Think-?’

It was pretty to see the Duke’s reception of Lady Mabel.  ’I knew your mother many years ago,’ he said, ’when I was young myself.  Her mother and my mother were first cousins and dear friends.’  He held her hand as he spoke and looked at her as though he meant to love her.  Lady Mabel saw that it was so. could it be possible that the Duke had heard anything;—­that he should wish to receive her?  She had told herself and had told Miss Cassewary that though she had spared Silverbridge, yet she knew that she would make him a good wife.  If the Duke thought so also, then surely she need not doubt.

‘I knew we were cousins,’ she said, ’and have been so proud of the connection!  Lord Silverbridge does come and see us sometimes.’

Soon after that Silverbridge and Popplecourt came in.  If the story of the old woman in the portrait may be taken as evidence of a family connection between Lady Cantrip and Lord Popplecourt, everybody there was more or less connected with everybody else.  Nidderdale had been a first cousin of Lady Glencora, and he had married a daughter of Lady Cantrip.  They were manifestly a family party,—­thanks to the old woman in the picture.

It is a point of conscience among the—­perhaps not ten thousand, but say one thousand of bluest blood,—­that everybody should know who everybody is.  Our Duke, though he had not given his mind much to the pursuit, had nevertheless learned his lesson.  It is a knowledge which the possession of the blue blood itself produces.  There are countries with bluer blood than our own in which to be without such knowledge is a crime.

When the old lady in the portrait had been discussed, Popplecourt was close to Lady Mary.  They two had no idea why such vicinity had been planned.  The Duke knew of course, and Lady Cantrip.  Lady Cantrip had whispered to her daughter that such a marriage would be suitable, and the daughter had hinted it to her husband.  Lord Cantrip of course was not in the dark.  Lady Mabel had expressed a hint on the matter to Miss Cass, who had not repudiated it.  Even Silverbridge had suggested to himself that something of the kind might be in the wind, thinking that, if so, none of them knew very much about his sister Mary.  But Popplecourt himself was divinely innocent.  His ideas of marriage had as yet gone no farther than a conviction that girls generally were things which would be pressed on him, and against which he must arm himself with some shield.  Marriage would have to come, no doubt, but not the less was it his duty to live as though it were a pit towards which he would be tempted by female allurements.  But that a net should be spread over him here he was much too humble-minded to imagine.