Of course the Duke admitted him.  There was but one idea on his head as to what was coming.  His son had taken this way of making some communication to him respecting his political creed.  Some overture or some demand was to be preferred through Tregear.  If so, it was proof of a certain anxiety on the matter on his son’s part which was not displeasing to him.  But he was not left long in the mistake after Tregear had entered the room.  ‘Sir,’ he said, speaking quite at once, as soon as the door was closed behind him, but still speaking very slowly, looking beautiful as Apollo as he stood upright before his wished-for father-in-law—­’Sir, I have come to ask you to give me the hand of your daughter.’  The few words had been all arranged beforehand, and were now spoken without any appearance of fear or shame.  No one hearing them would have imagined that an almost penniless young gentleman was asking in marriage the daughter of the richest and greatest nobleman in England.

‘The hand of my daughter!’ said the Duke, rising from his chair.

‘I know how very great is the prize,’ said Frank, ’and how unworthy I am of it.  But—­as she thinks me worthy—­’

‘She!  What she?’

‘Lady Mary.’

‘She think you worthy!’

‘Yes, your Grace.’

‘I do not believe it.’  On hearing this, Frank simply bowed his head.  ’I beg your pardon, Mr Tregear.  I do not mean to say that I do not believe you.  I never gave the lie to any gentleman, and I hope I never may be driven to do so.  But there must be some mistake in this.’

’I am complying with Lady Mary’s wishes in asking your permission to enter your house as a suitor.’  The Duke stood for a moment biting his lips in silence.  ‘I cannot believe it,’ he said at last.  ’I cannot bring myself to believe it.  There must be some mistake.  My daughter!  Lady Mary Palliser!’ Again the young man bowed his head.  ‘What are your pretensions?’

‘Simply her regard.’

’Of course it is impossible.  You are not so ignorant but that you must have known as much when you came to me.’

There was so much scorn in his words, and in the tone in which they were uttered, that Tregear in his turn was becoming angry.  He had prepared himself to bow humbly before the great man, before the Duke, before the Croesus, before the late Prime Minister, before the man who was to be regarded as certainly the most exalted of the earth; but he had not prepared himself to be looked at as the Duke looked at him.  ‘The truth, my Lord Duke, is this,’ he said, ’that your daughter loves me, and that we are engaged to each other,—­as far as that engagement can be made without your sanction as her father.’

‘It cannot have been made at all,’ said the Duke.

’I can only hope,—­we can both of us only hope that a little time may soften-’

’It is out of the question.  There must be an end of this altogether.  You must neither see her, nor hear from her, no in any way communicate with her.  It is altogether impossible.  I believe, sir, that you have no means?’