‘It is the only word that will express my meaning.’

’And one which I must be bold enough to say you are not justified in using.  Should she become my wife tomorrow, no one in England would think that she had disgraced herself.  The Queen would receive her on her marriage.  All your friends would hold their hands out to us,—­presuming that we had your good-will.’

‘But you would not have it.’

’Her disgrace would not depend upon that, my Lord.  Should your daughter so dispose herself, as to disgrace herself,—­which I think to be impossible,—­your countenance could not set her right.  Nor can the withdrawal of your countenance condemn her before the world if she does that with herself which any other lady might do and remain a lady.’

The Duke, when he heard this, even in the midst of his wrath, which was very violent, and the in the midst of his anger, which was very acute, felt that he had to deal with a man,—­with one whom he could not put off from him into the gutter, and there leave as buried in the mud.  And there came, too, a feeling upon him, which he had no time to analyse, but of which he was part aware, that this terrible indiscretion on the part of his daughter and of his late wife was less wonderful than it had at first appeared to be.  But not on that account was he the less determined to make the young man feel that his parental opposition would be invincible.  ’It is quite impossible, sir.  I do not think that I need say anything more.’  Then, while Tregear was meditating whether to make any reply; the Duke asked a question which had better have been left unasked.  The asking of it diminished somewhat from that ducal, grand-ducal, quasi-archducal, almost Godlike superiority which he had assumed, and showed the curiosity of a mere man.  ’Has anybody else been aware of this?’ he said, still wishing to know whether he had cause for anger against Silverbridge in the matter.

‘Mrs Finn is aware of it,’ said Tregear.

‘Mrs Finn!’ exclaimed the Duke, as though he had been stung by an adder.  This was the woman whom he had prayed to remain awhile with his daughter after his wife had been laid in her grave, in order that there might be someone near whom he could trust!  And this very woman whom he had so trusted,—­whom, in his early associations with her, he had disliked and distrusted, but had taught himself both to like and to trust because his wife had loved her,—­this woman was the she-Pandarus who had managed matters between Tregear and his daughter!  His wife had been too much subject to her influence.  That he had always known.  And now, in this last act of her life, she had allowed herself to be persuaded to give up her daughter by the baneful wiles of this most pernicious woman.  Such were the workings of the Duke’s mind when the young man told him that Mrs Finn was acquainted with the whole affair.  As the reader is aware, nothing could have been more unjust.