’I thought you wanted woods.  Lord Chiltern is always troubling me about Trumpington Wood.’

This breeze about the hunting enabled the son to escape without any further allusion to Miss Boncassen.  He did escape, and proceeded to turn over in his mind all that had been said.  His tale had been told.  A great burden was thus taken off his shoulders.  He could tell Isabel so much, and thus free himself from the suspicion of having been afraid to declare his purpose.  She should know what he had done, and should be made to understand that he had been firm.  He had, he thought, been very firm and gave himself some credit on that head.  His father, no doubt, had been firm too, but that he had expected.  His father had said much.  All that about honour and duty had been very good; but this was certain;—­that when a young man had promised a young woman he ought to keep his word.  And he thought that there were certain changes going on in the management of the world which his father did not quite understand.  Fathers never do quite understand changes which are manifest to their sons.  Some years ago it might have been improper that an American girl should be elevated to the rank of an English Duchess, but now all that was altered.

The Duke spent the rest of the day alone, and was not happy in his solitude.  All that Silverbridge had told him was sad to him.  He had taught himself to think that he could love Lady Mabel as an affectionate father wishes to love his son’s wife.  He had set himself to wish to like her, and had been successful.  Being most anxious that his son should marry he had prepared himself to be more than ordinarily liberal,—­to be in every way gracious.  His children were now everything to him, and among his children his son and heir was the chief.  From the moment in which he had heard from Silverbridge that Lady Mabel was chosen he had given himself up to considering how he might best promote their interests,—­how he might best enable them to live, with that dignity and splendour which he himself had unwisely despised.  That the son who was to come after him should be worthy of the place assigned to his name had been, of personal objects, the nearest to his heart.  There had been failures, but still there had been left room for hope.  The boy had been immature at Eton;—­but how many unfortunate boys had become great men!  He had disgraced himself by his folly at college,—­but although some lads will be men at twenty, others are then little more than children.  The fruit that ripens the soonest is seldom the best.  Then had come Tifto and the racing mania.  Nothing could be worse than Tifto and racehorses.  But from that evil Silverbridge had seemed to be made free by the very disgust which the vileness of the circumstance had produced.  Perhaps Tifto driving a nail into his horse’s foot had on the whole been serviceable.  That apostasy from the political creed of the Pallisers had been a blow,—­much more felt than the