His own Duchess, she whose loss to him now was as though he had lost half of his limbs,—­had not she in the same way loved a Tregear, or worse than a Tregear, in her early days?  Ah, yes!  And though his Cora had been so much to him, had he not often felt, had he not been feeling all his days, that Fate had robbed him of the sweetest joy that is given to man, in that she had not come to him loving him with her early spring of love, as she had loved that poor ne’er-do-well?  How infinite had been his regrets.  How often had he told himself that, with all that Fortune had given him, still Fortune had been unjust to him because he had been robbed of that.  Not to save his life could he have whispered a word of this to anyone, but he had felt it.  He had felt it for years.  Dear as she had been, she had not been quite what she should have been but for that.  And now this girl of his, who was so much dearer to him than anything else left to him, was doing exactly as her mother had done.  The young man might be stamped out.  He might be made to vanish as that other young man had vanished.  But the fact that he had been there, cherished in the girl’s heart,—­that could not be stamped out.

He struggled gallantly to acquit the memory of his wife.  He could best do that by leaning with the full weight of his mind on the presumed iniquity of Mrs Finn.  Had he not known from the first that the woman was an adventuress?  And had he not declared to himself over and over again that between such a one and himself there should be no intercourse, no common feeling?  He had allowed himself to be talked into an intimacy, to be talked into an affection.  And this was the result!

And how should he treat this matter in his coming interview with his son,—­or should he make allusion to it?  At first it seemed as though it would be impossible for him to give his mind to that other subject.  How could he enforce the merits of political liberalism, and the duty of adhering to the old family party, while his mind was entirely preoccupied with his daughter?  It had suddenly become almost indifferent to him whether Silverbridge should be a Conservative or a Liberal.  But as he dressed he told himself, that, as a man, he ought to be able to do a plain duty, marked out for him as this had been by his own judgement, without regard to personal suffering.  The hedger and ditcher must make his hedge clean and clean his ditch even though he be tormented by rheumatism.  His duty by his son he must do, even though his heart were torn to pieces.

During breakfast he tried to be gracious, and condescended to ask a question about Prime Minister.  Racing was an amusement to which English noblemen had been addicted for many ages, and had been held to be serviceable rather than disgraceful, if conducted in a noble fashion.  He did not credit Tifto with much nobility.  He knew but little about the Major.  He would much have preferred that his son should have owned a horse alone, if he must have anything to do with ownership.  ’Would it not be better to buy the other share?’ asked the Duke.