There came a piteous look over the father’s face.  Why should he be treated as no other father would be treated?  Why should it be supposed that he would desire to send his girl away from him?  But yet he felt that it would be better that she should go.  It was his present purpose to remain at Matching through a portion of the summer.  What could he do to make a girl happy?  What comfort would there be in his companionship?

‘I suppose she ought to go somewhere,’ he said.

‘I had not thought of it,’ said Mrs Finn.

‘I understood you to say,’ replied the Duke, almost angrily, ’that she ought to go someone who would take care of her.’

‘I was thinking of some friend coming to her.’

’Who would come?  Who is there that I could possibly ask?  You will not stay.’

’I certainly would stay, if it were for her good.  I was thinking, Duke, that perhaps you might ask the Greys to come to you.’

‘They would not come,’ he said, after a pause.

’When she was told that it was for her sake, she would come, I think.’

Then there was another pause.  ‘I could not ask them,’ he said; ’for his sake I could not have it put to her in that way.  Perhaps Mary had better go to Lady Cantrip.  Perhaps I had better be alone for a time.  I do not think that I am fit to have any human being with me in my sorrow.’

CHAPTER 2

Lady Mary Palliser

It may be said at once that Mrs Finn knew something of Lady Mary which was not known to her father, and which she was not yet prepared to make known to him.  The last winter abroad had been passed at Rome, and there Lady Mary Palliser had become acquainted with a certain Mr Tregear,—­Francis Oliver Tregear.  The Duchess, who had been in constant correspondence with her friend, had asked questions by letter as to Mr Tregear, of whom she had only known that he was the younger son of a Cornish gentleman, who had become Lord Silverbridge’s friend at Oxford.  In this there had certainly been but little to recommend him to the intimacy of such a girl as Lady Mary Palliser.  Nor had the Duchess, when writing, ever spoken of him as a probable suitor for her daughter’s hand.  She had never connected the two names together.  But Mrs Finn had been clever enough to perceive that the Duchess had become fond of Mr Tregear, and would willingly have heard something to his advantage.  And she did hear something to his advantage,—­something also to his disadvantage.  At his mother’s death, this young man would inherit a property amounting to about fifteen hundred a year.  ’And I am told,’ said Mrs Finn, ’that he is quite likely to spend his money before it comes to him.’  There had been nothing more written specially about Mr Tregear, but Mrs Finn had feared not only that the young man loved the girl, but that the young man’s love had in some imprudent way been fostered by the mother.