If the Duchess were proud, capricious, autocratic, and uncertain in temper, as her detractors declared, at least she possessed warm and deep feelings, and could be infinitely agreeable and kindly when she chose. To Geraldine she was uniformly gentle and sympathetic. Perhaps she already felt that she had passed the meridian of her days of power. The kinswoman, Abigail Hill (now Mrs. Masham), whom she had first introduced to the Queen, was rapidly rising in royal favour, and seemed likely to prove not only a rival, but a supplanter. It had not come to that yet; and the return of the Duke, covered with glory and honour, averted for a while the calamity already overshadowing her. But so clever and astute a woman could not be altogether blind to the Queen’s waning affection; and perhaps the consciousness of her own faults and shortcomings, and her unguarded temper, helped at this juncture to soften the asperities of this rough but sterling nature, and disposed her to take pleasure in the sincere and undisguised affection and admiration of this beautiful girl. Geraldine on her part took great pleasure in the society of one who held in a semi-masculine contempt the follies, frivolities, and buffooneries of the present day code of manners. Of men and women alike, the Duchess spoke with hearty scorn, her eyes flashing and her lips curling in a fine contempt. Her influence at Court had always been on the side of gravity, decorum, and what the fashionable dames and gallants called "dullness." She and the Queen were at one in all these matters, as they were at one in their ideas of conjugal fidelity and the sacredness of the marriage bond. The Queen was as devoted to her weak-minded husband as the Duchess to her victorious lord. Both held in detestation the laxity which prevailed in the world of fashion, and neither cared for the criticisms passed upon the dullness of the Court, so long as its virtue was preserved untainted. Geraldine, sickened by what she saw and heard at the gay routs to which she had been taken in her mother’s train, felt the solemn stately gravity of the Duchess’s house as a haven of rest. She spent her time during her visits in the private apartment of the great lady, where the latter came and sat whenever she had leisure to do so, writing short notes to her husband, to be dispatched by special couriers, or talking of him and his triumphs, or the prospects of the war or of parties at home, to one who was eager to learn and ready to take a keen and intelligent interest in all, and whose sincere admiration and affection, expressed rather in looks and little unconscious actions than in words, seemed to soothe and refresh her not a little, accustomed as she was to full-mouthed flatteries to her face, and the scheming of jealousy behind her back.