"No; curiously enough, I didn't. There was too much fun in thinkin' what would come next to bother about her. I'm a bit of a philosopher, Leah, an' when I can't get cake I chew bread. Now I've got the cake I'm enjoyin' it." "And eating too much of it. Look how stout yon are getting." "Respectable men always get stout when they grow old." "You are not old." "I'm a bit elderly. Somehow I don't enjoy larks so much as I used to," mused Jim, thoughtfully--"sign of age, I suppose. But I daresay I'll get some sort of fun out of life, an' maybe will need old Jarvey Peel's money at sixty. It'll be more than thirty thousand by then." "Less the six thousand you paid Strange," said his Duchess, cruelly. Jim winced. "Bit of a pull, that--hey! Nice fancy price I've had to pay for your fun, Leah." "It was to bring you back." "To make you a Duchess, you mean." "One would think you were middle class to hear you talk of titles in that respectful way. Who bothers about such things nowadays? I have been bored to death since Strange's blackmail turned you into a pauper Duke." Her husband made a grimace at this very plain speaking. "I wish you wouldn't talk like that, Leah. Hang it, I thought you really loved me when you fainted on my return." "All acting, my good man," she assured him, annoyed by his recalling that twelve-month-old weakness. "I had to impress the family somehow." "Then you don't love me?" said Jim, slowly. "What a question to ask after nearly seven years of married life." "But I'm respectable now," urged Jim, setting forth the contents of the new page he had turned over. "I don't race or bet overmuch, an' never look at a pretty woman. I go to church, an' sit in the Lords, an' take the chair at charity dinners, an'----" "You do that last because you love eating. All the charity funds are spent on the victuals, and the poor get about a penny in the collected pounds. Oh, you are quite a model, Jim, and so dull." This is but a sample of the few conversations the ducal pair allowed themselves, for they did not foregather with any enthusiasm. For propriety's sake the Duke and Duchess of Pentland were seen together at the few functions they could attend during the months of mourning; their home life was outwardly harmonious, and the crying down of a grass-widow which had been heard during those weeks of suspense following Strange's arrest had changed to crying up, when it was seen how very correctly the new Duchess behaved. Therefore they saw one another only officially, save on rare occasions. Leah found Jim dull, as she had frankly told him, and he winced always at his wife's tongue, which had lost none of its cutting power. Even his stupid brain grasped the fact that she was changed, though in what way he could not exactly say. She was certainly restless, and his bovine contentment with things-as-they-are could not understand this phase. Also she was dissatisfied, although she had secured all she had wanted by almost a miracle.