The young man looked at her with that ineffable air of imbecility and vanity which no man can escape at such a crisis, and made her a little bow of acquiescence. Her tone, her air, made him aware that she had no doubt of his success in the first instance, and this gave him a sudden intoxication. A father! What was a father? If she once gave him authority to speak to her father, would not all be said? “Oh, you goose!” said Lady Germaine again; “oh, you ignoramus! You are so silly that I am obliged to call you names. Do you know who the Duke of Billingsgate is? Simply the proudest man in England. He thinks there is nobody under the blood royal that is good enough for his child.” “And he is quite right! I am of the same opinion,” said Winton; then he paused and gave her a look in which, notwithstanding his gravity and enthusiasm, there was something comic. “But then,” he added, “the blood royal, that is not always the symbol of perfection, and then----” “And then----? You think, of course, that you have something to offer which a royal duke might not possess?” “Perhaps,” said Winton, looking at her again with a sort of friendly defiance; and then his eyes softened with that in which he felt himself superior to any royal duke or potentate; the something which was worthy of Lady Jane, let all the noble fathers in the world do their worst against him. He was not alarmed by all that Lady Germaine had said. Most likely he did not realise it. His mind went away even while she was speaking. She had heart enough to approve of this, and to perceive that Winton felt as a true lover ought to feel, but she was half provoked all the same, and anxious how it was all to turn out. “Do be a little practical,” she said; “try for a moment to leave her out of the question. What are you going to say to the Duke? That is what I want to know.” “How can I tell you?” said Winton; “how can I speak at all on such a subject? If I am to be so happy as to have anything at all to say to the Duke:--why, then--the occasion will inspire me,” he added, after a pause. “I cannot even think now what in such circumstances I should say.” Lady Germaine gave up with a sigh all attempt to guide him. “Then I must just wash my hands of you,” she said, with a sort of despair; “indeed, in any case I don’t know what I could have done for you. I shall be blamed, of course. The Duke will turn upon me, I know; but, thank heaven, I have nothing to fear from the Duke, and I don’t see what I can be said to have to do with the business. You met only in the ordinary way at my house. I never planned meetings for you, nor schemed to bring you together. Indeed I never thought of such a thing at all. Lady Jane, who has refused the first matches in the kingdom, what could have led me to suppose that she would turn her eyes upon _you_?”