With this she did not quite sympathise, feeling it too fine and elaborate. Her instinct told her that domestic economy, to be beautiful, must be more spontaneous and not so laboured, and that some things were tawdry, and some sordid, in the arrangements laid down. She thought over the problems in these books with great conscientiousness. She thought a French cook would be much the best to start with, for they were so economical. She thought plate would be the cheapest thing to use, since it never breaks. But with a few mistakes of this kind, which were inevitable, and which experience would set right in three months, Lady Jane made herself out a beautiful programme for her behaviour as a poor man’s wife. It gave her a sense of elation to feel that at the least she could do something, and qualify herself for fulfilling a heroic destiny. She was quite unconscious of either downfall or humiliation. CHAPTER VI. THE ART OF STRATEGY. But the Duchess’s thoughts were of a more serious kind, and it was she who through all had the most difficult part to play. Perhaps five or six years before, when Lady Jane was in the first bloom of womanhood, her mother would have thought but little of Reginald Winton as a husband for her child. She would have preferred, need it be said, another set of strawberry-leaves; or even an earl with a good estate would have seemed to her a more suitable match. But as the years went on, and it became apparent to her that what with Lady Jane’s own visionary stateliness, and the known folly of her father, it was quite possible that there might be no match for her daughter at all, her ideas were sensibly modified. It did not seem to her at all desirable that Lady Jane should remain Lady Jane for ever. The Duchess had experienced no absolute blessedness in life. Her husband had given her infinite trouble, her son had by no means realised her ideal, and her daughter had gone beyond it, and sometimes vexed her as much by very excellence as Hungerford did by his commonplace nature. But still she thought it better to be thwarted and disappointed at the head of a family, than to sicken of solitude and pine out of it. She thought the same for her daughter; though indeed Lady Jane’s character would have lent itself much better to the maiden state than that of her more practical and active-minded mother. She had, too, a still more stringent reason, not of an abstract character at all. She knew that some time or other a crash must come. The Duke had never denied himself in his life, and he was not likely, of his own free will, to begin now. But as everything has to be paid for sooner or later, one way or another, she knew very well the time was coming when their fictitious fortunes would collapse, and it would be known to all the world that their income was not enough to support them, and that they were burdened with debts which they could not pay. And indeed it often seemed to her that she would be glad when