“Jane will have no preference that is not justified by the merit of the object,” cried Jane’s father. “She is too much my child for that. She will never permit her mind to stray out of her own rank. Indeed, it is with difficulty I realise,” he added, with dignity, “the possibility that she can have conceived what you call a preference at all. To me she has always been so completely superior, so serene, so----” “But not cold,” the Duchess said. “I don’t know what you mean by cold; yes, cold, certainly, in my sense of the word, as every woman ought to be. I believe that unless I put it before her--or you as my representative--she is far too pure-minded and elevated ever to think of marriage at all.” “If she were shut up in a tower,” said the Duchess; “but unfortunately there are so many things in this world to force the idea upon her, and if you really wish her to marry----” “Of course I wish her to marry,” said the Duke, almost angrily; and then he added, “in her own rank in life.” The Duchess asked herself afterwards whether this had been a wise way of directing her husband’s attention to the subject. She had meant it to be very wise, but conversation is one of those strange things that will manage itself. However closely we may have laid down the lines of what we shall say, it is pretty certain to balk us and direct us in other ways. This had been the case on the present occasion. Instead of directing the Duke’s mind to the possibility of receiving a suitor who should be indispensable to Jane’s happiness, though not of her rank, she had only elicited from him a repetition of his determination that nobody out of her own rank should marry Lady Jane. She thought with a shiver of Winton coming down full of hope with the intention of unfolding his rent-roll, and his statement of the settlements he was able to make, for the Duke’s satisfaction. The Duke was one of the few men remaining in the nineteenth century who was invulnerable to money. Susan Hungerford was enough to give any one a disgust at that manner of filling the household coffers. Perhaps it would have been better to say nothing, to let Winton work upon the Duke by that respectful admiration for his opinions which he had already shown. She walked back to the castle with a sense of failure in her mind. For her part, she would not have been at all disinclined towards a clergyman (had he been _nice_) who would have established her child in the beautiful rectory not a quarter of a mile from the lodge-gates, and kept her constantly, as it were, at home. But there was no clergyman available, and no question of that. Lady Jane gave her a half-timid glance when she went into the drawing-room with the fresh air of the evening about her. She would not inquire whether there had been any talk of herself between her parents; but she could not keep that question out of her eyes. All the Duchess’s reply was to give her a kiss, and ask whether she had not been out this delicious evening.