“This is better than town,” her Grace said. Was it better than town? For the first time, with a soft sigh Lady Jane remained silent and did not echo the sentiment. The country is sweet, and the woods, and fields, and one’s native air, and the silence of nature--but there are other things which perhaps even in smoky London, among the bricks and mortar which his Grace made so little of, were still more sweet. Of all people in the world, Lady Jane was the last to prefer a ball-room, or the jaded and heated crowds at the end of the season. But for the first time in her life she thought of these assemblies with a sigh. CHAPTER VII. SUSPENSE. Winton stayed in London until September, with a certain sense of satisfaction in this self-martyrdom. It was totally unnecessary and could advantage nobody--but the thought of going into the country and pretending to enjoy himself while everything was so doubtful as to his future prospects, was disagreeable to him. He neglected his friends, he declined his invitations, he took pleasure in making himself miserable, and in pouring out his loneliness and wretchedness on sheet after sheet of note-paper, and addressing the budget to Billings Court; from whence, very soon indeed after this practice began, the Duchess, alarmed, sent him an energetic protestation. “Such a hot correspondence will soon awaken suspicions,” she wrote; “for Jane’s sake I implore you to be a little more patient.” “Patient! much she knows about it!” Winton said, when, pouncing upon this letter with the hope of finding, perhaps--who could tell?--the Duke’s consent in it and final sanction, he encountered this disappointing check. What could she know about it indeed, with Jane by her side, and all that she cared for? Perhaps in other circumstances the young man might have had a glimmering perception that the Duchess was well acquainted with the exercise of patience, even though Jane was her daughter; but at present his own affairs entirely occupied his mind. He spent a good deal of his time in Wardour Street and other cognate regions, and attended a great many sales, in which there was some degree of soothing to be obtained; for to “pick up” something which might hereafter grace her sitting-room, gave a glory to _bric-a-brac_, and thus he seemed to be doing something for her, even when most entirely separated from her. Jane herself wrote to him the most soothing of letters. “So long as we know each other as we do, and trust each other, what does a little delay matter?” she said. Poor Winton cried out, “Much she knows about it!” again, as he kissed yet almost tore, in loving fury, her tender little epistle. This was very unreasonable, for of course she knew quite as much about it as he did. When a pair of lovers are parted, it is not the lady that is supposed to feel it the least.