Winton looked from one lady to another keenly, with an inquiry which the Duchess met without flinching, and Lady Jane without being at all aware what it meant. Her Grace gave him an almost imperceptible nod, always looking him full in the face. Her eyes seemed to promise everything. “In that case,” he said--“in that case--better the refusal: then we shall see what there remains to do.” The Duchess sighed. “I believe it is the wisest way,” she said, “after all: but you cannot suppose it is very pleasant to me. Now, go; you must go, and leave us to dress. You may come here to-morrow after breakfast, or when we come in, in the afternoon--but you must not be always coming. And in the meantime prudence, prudence! you cannot be too prudent. If you betray yourself I cannot answer for the consequences. You must remember that for Jane’s sake.” Then they put him out of the room, out of the shining of the sunset in which he thought she stood transfigured, the soft glory caressing her, the level golden radiance getting into her eyes and flooding them--and closed the door upon him, leaving him in the darkness of the passage, which looked all black to his dazzled eyes. Fortunately his guide appeared a moment afterwards and he was led up to his chamber, in the wilds so to speak of the great house, where he came back to himself as well as he could. Winton was only a man like the rest of his kind. He wondered if the women enjoyed, with a native feminine malice such as everybody has commented upon from the beginning of time, the position in which they had placed him. Ah, not _they_; not Jane, who was a world above all jesting--but perhaps the Duchess, who, he could imagine, did not mind making him pay a little in his dignity, in his self-regard, for the promotion he had got through her daughter’s love. She would do anything for him because Jane loved him, but perhaps she had a mischievous satisfaction in the little drama which she was arranging round him--the external slights, the sudden bliss, the dismissal back again to humility and the second floor. Was this so? He concluded it was, with a half-amused irritation, a sense of being played with. She was kind: but was it in mortal to suffer without a pang, without an attempt at reprisals, the loss of Jane? And then, perhaps the Duchess too had a little feeling that he was not one of her own caste, her daughter’s equal--not enough to make her resist that daughter’s choice, but yet enough to prompt in passing a little prick as with a needle at the too fortunate. As a matter of fact, had Winton been cool enough to notice it, the Duchess had meant him no prick at all. He had been received in the usual way, lodged according to the general rule. She had thought it wisest not to do anything to distinguish him beyond his neighbours, but that was all.