The Duchess’s little sitting-room had not for years enclosed so melancholy a group. She herself, in old days when she first began to realise all the circumstances of the life which she had come into, had wept many an unnoticed tear in it; but in after-years she had acquired the philosophy of maturity, and had too much to do holding her own amid all the adverse circumstances about her, to be able to indulge in personal lamentations. But Lady Jane had never known any of those burdens which had made her mother’s career so full of care. When Winton rushed in, in all the excitement of the scene which he had just gone through in the Duke’s library, too much disturbed even to tell her what had passed, it was almost her first experience of the darker side of existence. For the first moment he had not been able to keep some resentment and sense of the indignity to which he had been exposed from getting to light. He told her with a pale smile and fiery eyes that he had scarcely time to speak to her, that he must go instantly, that her father had turned him out. But as Winton came to himself, and began to perceive the pain which he was inflicting upon her, he did his best to smooth away the first unguarded outburst. Lady Jane’s pallor, the tears which she could not restrain, the serenity of her countenance turned into anguish, all made apparent to him the fact which he had forgotten, that there were to her two sides to the question. He tried to draw in his words, to smooth away what he had said in the first outburst of his resentment. “After all, we must remember it was a great shock to him. I am nobody, only a simple gentleman, not fit to place myself on a level with the Duke’s daughter,” he said, though still with that smile of wounded pride and bitterness about his lips. Lady Jane was too heart-broken to say much; she listened like a martyr at the stake, standing silent while spears and arrows were thrust into her. Her father! he had been tried and he had not borne the trial. What she understood by rank was the highest courtesy, the noblest humbleness. A man who would turn another to the door, who would suffer his guest to perceive, under any circumstances, that he was not as a prince in his host’s eyes--Lady Jane did not understand such a being. It hurt her so deeply that she did not even at first realise the fact that it was her lover who was turned away. She tried to ask a few faltering questions, to make out the circumstances to be less terrible; but failing in this, fell into silence, into such shame and consternation and deep humiliated pain as even Winton scarcely comprehended. No other hand, no other proceeding could have struck such a blow at all the traditions of her life. She sat with her hand indeed in her lover’s, but in a kind of miserable separation even from him, feeling her life fall away from her, unable to think or realise what was to happen now; until Winton, recovering from his excitement only to fall into a deeper panic, took