And then they went to luncheon. A little look of exhaustion about Lady Jane’s face, a clear shining in her eyes like the sky after rain, betrayed to some keen-sighted spectators that there had been agitation in the atmosphere. But for a novice unaccustomed to trouble, she bore herself very well. And as for the Duchess, she was perfect. Her unruffled mind, her easy grace of greatness, were visible in every movement. What could so great a lady have to trouble her? She was gracious to everybody, and full of suggestions as to what should be done, as the afternoon promised to clear up, proposing expeditions to one place and another. “Mr Winton would have been an addition to your riding-party, but unfortunately he left us this morning,” she said in a voice of the most perfect composure. “So that there was nothing in it, after all,” little Lady Adela whispered to her mother. But Lady Grandmaison, who was a woman of experience, shook her head. And next morning Lady Jane, pale, but courageous, with a heart that fluttered, but a purpose as steadfast as her nature, went softly down-stairs in her turn and knocked at the Duke’s door. CHAPTER X. A MOMENTOUS INTERVIEW. The Duke, like his wife, was too highbred to allow any sign of disturbance to be seen in him; but nevertheless he was very greatly disturbed. Such a thing had never happened to him in all his life before. He had come in contact indeed with many men of lower social pretensions than Winton. But a person who is absolutely nobody is always easier to deal with than one who, without reaching at all to the level on which you can regard him as an equal, is still, by the unfortunate and levelling privileges of English society, supposed to be as good even as a duke; whereas nobody but a duke can be, in reality, as good as a duke, though a peer of old creation may approach him near enough for most social purposes. But a Mr Winton! His was precisely the kind of position which is most perplexing and disagreeable to the great man who is nevertheless obliged to allow, in deference to the folly of society, that there can be nothing higher than an English gentleman, and that princes themselves must consider their right to that title as their highest qualification. There are commoners, indeed, with whom even a duke might make an alliance and find himself no loser. We have already pointed out that Mr Roundell, of Bishop’s Roundell, had been seriously thought of as a suitor for Lady Jane. But a little squire with a little manor-house somewhere in the Midland counties--a man whom only a chance inheritance had raised above the necessity of working for his living, whose ancestors had been no better than little squires before him, who was nobody, of a race unheard of out of their parish, that he should take it upon him to walk quietly up to the Duke on his own hearth and ask from him the hand of Lady Jane! He did not venture to permit himself to dwell upon the thought. When it came back to his mind it set his