blood boiling as at first--his head grew hot, his veins too full, his respiration difficult. To allow himself to be driven into a fit by such _canaille_ would be unworthy of him; and therefore the Duke put force upon himself, and when the recollection came back took the wise step of flying from it. He would not risk himself on such an ignoble occasion. To allow a Mr Winton to bring on an illness would be almost as bad as accepting him for Lady Jane. Therefore he sent for his steward, or had an interview with his head groom, or seized upon some other external aid to save himself from the thought. He was unusually stately during the evening and snubbed the man of the clubs, who had gained some favour before by his adroitness and the interest he took in the house of Billings. The Duke turned his back upon this candidate for favour in the midst of an account he was giving of some discoveries he had made--discoveries for which the entire race of the Altamonts ought, he believed, to have been his debtors--as if the House of Altamont could have been advantaged by any discovery made by a man who was nobody, or indeed wanted any new glorification. The Duke turned round in the very midst of the tale, turned his shoulder to the discoverer and began to talk to the next of his noble visitors. This snub direct made everybody stare, and quenched the victim for the evening. It gave his Grace a little satisfaction to mortify somebody; but after all it did not do much for his own wounds. And after a disturbed night, when malicious recollection presented him with the souvenir of Winton almost before he was free of his disturbed dreams, it may be supposed that the Duke’s uprising was not a pleasant one. Heaven and earth! a little squire! a nobody! He got up precipitately--if the Duke could be supposed to do anything precipitately--and hurried his dressing, and plunged himself into business. To allow himself to be drawn even into a bilious attack by an assailant so contemptible would have been beneath him. His Grace was very busy checking the steward’s accounts, and just had started what he thought was an error in the balance-sheet, and was about with much enjoyment to hunt it back to its origin--for he loved to think that he was cheated, and to find out the managers of the estate in an inaccurate sixpence was a great gratification to him--when there suddenly came a low and somewhat tremulous knock at his door. He knew in a moment that it was some new annoyance and connected with the Winton affair, though it did not occur to him who the applicant could be who made this gentle demand for admittance. His first thought was so little wise that it prompted him to make as though he had not heard. But he heard very well, and through every fibre of him. Then as he waited, keeping very quiet, with perhaps a hope that the interruption might thus be diverted, the knock was repeated a little louder. The Duke rose in great impatience.