Thus with tired and lingering steps, and despondency taking possession of her soul, Lady Jane went softly up-stairs, longing to divest herself of her wedding-gown and hide her humiliation, looking vainly for her father, whose appearance in this wilderness, even if it were only to upbraid and denounce her, would still have had a certain consolation in it. The Duke, unseen, watched her progress with a vindictive pleasure in the downcast air and slow, languid step. He watched her to her very door with an eagerness not to be described. At the last moment she might turn round, she might still leave the house, she might escape. In no case could he have used violence to his daughter. To level thunderbolts of speech was one thing, to use force was quite another. To lift his hand was impossible. If she turned round and fled down the stairs and out at the door, she must do so: there was no way in which he could stop her: if any third person were present, even Mrs Brown, he would be obliged to keep a watch upon himself, to demand no more obedience than she would give, to treat her as a reasonable being. All this the Duke felt, spying upon her steps as she went slowly up, following her, his footsteps falling noiselessly on the thick carpets. He heard her sigh, but this made no difference. To any one else this sigh of the widowed bride, alone in this dismal empty house on the day that was to have been, that almost was, her wedding-day, would have contained something touching. But it did not touch the Duke. He followed at a distance, keeping out of sight, determined to give her no opportunity to appeal to him. When he heard her door close, a certain glow of satisfaction came over his face. He went forward quickly, and turned the key in the lock and put it in his pocket. He heard her moving about in the room, and he could hear that she stopped short at the noise and stood listening to know what it was. But all was quiet again, and Lady Jane suspected nothing. She had begun to look in her wardrobe for something to put on instead of her white dress. She thought it was some jar of one of the doors as she opened them. And he stole down-stairs again, unnoticed and unobserved. Who was there to notice him? no one in the house, except his daughter locked into the room, and Mrs Brown with her little niece down-stairs. The Duke withdrew into the library, where he had sat and pondered for many a day, but never as now. The old housekeeper had bestirred herself and had lighted a fire and set out a table with two places for luncheon. She at least could do her duty if no one else did. Mrs Brown, indeed, felt as a neglected general has often done when the moment arrived in which he could distinguish himself. She had never had this opportunity. Now, at last, in the end of her life it had come to her. His Grace, who was so particular, should for once in his life know what it was to eat a chop, an English chop, in its perfection. She had