“And on the edge of a smash, the greatest smash that has been since---- Billings will have to be sold up, and all that is in it,” Lord Germaine said thoughtfully. Lady Germaine showed neither surprise nor pain at this piece of news. “What a chance for Reginald!” she said. “He can buy in all their best things and do up Jane’s rooms at Winton like her old ones at home.” And then she laughed and added, “He wouldn’t have those old things in his house. Taste had not been invented when their Graces were married.” It was in this mood of partial hilarity that they reached their own door, where poor Winton was waiting. However sympathetic friends may be, the way in which they take our troubles is very different from the way in which we ourselves take them. The Germaines, though they threw themselves so warmly into his affairs, and had given themselves so much trouble, had to change their aspect suddenly, to put up shutters and draw down blinds metaphorically, as they approached the actual sufferer. But into his misery and rage it is unnecessary to enter. He said, as was natural, a great many things that it would have been better not to say, and for some time after he besieged the house. He went in person, he wrote, he communicated by means of his solicitors with the solicitors of the Duke, whose mouths watered over the settlements he had made, which the authorities on his own side thought ridiculous, and professed their eagerness to do their best, but would not flatter him with any hopes of success. “No man in his senses would reject a son-in-law like you, Mr Winton, especially in the circumstances,” the senior partner said; “but the Duke is the Duke, and there is nothing more to be said. We have found him very impracticable, extremely impracticable in his own affairs; things are looking bad for the family altogether. There is Lord Hungerford now has some sense. He made a capital marriage himself--you should get him on your side.” Winton found no great difficulty in getting Hungerford on his side. That young nobleman was so much excited on the subject, that he even took it upon him to speak to his father and show him how ridiculous it was. “You can’t make a house in Grosvenor Square like a castle in the Apennines,” Hungerford cried; “for heaven’s sake, sir, don’t make us ridiculous!” Lady Hungerford on her side enjoyed the whole affair immensely. “I never realised before that I had really married into a great house,” she said. “It’s like the ‘Family Herald.’ It’s like the sort of nobility we understand among the lower classes, don’t you know? not your easygoing, like-other-people kind.” And she offered to take lessons of a locksmith so that she might be able to break open Jane’s prison.