The Duke paid one or two visits before the opening of Parliament. It may be supposed that to none but very great houses indeed would his Grace pay such an honour: and though he was not very quick to observe in general matters, yet his sense of his own importance was so keen that it answered for intelligence, so far as he himself was concerned. He saw that the ladies regarded him with a sort of alarm, that even the gentlemen after dinner showed a curiosity which was not certainly the awed and respectful interest which he thought it natural he should excite. And it was not long before his hostess, who was, he could not deny, his equal, of his own rank, and of unexceptionable antecedents, made the matter clear to him. “Duke,” she said, “of course you know I wouldn’t for the world meddle in any one’s private affairs. But there is such a strange story going about---- Dear Jane! We had hoped to see her with you as well as Margaret” (Margaret was the Duchess, and a very intimate friend of this other great, great lady); “and now neither of them has come. But it is not possible--don’t think for a moment that I believe it!--that this story can be true.” “If your Grace will kindly explain what the story is?” Our Duke, liking due respect himself, always gave their titles to other people, according to the golden rule. “I don’t like even to put it into words; that you stopped her marriage--at the altar itself; that the dear girl is neither married nor single; that---- But I give you pain.” “The statement is calculated to give me pain; but the facts, as of course your Grace knows very well, are true. I arrived in time to prevent my daughter from making a marriage which I disapproved.” “Oh, we are all liable to that,” said the great lady, letting her eyes dwell regretfully, yet with maternal pride, upon a daughter who had been so abandoned as to marry a clergyman, but who had produced a baby, for whose sake the parents had forgiven its father. “Who can guard against such a misfortune? But Beatrice, poor thing, is very happy,” she added with a sigh. The Duke made her a little bow. It said a great deal. It said, if you are so lost to every sense of what is becoming as to take it in that way--but I should never have allowed it! He to utter sentences of this kind, who had made himself the talk of society! “But, Duke,” she said with spirit, taking up Nurse Mordaunt’s argument, “if the altar is not held sacred, what will become of us? They say you stopped her when she was saying the very words----” “The subject is not a very agreeable one,” said the Duke; “I cannot take it upon me to recollect at what point they were in the service---- but at all events, your Grace may be assured it was not too late.”