The Duke was in his library thinking what to do, and the Duchess--in her morning-room, with her heart greatly fluttered by that little royal speech, which had been reported to her already--sat with, strange to say, only half a thought of Jane, looking in the face that other dark and gloomy thing,--the ruin that was approaching. She had palpable evidence of it before her, and knew that it was now a matter of weeks, perhaps of days, so that though her heart, like an agitated sea after the storm, was still heaving with the other emotion, her thoughts for the moment had abandoned Jane. But the Duke’s mind was full of his daughter. He would have to _Give In_! Look at it how he would, he saw no escape for that. “The women,” as Lord Germaine in his slangy way prophesied, “had made it too hot for him,” and royalty itself--clearly he could not put his head out of his door, or appear in the society of his peers again, till this was done. But how was it to be done? To make his recantation in the eye of day, in the sight even of his household, was more than he could calmly contemplate. It was no longer, What was he to do? but, How was he to do it? that was in his mind. He had got up, unable to keep still, and feeling that some step must be taken at once. When---- * * * * * We had already got this length on a previous page. At this memorable crisis, when all the world seemed to his consciousness to be standing still to see what he would do, the door of the library was pushed slowly open from without. The doors in Grosvenor Square did not squeak and mutter like the wizards in the Old Testament, as our doors so often do, but rolled slowly open, majestically, without sound. This was what happened while the Duke stood still, something within him seeming to give way, his heart fluttering as if what he expected was a visitor from the unseen. He stood with his eyes opening wide, his lips apart. Was it a deputation from Mayfair? was it the royal lady herself? was it---- It was something more overwhelming, more miraculous than any of these. It was Lady Jane. The reader is already aware who was coming, but the Duke was not aware. He gasped at her with speechless astonishment, as if she had been indeed a visitor from the unseen.