“I’ll have a rattling good time now,” he thought, as he drove to the Marlow station. “And I’ll divorce her; Lord, what a joke it’ll be! Perhaps they won’t give it me; I dare say they won’t give it me; there’s a marplot called the Queen’s Proctor; they’ll talk of collusion, and she’ll bring counter-charges, and all the rest of it; but we’ll have the fun all the same, and she won’t be able to show her face at Court. They’re so damned particular at Court about the people who are found out! So is society: she’ll be drummed out of society. Lord, what fun it will be!” Better even than gin and poker and music-hall singers and shady bookmakers in a village on the Thames. Whilst his father had lived that fun had been always peremptorily forbidden to him. “Whatever your wife may have done or shall do, you have forfeited all title to resent it,” the old duke had always said to him; “and I will not have my name bespattered with your filth in public.” Wholly unconscious of the dark designs he carried in his sodden but sharp little brains, his wife was almost civil to him when he came into her presence, sobered by the fresh air he had breathed on his return from Marlow. She restrained the Blenheims from attacks on his trousers, and did not make any inquiries as to why he had been missing for fifty-six hours. He was Cocky, he would always be Cocky, the most wretched little scamp in creation; still he was indisputably Seventh Duke of Otterbourne, and had considerable power to make himself disagreeable. Out of his presence she enjoyed rapturously the vituperation which society papers and the Radical press poured upon him now that he had really become an hereditary legislator. “They are too funny for anything,” she said, tossing a handful of them to Brancepeth. “They must have had detectives after him every hour of his life. How on earth do they know all they do?” “It’s easy enough to know about a man who don’t pay his cabman and borrows sovereigns of his valet,” replied Brancepeth with equanimity, picking up the scattered news sheets. “Well, he won’t want to borrow sovereigns now,” remarked his wife. “Won’t he?” said her friend, with worlds of significance in the simple words. “Oh, Lord, if he ever gets to heaven he’ll pawn St. Peter’s key!” “But there’ll be lots of money, won’t there? And the roc’s egg will be mine, won’t it?” she asked, for her knowledge of such matters was vague. “Ask your solicitor,” said Brancepeth. The remains of the late duke were taken down to Staghurst, his principal place, a vast mansion and a vaster park in a southwest county, his sons and daughter accompanying the corpse; his daughter-in-law went also, taking with her Jack and Gerry; in small things she always did what looked well. If you pay in halfpence in that way the world pays you back in guineas.