“That’s the little duke, bless his pretty face!” he had heard the women say who were respectfully gathered about the churchyard entrance to see the great people come out from the gate. And very pretty Jack did look, with his bright hair shining like new gold against his sable garments, and a look of pity and wistfulness and solemnity on his face which was touching. “Am I really duke and all that?” he asked later of the nurse who had accompanied them to Staghurst. She replied: “You really are, sir, yes.” “Am I what gran’pa’ was?” “Yes, your Grace, yes.” He pondered deeply on the fact, standing with his legs very wide apart and his brows knitted. “Then I’ll live with Harry.” The nurse, who was discretion itself, answered, “Your Grace will do just whatever your Grace wishes.” “That’ll be jolly,” said the new duke; and he stood on his golden head. “But I suppose I shall always have to behave very well,” he thought, in a soberer moment. The obligation was painful; Jack’s natural man was naughty; not as naughty as Boo wished him to be, but still naughty, naughty in a frank sportive merry way, as colts are skittish and pups destructive. His mother enjoyed her luncheon, because that long Service had given her renewed appetite, and she was infinitely diverted by Lily Larking’s wreath; but, all the same, she felt as she had never felt in her life, lonely, insecure, anxious, apprehensive. Cocky had been more support to her than she had realized before his death; his connivance, his condonation, his ready resources in difficulty, his unlimited unscrupulousness, had all been more useful and more valuable than she had ever realized until they were all lost to her for ever. Their association had not been much more creditable than that of two thieves or marauders, but mutual interest had bound them together as it binds those, and the link, when broken, left a blank. Moreover, had she not married him to be Duchess of Otterbourne? She was Duchess of Otterbourne now, but shorn of all the advantages appertaining to the title except the mere barren rank. Anything more odious than the position of a widow living on her jointure and bullied by trustees, could not, she thought, be conceived. She had not been able to grasp the sense of Cocky’s will as it had been read aloud in its barbarous legal jargon and bastard Latin, but she had understood that it was “nasty,” very nasty in its provisions; and that as guardians of the children, there were appointed her brother and Augustus Orme, the churchman. She seemed, herself, to come in nowhere, and to have no power or privileges of any sort, and to be cut down as utterly in every way as the provisions of her marriage settlements allowed.