She knew that Ronald, however generous with his own, would be a very dragon in defence of his ward’s possessions; and the little duke’s minority would be an exceedingly long one. From all power she had herself been carefully and mercilessly excluded by all the provisions alike of her husband and of his father. The terms of the wills had been sufficiently explained to her to leave her no doubt in that respect. Her courage was high and her carelessness was great; but both quailed at the idea of many matters which would inevitably now come under her brother’s eyes. Cocky had been a bore; but you could always shut Cocky’s eyes and his mouth too if you had a twenty-pound note to give him; and he was never in the least degree curious whence it came. Cocky had had many defects, but he had been at times a very convenient person; she had wished him dead very often, but now that he was really dead she was rather sorry. She could not now even take any of that lace away from Staghurst; it would all be locked up again to wait twenty years for Jack’s wife. She was not in the least afraid of doing wrong, but she was keenly afraid of being found out, and especially of being found out by her brother. She knew very well that Ronald’s toleration of her and affection for her were entirely based on the fact that she had in a great degree always succeeded in blindfolding him. He knew her to be reckless, imprudent, and madly extravagant, but he thought her innocent in other ways, and compromised by her husband. Oh, the support that Cocky had been! She did feel genuine sorrow for his loss. To lose your scapegoat, your standing apology, your excuse for everything, is worse than to lose your jewel-box, especially when it has only paste copies of your jewels in it. She would really have liked to have had Cocky survive a few years as Duke of Otterbourne. They would not have had much money, but they would have had such quantities of credit that their want of actual money would scarcely have been felt. They would have sold everything which settlement would have allowed them to sell, and very probably found means even to break the entail. She was wholly unaware that the very first use he would have made of his accession would have been to drag her into the glare of that transpontine melodrama which is played in the Court of Probate and Divorce. In the glare of his dying eyes she had indeed recognized hatred, but she had not known that such hatred would have taken its worst vengeance on her had he lived.