If ever in his sturdy life William Massarene had been shy, he was so when the gaze of this accomplished person met his own. But whatever the minister observed, and any conclusions he might draw from his observations, he kept to himself, having in his career learned that there is no proverb truer than that of _l’arbre et l’écorce_. He was bland and charming both to _l’ours et l’agneau_, as he called them. _Pauvre agneau!_ She had gambolled too carelessly and skipped too nearly the hairy arms of the ponderous bear! The diplomatist felt thankful that he could look calmly as a spectator at the struggle. He was prudent by nature and by habit, and beyond all women who were ever created his own personal reputation and his own personal ambitions were dear to him. Equally circumspect, Massarene, as he took great care not to compromise himself, did not compromise her, except in the inductions of such very fine and accomplished observers as this diplomatist, of whom there are few left in the hurry and hurly-burly of modern society. If the whole of his constituency had been watching him, he could not have been more careful. A man has not been President of the Band of Purity and the White Riband Association in an American township without learning how to keep his neighbors’ noses out of his own whiskey and candy stores. But he was an ever present horror in her life. He could subdue her with a glance of his colorless, dull eyes. She no longer dragged him behind in the dust of her chariot; she was dragged in the dust behind his. She was tortured by the ever harrowing dread that others would notice the change. She had even lost the spirits and the nerve to invent fictions to account for such a change to her friends. She let things drift in apathy and disgust and fear. From Homburg he let her go on to Carlsbad, where he did not show himself, and thence on a visit to a sister of hers who had married a Magyar magnate, where she was for a while in peace, since there certainly her tyrant could not go. Her children were meantime still at Whiteleaf, a ducal property, of which Alberic Orme held the living, where they and the Blenheims had a healthier, if less brilliant, life than had been their portion when with her. She had no anxiety about them. She knew that their uncle Ronnie would see to all that was necessary for them. She hated his conscientiousness bitterly, but she trusted to it as to a staff which would never break. The vast domain of Staghurst had already been let to an Indian maharajah. Otterbourne House had been leased to the representative of a great Power. All other houses and estates were similarly disposed of, and the strictest measures were being taken to make the little Duke’s minority fruitful.