She never rivalled their efforts, she never failed to make them feel both clever and comfortable. A brilliant, ambitious woman could never have won the popularity that Gundred’s calm indifference achieved. If not gay, her set was clever and solid, nor did anyone ever discern that it was only her well-bred stupidity that had had the gift of gathering it round her by sheer force of apparent colourlessness and calm. Gundred loved the power that her position had attained, and, as time went by, Fate also was kind, and gave her that full measure of glory which had been denied to her earlier years. London had ignored the inconspicuous Miss Mortimer, unmarried, and slenderly portioned. But London showed itself very amenable to the charms of Lady Gundred Darnley, conspicuously wealthy, and with Brakelond as well as Ivescar at her back. For the old Duke faded away at last, and Gundred’s father reigned in his stead--a mild and inoffensive reign, which left all real dominion to be exercised by his daughter. For the new Duke, like his predecessor, had slid into a gentle imbecility, and now lived at Brakelond in contented seclusion; Gundred occupied the house as mistress, vigorously took up her father’s responsibilities, and was, to all intents and purposes, the tenth reigning Duchess of March and Brakelond. She never went in to dinner after a Marchioness without feeling that such an order of precedence was altogether paradoxical and out of joint. For was she not herself a Duchess in everything but name? Her constant energies overshadowed her husband in the public eye. By the side of his energetic practical wife he spent a peaceful existence very much alone, very little hampered by the more brilliant cares in which Gundred took such pleasure. She could not push him into any prominent position; he had lost, in an hour, all stir of ambition, and preferred to live on in the company of his dreams and memories and visions. Their son was his great delight, his most constant occupation. Gundred was a trifle too multifariously busy, a trifle too excellent to be a perfectly sympathetic mother. It was to his father that Jim Darnley carried all his more interesting private matters for sympathy and discussion. Kingston, as the years brought him increasing calm, found his world growing narrower, till at last it held only his son and his memory of that strange intoxicating passion which had ended on so terrific a final note at Brakelond more than twenty years ago. His heart still clung to the far-off thought of Isabel, and his life was always in some mystical sense alert to catch news of her in the shadowy lands where she might now be dwelling.