The Duke's Children eBook

was to him every whit as good a peer as himself.  And he would as soon sit in counsel with Mr Monk, whose father had risen from a mechanic to be a merchant, as with any nobleman who could count ancestors against himself.  But there was an inner feeling in his bosom as to his own family, his own name, his own children, and his own personal self, which was kept altogether apart from his grand political theories.  It was a subject on which he never spoke; but the feeling had come to him as a part of his birthright.  And he conceived that it would pass through him to his children after the same fashion.  It was this which made the idea of a marriage between his daughter and Tregear intolerable to him, and which would operate as strongly in regard to any marriage which his son might contemplate.  Lord Grex was not a man with whom he would wish to form any intimacy.  He was, we may say, a wretched unprincipled old man, bad all round; and such the Duke knew him to be.  But the blue blood and the rank were there, and as the girl was good herself he would have been quite contented that his son should marry the daughter of Lord Grex.  That one and the same man should have been in one part of himself so unlike the other part,—­that he should have one set of opinions so contrary to another set,—­poor Isabel Boncassen did not understand.

CHAPTER 49

The Major’s Fate

The affair of Prime Minister and the nail was not allowed to fade away into obscurity.  Through September and October it was made matter for pungent inquiry.  The Jockey Club was alive.  Mr Pook was very instant,—­with many Pookites anxious to free themselves from suspicion.  Sporting men declared that the honour of the turf required that every detail of the case should be laid open.  But by the end of October, though every detail had been surmised, nothing had in truth been discovered.  Nobody doubted but that Tifto had driven the nail into the horse’s foot, and that Green and Gilbert Villiers had shared the bulk of the plunder.  They had gone off on their travels together, and the fact that each of them had been in possession of about twenty thousand pounds was proved.  But then there is no law against two gentlemen having such a sum of money.  It was notorious that Captain Green and Mr Gilbert Villiers had enriched themselves to this extent by the failure of Prime Minister.  But yet nothing was proved!

That the Major had either himself driven the nail or seen it done, all racing men were agreed.  He had been out with the horse in the morning and had been the first to declare that the animal was lame.  And he had been with the horse till the farrier had come.  But he had concocted a story for himself.  He did not dispute that the horse had been lamed by the machinations of Green and Villiers,—­with the assistance of the groom.  No doubt he said, these men, who had been afraid to face an inquiry, had contrived and had carried out the iniquity.