‘I was not thinking of any guidance,’ said the Duke.

’Of course not.  But with one so young, where there is intimacy there will be guidance.  There should be somebody with her.  It was almost the last thought that occupied her mother’s mind.  I could not tell her, Duke, but I can tell you, that I cannot with any advantage to your girl be that somebody.’

‘Cora wished it.’

‘Her wishes, probably, were sudden and hardly fixed.’

‘Who should it be, then?’ asked the father, after a pause.

‘Who am I, Duke, that I should answer such a question?’

After that there was another pause, and then the conference was ended by a request from the Duke that Mrs Finn would stay at Matching for yet two days longer.  At dinner they all met,—­the father, the three children, and Mrs Finn.  How far the young people among themselves had been able to throw off something of the gloom of death need not here be asked; but in the presence of their father they were sad and sombre, almost as he was.  On the next day, early in the morning, the younger lad returned to his college, and Lord Silverbridge went up to London, where he was supposed to have his home.

‘Perhaps you would not mind reading these letters,’ the Duke said to Mrs Finn, when she again went to him in compliance with a message from him asking for her presence.  Then she sat down and read two letters, one from Lady Cantrip, and the other from a Mrs Jeffrey Palliser, each of which contained an invitation for his daughter, and expressed a hope that Lady Mary would not be unwilling to spend some time with the writer.  Lady Cantrip’s letter was long, and went minutely into circumstances.  If Lady Mary would come to her, she would abstain from having other company in the house till her young friend’s spirits should have somewhat recovered themselves.  Nothing could be more kind, or proposed in a sweeter fashion.  There had, however, been present in the Duke’s mind as he read it a feeling that a proposition to a bereaved husband to relieve him of the society of an only daughter, was not one which would usually be made to a father.  In such a position a child’s company would probably be his best solace.  But he knew,—­at this moment, he painfully remembered,—­that he was not as other men.  He acknowledged the truth of this, but he was not the less grieved and irritated by the reminder.  The letter from Mrs Jeffrey Palliser was to the same effect, but was much shorter.  If it would suit Mary to come to them for a month or six weeks at their place in Gloucestershire, they would both be delighted.

‘I should not choose her to go there,’ said the Duke, as Mrs Finn refolded the latter letter.  ’My cousin’s wife is a very good woman, but Mary would not be happy with her.’

‘Lady Cantrip is an excellent friend for her.’

‘Excellent.  I know no one whom I esteem more than Lady Cantrip.’

‘Would you wish her to go there, Duke?’