Nor had he and Lady Cantrip combined been able to exercise
over her the sort of power to which Lady Glencora had been subjected.
If he persevered,--and he still was sure, almost sure, that he would
persevere,--his object must be achieved after a different fashion.
There must be infinite suffering,--suffering both to him and to her.
Could she have been made to consent to marry someone else, terrible
as the rupture might have been, she would have reconciled herself at
last to her new life. So it had been with his Glencora, after a time.
Now the misery must go on from day to day beneath his eyes, with the
knowledge on his part that he was crushing all joy out of her young
life, and the conviction on her part that she was being treated with
continued cruelty by her father! It was a terrible prospect! But if
it was manifestly his duty to act after this fashion, must he not do
his duty?

If he were to find that by persevering in this course he would doom
her to death, or perchance to madness,--what then? If it were right,
he must still do it. He must still do it, if the weakness incident to
his human nature did not rob him of the necessary firmness. If every
foolish girl were indulged, all restraint would be lost, and there
would be an end to those rules as to birth and position by which he
thought his world was kept straight. And then, mixed with all this,
was his feeling of the young man's arrogance in looking for such a
match. Here was a man without a shilling, whose manifest duty it was
to go to work so that he might earn his bread, who instead of doing
so, had hoped to raise himself to wealth and position by entrapping
the heart of an unwary girl! There was something to the Duke's
thinking base in this, and much more base because the unwary girl was
his own daughter. That such a man as Tregear should make an attack
upon him and select his rank, his wealth, and his child as the
stepping-stones by which he intended to rise! What could be so
mean as that a man should seek to live by looking out for a wife
with money? But what so impudent, so arrogant, so unblushingly
disregardful of propriety, as that he should endeavour to select
his victim from such a family as that of the Pallisers, and that
he should lay his impious hand on the very daughter of the Duke of
Omnium?

But together with all this there came upon him moments of ineffable
tenderness. He felt as though he longed to take her in his arms and
tell her, that if