improper that an American girl should be
elevated to the rank of an English Duchess; but now all that was
altered.

The Duke spent the rest of the day alone, and was not happy in his
solitude. All that Silverbridge had told him was sad to him. He
had taught himself to think that he could love Lady Mabel as an
affectionate father wishes to love his son's wife. He had set himself
to wish to like her, and had been successful. Being most anxious
that his son should marry he had prepared himself to be more than
ordinarily liberal,--to be in every way gracious. His children were
now everything to him, and among his children his son and heir was
the chief. From the moment in which he had heard from Silverbridge
that Lady Mabel was chosen he had given himself up to considering
how he might best promote their interests,--how he might best enable
them to live, with that dignity and splendour which he himself had
unwisely despised. That the son who was to come after him should
be worthy of the place assigned to his name had been, of personal
objects, the nearest to his heart. There had been failures, but still
there had been left room for hope. The boy had been unfortunate at
Eton;--but how many unfortunate boys had become great men! He had
disgraced himself by his folly at college,--but, though some lads
will be men at twenty, others are then little more than children.
The fruit that ripens the soonest is seldom the best. Then had come
Tifto and the racing mania. Nothing could be worse than Tifto and
race-horses. But from that evil Silverbridge had seemed to be made
free by the very disgust which the vileness of the circumstance had
produced. Perhaps Tifto driving a nail into his horse's foot had on
the whole been serviceable. That apostasy from the political creed of
the Pallisers had been a blow,--much more felt than the loss of the
seventy thousand pounds;--but even under that blow he had consoled
himself by thinking that a Conservative patriotic nobleman may serve
his country,--even as a Conservative. In the midst of this he had
felt that the surest resource for his son against evil would be in an
early marriage. If he would marry becomingly, then might everything
still be made pleasant. If his son would marry becomingly nothing
which a father could do should be wanting to add splendour and
dignity to his son's life.

In thinking of all this he had by no means regarded his own mode of
life with favour. He knew how jejune