ouched him that he had sometimes knelt down to say his,
too, saying to her, with slight awkward boyishness, that a fellow who
had a sort of angel for his wife ought to do his best to believe in the
things she believed in.

"And all the time----!" a devil who laughed used to snigger in his ear
over and over again, until it was almost like the ticking of a clock
during the worst months, when it did not seem probable that a man could
feel his brain whirling like a Catherine wheel night and day, and still
manage to hold on and not reach the point of howling and shrieking and
dashing his skull against wails and furniture.

But that passed in time, and he told himself that he passed with it.
Since then he had lived chiefly at Broadmorlands Castle, and was spoken
of as a man who had become religious, which was not true, but, having
reached the decision that religion was good for most people, he paid a
good deal of attention to his church and schools, and was rigorous in
the matter of curates.

He had passed seventy now, and was somewhat despotic and haughty,
because a man who is a Duke and does not go out into the world to rub
against men of his own class and others, but lives altogether on a great
and splendid estate, saluted by every creature he meets, and universally
obeyed and counted before all else, is not unlikely to forget that he is
a quite ordinary human being, and not a sort of monarch.

He had done his best to forget Edith, who had soon died of being a shady
curate's wife in Australia, but he had not been able to encompass it. He
used, occasionally, to dream she was kneeling by the bed in her childish
nightgown saying her prayers aloud, and would waken crying--as he had
cried in those awful young days. Against social immorality or village
light-mindedness he was relentlessly savage. He allowed for no
palliating or exonerating facts. He began to see red when he heard of or
saw lightness in a married woman, and the outside world frequently said
that this characteristic bordered on monomania.

Nigel Anstruthers, having met him once or twice, had at first been much
amused by him, and had even, by giving him an adroitly careful lead,
managed to guide him into an expression of opinion. The Duke, who
had heard men of his class discussed, did not in the least like him,
notwithstanding his sympathetic suavity of manner and his air of being
intelligently impressed by what he heard. Not long afterwards, however,
it trans