o tell me what she can do and what she can't. When I
asked her whether Sprugeon might be trusted, she said that she really
wished that I wouldn't say anything more to her about it. I call that
dishonest and sly. I shouldn't at all wonder but that Fletcher has
been with the Duke. If I find that out, won't I expose them both!"

CHAPTER XXXII

"What Business Is It of Yours?"

Things had not gone altogether smoothly with the Duchess herself
since the breaking up of the party at Gatherum Castle,--nor perhaps
quite smoothly with the Duke. It was now March. The House was again
sitting, and they were both in London,--but till they came to town
they had remained at the Castle, and that huge mansion had not
been found to be more comfortable by either of them as it became
empty. For a time the Duchess had been cowed by her husband's stern
decision; but as he again became gentle to her,--almost seeming by
his manner to apologise for his unwonted roughness,--she plucked up
her spirit and declared to herself that she would not give up the
battle. All that she did,--was it not for his sake? And why should
she not have her ambition in life as well as he his? And had she not
succeeded in all that she had done? Could it be right that she should
be asked to abandon everything, to own herself to have been defeated,
to be shown to have failed before all the world, because such a one
as Major Pountney had made a fool of himself? She attributed it
all to Major Pountney;--very wrongly. When a man's mind is veering
towards some decision, some conclusion which he has been perhaps slow
in reaching, it is probably a little thing which at last fixes his
mind and clenches his thoughts. The Duke had been gradually teaching
himself to hate the crowd around him and to reprobate his wife's
strategy, before he had known that there was a Major Pountney under
his roof. Others had offended him, and first and foremost among them
his own colleague, Sir Orlando. The Duchess hardly read his character
aright, and certainly did not understand his present motives, when
she thought that all might be forgotten as soon as the disagreeable
savour of the Major should have passed away.

But in nothing, as she thought, had her husband been so silly as in
his abandonment of Silverbridge. When she heard that the day was
fixed for declaring the vacancy, she ventured to ask him a question.
His manner to her lately had been more than urbane, more than
affectionat