nd, or to another,--using
irony rather than argument to support her cause and to vindicate her
ways. The shafts of ridicule hurled by her against her husband in
regard to his voluntary abasement had been many and sharp. They stung
him, but never for a moment influenced him. And though they stung
him, they did not even anger him. It was her nature to say such
things,--and he knew that they came rather from her uncontrolled
spirit than from any malice. She was his wife too, and he had an
idea that of little injuries of that sort there should be no end of
bearing on the part of a husband. Sometimes he would endeavour to
explain to her the motives which actuated him; but he had come to
fear that they were and must ever be unintelligible to her. But he
credited her with less than her real intelligence. She did understand
the nature of his work and his reasons for doing it; and, after
her own fashion, did what she conceived to be her own work in
endeavouring to create within his bosom a desire for higher things.
"Surely," she said to herself, "if a man of his rank is to be a
minister he should be a great minister;--at any rate as great as his
circumstances will make him. A man never can save his country by
degrading himself." In this he would probably have agreed; but his
idea of degradation and hers hardly tallied.

When therefore she asked him what they were going to make him, it
was as though some sarcastic housekeeper in a great establishment
should ask the butler,--some butler too prone to yield in such
matters,--whether the master had appointed him lately to the cleaning
of shoes or the carrying of coals. Since these knots had become so
very tight, and since the journeys to Windsor had become so very
frequent, her Grace had asked many such questions, and had received
but very indifferent replies. The Duke had sometimes declared that
the matter was not ripe enough to allow him to make any answer. "Of
course," said the Duchess, "you should keep the secret. The editors
of the evening papers haven't known it for above an hour." At
another time he told her that he had undertaken to give Mr. Gresham
his assistance in any way in which it might be asked. "Joint
Under-Secretary with Lord Fawn, I should say," answered the Duchess.
Then he told her that he believed an attempt would be made at a mixed
ministry, but that he did not in the least know to whom the work of
doing so would be confided. "You will be about the last man who