not tell her, Duke, but I can tell you, that I cannot with any
advantage to your girl be that somebody.'

'Cora wished it.'

'Her wishes, probably, were sudden and hardly fixed.'

'Who should it be, then?' asked the father, after a pause.

'Who am I, Duke, that I should answer such a question?'

After that there was another pause, and then the conference was
ended by a request from the Duke that Mrs Finn would stay at
Matching for yet two days longer. At dinner they all met,--the
father, the three children, and Mrs Finn. How far the young people
among themselves had been able to throw off something of the gloom
of death need not here be asked; but in the presence of their
father they were sad and sombre, almost as he was. On the next
day, early in the morning, the younger lad returned to his
college, and Lord Silverbridge went up to London, where he was
supposed to have his home.

'Perhaps you would not mind reading these letters,' the Duke said
to Mrs Finn, when she again went to him in compliance with a
message from him asking for her presence. Then she sat down and
read two letters, one from Lady Cantrip, and the other from a Mrs
Jeffrey Palliser, each of which contained an invitation for his
daughter, and expressed a hope that Lady Mary would not be
unwilling to spend some time with the writer. Lady Cantrip's
letter was long, and went minutely into circumstances. If Lady