How was he to guide her through the shoals and rocks which lay in
the path of such a girl before she can achieve matrimony?

It was the fate of the family that, with a world of acquaintance,
they had not many friends. From all close connection with
relatives on the side of the Duchess they had been dissevered by
old feelings at first, and afterwards by want of any similitude in
the habits of life. She had, when young been repressed by male and
female guardians with an iron hand. Such repression had been
needed, and had been perhaps salutary, but it had not left behind
it much affection. And then her nearest relatives were not
sympathetic with the Duke. He could obtain no assistance in the
care of his girl from that source. Nor could he even do it from
his own cousins' wives, who were his nearest connections on the
side of the Pallisers. They were women to whom he had ever been
kind, but to whom he had never opened his heart. When, in the
midst of the stunning sorrow of the first week, he tried to think
of all this, it seemed to him that there was nobody.

There had been one lady, a very dear ally, staying in the house
with them when the Duchess died. This was Mrs Finn, the wife of
Phineas Finn, who had been one of the Duke's colleagues when in
office. How it had come to pass that Mrs Finn and the Duchess had
become singularly bound together has been told elsewhere. But
there had been close bonds,--so close that when the Duchess on
their return from the Continent had passed through London on her
way to Matching, ill at the time and very comfortless, it had been
almost a thing of course, that Mrs Finn should go with her. And as
she had sunk, and then despaired, and then died, it was this woman
who had always been at her side, who had ministered to her, and