"I am not in the least angry."
"I should not venture to express any opinion, of course,--only that
you ask me."
"I do ask you, and you are quite welcome to express your opinion. And
were it not expressed, I should know what you thought just the same.
I have wondered at it myself sometimes,--that I should have become as
it were engulfed in this new life, almost without will of my own. And
when he dies, how shall I return to the other life? Of course I have
the house in Park Lane still, but my very maid talks of Matching as
my home."
"How will it be when he has gone?"
"Ah,--how indeed? Lady Glencora and I will have to curtsey to each
other, and there will be an end of it. She will be a duchess then,
and I shall no longer be wanted."
"But even if you were wanted--?"
"Oh, of course. It must last the Duke's time, and last no longer. It
would not be a healthy kind of life were it not that I do my very
best to make the evening of his days pleasant for him, and in that
way to be of some service in the world.
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