Part 2 (2/2)

The Duke's affection for Miss J. can hardly have been altogether the work of her imagination. Besides the interview copied in her Diary, there is the evidence of the correspondence. True, his epistles are lacking in open protestations of devotion. Miss J. herself remarks that the Duke's letters were always cautiously written. He was too much a man of the world to run the risk of compromising himself in black and white. But the very existence of this correspondence, extending over a period of seventeen years, is a strong argument in favor of his having felt for her a remarkably warm friends.h.i.+p at the least.

It can hardly be supposed that the Duke seriously intended to marry Miss J. As he himself writes to her,--

”I should not treat you as I should wish to be treated myself. The commands of all others which we ought to obey are those dictated to us by our social relations. What would be said, if I, a man of seventy years of age, nearly, were to take in marriage a lady young enough to be my Granddaughter?”

Upon this Miss J. comments:--

”_Alas! Alas!_ how deceitful is the human heart! For I am convinced that although the Duke _wrote_ thus, there was not a moment during our acquaintance when if I had _not_ been _by the Grace of G.o.d_ what I was and am that he would have thought I was too young to bow down before me with the most sinful adulation.”

What was either a flirtation or a manifestation of fatherly fondness on the part of the Duke was a grand pa.s.sion to Miss J. Perhaps her vanity was as deeply touched as her heart; but those who knew her best declared that never until the Duke's death did she resign all hope of becoming the d.u.c.h.ess of Wellington.

In another part of her Diary she writes, with the diffuseness and reiteration that mark her style:--

”That I loved the Duke I am not ashamed to say, G.o.d knows, and that too with the purest affection. Consequently when he asked me if I felt sufficient to be with him a whole life, (which was the question referred to in that odious letter, for odious indeed it still appears in my sight, yea, increasingly so with time, for I recoil with unspeakable horror from the thought that I could be thus enquired of without being clearly comprehended), I replied to the same in the following words, '_If it be the will of G.o.d_,' not supposing for a moment, as expressed, that such an enquiry could be made of one with G.o.d's Holy Book before me, to which I had been attracting his attention with all the reverence and veneration so holy an employment demanded, except under intentions the most honorable. This idea many would perhaps say must have arisen from my want of knowledge of mankind and the world etc. But in that case how was it that dear Mrs. L----, a perfect woman of the world in her early life, could think the same and consequently encourage such views?”

Long after the Duke had wearied of his pa.s.sing fancy Miss J. clung to the idea that she could yet draw him to her. Her secluded life, given up to good works and pious meditations, and still later her confirmed ill-health, heightened her unworldliness, and rendered it more than ever difficult for her to see the impossibility of what in the eyes of the Duke and his family and friends would have been a misalliance.

It is perhaps uncharitable to suppose that Miss J. intended by her a.s.sumed reluctance to grant the Duke a third interview to force him to make a formal declaration of his intentions and ask her hand in marriage. If this, however, was her plan, it met with a signal failure.

Clearly nothing was farther from the Duke's thoughts than to make himself the b.u.t.t of popular ridicule by taking a wife forty-five years younger than himself, and of retired even though perfectly respectable social position. Besides that, it can hardly be wondered at if the Duke, a man free from binding domestic ties, were not in a humor to place permanently at his elbow so strict a mentor as Miss J., no matter how pretty she might be. The prudishness and piety that were fascinating in a beautiful woman seldom seen, would wax wearisome in the most charming creature bound to him by indissoluble ties.

CHAPTER IV.

SMOOTH WATERS.

LONDON, June 2, 1835.

MY DEAR MISS J.,--I received your Note. We perfectly understand each other; and with your permission I will call upon you to-morrow at three o'clock.

There is only one point that I wish to explain in reference to our last meeting. There might have been a difference of Manner.

There was none of feeling.

You told me that you had written to me; and I certainly was anxious to possess your Letters. You certainly wished to take them out of the Paquet; but if I had thought that your reluctance to give them was deeply felt, you may rely upon it that I would not have pressed to have them.

At all events my perusal of them has occasioned an explanation which can do no Harm.

Believe me ever Yours most sincerely

W.

From this it appears that the personal interviews had recommenced. The letters now follow one another closely.

LONDON, June 15, 1835.

<script>