sults of such scrapes she, of course,
deplored; and therefore she would give good counsel, pointing out how
imperative it was that such evil-doings should be avoided; but with
the spirit that produced the scrapes she fully sympathised. The
father disliked the spirit almost worse than the results; and was
therefore often irritated and unhappy.

And the difficulties about the girl were almost worse to bear than
those about the boys. She had done nothing wrong. She had given no
signs of extravagance or other juvenile misconduct. But she was
beautiful and young. How was he to bring her out into the world? How
was he to decide whom she should or whom she should not marry? 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