'I cannot be at ease within myself while I think you are resenting my refusal.You do not know how constantly I carry you about with me.'
'You carry a very unnecessary burden then,' she said.But he could tell at once from the altered tone of voice, and from the light of her eye as he glanced into her face, that her anger about 'The Robes' was appeased.
'I have done as you have asked about a friend of yours,' he said.
This occurred just before the final and perfected list of the new men had appeared in all the newspapers.
'What friend?'
'Mr Finn is to go to Ireland.'
'Go to Ireland!--How do you mean?'
'It is looked upon as being a very great promotion.Indeed, I am told that he is considered to be the luckiest man in all the scramble.'
'You don't mean as Chief Secretary?'
'Yes, I do.He certainly couldn't go as Lord Lieutenant.'
'But they said that Barrington Erle was going to Ireland.'
'Well; yes.I don't know that you'd be interested by all the ins and outs of it.But Mr Erle declined.It seems that Mr Erle is after all the one man in Parliament modest enough not to consider himself to be fit for any place that can be offered to him.'
'Poor Barrington! He does not like the idea of crossing the Channel so often.I quite sympathize with him.And so Phineas is to be Secretary for Ireland! Not in the Cabinet?'
'No.--not in the Cabinet.It is not by any means usual that he should be.'
'That is promotion, and I'm glad! Poor Phineas! I hope they won't murder him, or anything of that kind.They do murder people, you know, sometimes.'
'He's an Irishman himself.'
'That just the reason why they should.He must pass up with that of course.I wonder whether she'll like going.They'll be able to spend money, which they always like, over there.He comes backwards and forwards every week,--doesn't he?'
'Not quite that, I believe.'
'I shall miss her, if she has to stay away so long.I know you don't like her.'
'I do like her.She has always behaved well, both to me and to my uncle.'
'She was an angel to him,--and to you too, if you only knew it.
I dare say you're sending him to Ireland so as to get her away from me.' This she said with a smile, as though not meaning it altogether, but yet half meaning it.
'I have asked him to undertake the office,' said the Duke solemnly, 'because I am told he is fit for it.But I did have some pleasure in proposing it to him because I thought it would please you.'
'It does please me, and I won't be cross any more, and the Duchess of -- may wear her clothes just as she pleases, or go without them.And as for Mrs Finn, I don't see why she should be with him always when he goes.You can quite understand how necessary she is to me.But she is in truth the only woman in London to whom I can say what I think.And it is a comfort, you know, to have someone.'
In this way the domestic peace of the Prime Minister was readjusted, and that sympathy and co-operation for which he had first asked was accorded to him.It may be a question whether on the whole the Duchess did not work harder than he did.She did not at first dare to expound to him those grand ideas which she had conceived in regard to magnificence and hospitality.She said nothing of any extraordinary expenditure of money.But she set herself to work after her own fashion, making to him suggestions as to dinners and evening receptions, to which he objected only on the score of time.'You must eat your dinner somewhere,' she said, 'and you need only come in just before we sit down, and go into your room if you please without coming upstairs at all.I can at any rate do that part of it for you.'
And she did do that part of it with marvellous energy all through the month of May,--so that by the end of the month, within six weeks of the time at which she first heard of the Coalition Ministry, all the world had begun to talk of the Prime Minister's dinners, and of the receptions given by the Prime Minister's wife.