Lord Rosebery’s government, despite the duke’s optimistic predictions, did not resign until June 24, consequently the general election was not fought until July, and during all this time Julia was kept at Bosquith; France, wholly amiable to his cousin’s wishes, stuck close to his borough. He had not a political dogma, cared no more for the Conservatives and Liberal-Unionists, than for Nationalists, Liberals, Radicals, and Socialists, and he had no intention of boring himself in Westminster save when his cousin required his vote. But he had planned a very definite and pleasant scheme of life, and the enthusiastic favor of the head of his house was essential to its success. He intended to re-let his own place in Hertfordshire, and live with the duke, both in London and in the country, until such time as his patience should be rewarded and the divine law of entail give him his own. He not only craved the luxury of the duke’s great establishments (as English people understand luxury), but, quite aware of the position he had forfeited among men, he was determined to win it back. Not that he felt any symptoms of regeneration, but the pride, which heretofore had raised him above public opinion, assumed a new form during his long convalescence, and prompted respectability and enjoyment of the social position he had inherited.

His cousin, although knowing vaguely that his heir had been “a bit wild,” and not as popular as he might be, was far too unsophisticated to guess the truth, and too surrounded by flatterers and toadies to hear what would manifestly displease him. Moreover, although France was under such strong suspicion of card cheating that no man would play with him, he had proved himself too clever to be caught, therefore had escaped an open scandal. He had twice avoided being co-respondent in divorce suits, once by shifting the burden on to the shoulders of a fellow-sinner, and once by securing, through a detective agency, such information that the wronged husband let the matter drop rather than suffer a counter-suit. But society was not his preserve. He was a man who had haunted byways where women were unprotected, and far from the limelight; and although there had been for twenty years the contemptuous impression that he was one of the greatest blackguards in Europe, that there was no villainy to which he had not stooped, he was, after all, little discussed, for he was much out of England, and, when off duty, went to Paris for his pleasures.

But although he had rather revelled in his dark reputation, he had now undergone a change of mind if not of heart. He had had a long draught of respectability, and of deference from his future menials and the several thousand good men in his constituency who had never heard of him before he came to Bosquith, as the convalescent heir of their popular duke, and won them by looking “every inch a man”; he had a young and beautiful wife with whom he was as much in love as was in him to love any one but himself, and in whom he recognized a valuable aid to his plan of social rehabilitation. Established in London as hostess of one of its oldest and most exclusive private palaces, with every opportunity to exercise her youthful charm (like the duke he despised brains in women), she would take but one season to draw about her a court anxious to stand well with the future Duchess of Kingsborough. And he was her husband. They could not ignore him if they would; and they would have less and less inclination, viewing him daily as a man ostentatioulsy devoted to his wife, taking his parliamentary duties very seriously indeed (he knew exactly the right phrases to get off), and living a life so exemplary and regular that his past would be dismissed with a good-natured smile (for was he not a future duke?), or openly doubted for want of proof. He knew that some people would never speak to him, others never invite him to their tables, although he might, with his wife and cousin, receive a card to their receptions; but, then, London society was very large, and he could endure the contempt of the few in the complaisance of the many.

His first quarry was the duke, already disposed to like him extremely, as they were the last males of their race, and latterly quite softened by certain sympathies and anxieties for his afflicted relative that had never infused his dry smug nature before. He was also one of those survivals that like anecdotes, and France, in his wandering life, had insensibly collected an infinite number. Naturally the most silent of men, he now made himself so agreeable that the duke, long companionless, himself suggested the permanent residence of the Frances under his several roofs, overrode all his cousin’s manly objections, and looked forward to a revival of the historic splendors of Kingsborough House with something like enthusiasm. France cemented the new bond when he appeared, as soon as his convalescence was over, at morning prayers, and even compelled the attendance of the rebellious Julia.

This alien in the great house of France detested family prayers. They were very long, the duke’s dull languid gaze travelled over his shoulder every time she sat when she should have knelt, and they came at an hour when she wanted to be on the moor or riding along the cliffs. But when she openly expressed herself, her husband, although he picked her up and kissed her many times, unobservant that she wriggled, replied peremptorily:—

“Not another word, my little beauty. To prayers you must go. It’s a rotten bore, but it’s the duty of a wife to advance her husband’s interests. Get our mighty cousin down on us, and we live in Hertfordshire all the year round.”

Although she hid the thought, Julia would have submitted to more than prayers to avoid living alone in a small house in the country with her husband. She had heard so much of duty during the last year (even her mother’s letters were full of it), that she had set her teeth in the face of matrimony, persuaded herself that France was no more offensive than other husbands, that hers was the common lot of woman, and, after reading Nigel’s book, that she was singularly fortunate in not having been born in the slums. But although she refused to admit to her consciousness a certain terrified mumbling in the depths of her brain, she did acknowledge that she no longer had the least desire for a child, and that she hated the scent of the pomade on her husband’s moustache. It was a pomade that had been fashionable for several years, and was used as sparingly as possible on France’s bristles; but lesser trifles have killed love in women, and Julia, frankly unloving, conceived an unconquerable aversion for this sickly scent; to this day it rises in her memory as associated with the abominable injustice that had been committed on her youth.

But she kept her mind and time fully occupied. She visited the sick, rode her good horse, and read until there was nothing left in the Bosquith library to satisfy her still insatiable mind. Then, for the first time, she realized that she had not a penny in her purse, had not had since her first few weeks in London. She made out a list of books she wanted, surmounted her diffidence, and asked her husband if she might order them from London. France, when she approached him, was smoking a pipe by the library fire, his cannon-ball head sunken luxuriously into the cushions of the chair, and his glassy eyes half closed. He pulled her down on his knee and read the list, then laughed aloud and pinched her ear.

“Never heard of one of these books, but they have an expensive look—wager not one of them costs under a pound. That would mean about ten pounds—by Gad! That would never do. I’m economizing and you must, too; for although we shall live with Kingsborough, we can’t expect him to pay for our clothes and all the rest of it. Besides, I don’t want an intellectual wife—had no idea you read such bally rot. Intellectual wives are bores, get red noses, and rims round their eyes. Jove! Think of those eyes gettin’ red and dim. I’d make a bonfire of all the books in England first. No, my lady, it’s your business to look pretty, and to remember a famous saying of our future king: ‘Bright women, yes; but no damned intellect.’ We want to have a rippin’ time as soon as Salisbury is in again, and I won’t have you frightenin’ people off.”

“I never supposed you would care so much for society,” said Julia, lamely. “I always think of you as a sailor.”

“I want what’ll be mine before long—what I’ve been kept out of long enough,” he answered savagely.

Julia was shocked. It was the first time he had betrayed himself, so anxious had he been for her good opinion, so careful not to excite himself with tempers until his heart was quite strong again. As she left his knee and turned her disconcerting eyes on him, he recovered himself with a laugh.

“I believe it’s all your mother’s fault. She told me it was your fate—by all the stars!—to be a duchess, and I don’t think I’ve got it out of my head since. But you know I’m devilish fond of my cousin—only one I’ve got, for those old hags don’t count. I’ll chuck such ideas, and—” his voice became sonorous with virtue—“think only of his kindness and of serving my country when my time comes.”

The time came in July, and he carried his borough almost without effort, so irresistible was the conservative reaction. He was not much of an orator, but not much was required of him. He made a fine appearance on a platform, and when, after a flattering introduction by the chairman, he stood up before a sympathetic audience, and between some scraps of party wisdom, furnished by the duke, doubled up his aristocratic hand and wedged it firmly into his manly thigh, and brought out in all its inflections: “Indeed, I may say—Indeed, I may say—Indeed, I may say—Indeed I may say!” the applause was stupendous.

Julia, sitting behind him with the duke, had much ado not to laugh aloud, but, then, Julia was an alien, and had no appreciation of gentlemen’s oratory.

She had taken more interest in the wives of the voters, and been relieved to find that their poverty was rather picturesque than bitter—Nigel’s book had given her a profound shock—but had wept at some of the tales told by women that had relatives in London and the great manufacturing towns of the north. After France’s final triumph, when he had been carried back to Bosquith on the shoulders of several honest yeomen, followed by a cheering mob of several hundred more, she asked him impulsively (being electrified herself for the moment) if he might not serve his country best by making a crusade against poverty. But he looked at her in such genuine bewilderment that she dropped the subject.