Silverbridge should have it all, if he could arrange it.
The one thing necessary was a fitting wife,--and the fitting wife
had been absolutely chosen by Silverbridge himself.
It may be conceived, therefore, that he was again unhappy. He had
already been driven to acknowledge that these children of his,--
thoughtless, restless, though they seemed to be,--still had a will
of their own. In all which how like they were to their mother!
With her, however, his word, though it might be resisted, had
never lost its authority. When he had declared that a thing should
not be done, she had never persisted in saying that she would do
it. But with his children it was otherwise. What power he had over
Silverbridge,--or for the matter of that, even his daughter? They
had only to be firm and he knew that he must be conquered.
'I thought that you liked her,' Silverbridge had said to him. How
utterly unconscious, thought the Duke, must the young man have
been of all that his position required of him when he used such an
argument! Liked her. He did like her.
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