She submitted, without unwillingness, to constant contact with disagreeable people.

She lavished her smiles,--so she now said to herself,--on butchers and tinkers.

What she said, what she read, what she wrote, what she did, whither she went, to whom she was kind and to whom unkind,--was it not all said and done and arranged with reference to his and her own popularity?
When a man wants to be Prime Minister he has to submit to vulgarity, and must give up his ambition if the task be too disagreeable to him.
The Duchess thought that that had been understood, at any rate ever since the days of Coriolanus.

"The old Duke kept out of it," she said to herself, "and chose to live in the other way.

He had his choice.
He wants it to be done.