“But when he looks at me in that way, I can’t help stopping, as I think he is going to speak; and then he always says, ‘Can I do anything for you, Lady Glencowrer?’“
She instantly saw that her husband did not like this. “Don’t be angry with me, dear,” she said. “You must admit that he is rather a bore.”
“I am not at all angry, Glencora,” said the husband; “and if you insist upon it, I will see that he leaves;—and in such case will of course never ask him again. But that might be prejudicial to me, as he is a man whom I trust in politics, and who may perhaps be serviceable to me.”
Of course Lady Glencora declared that Mr Bott might remain as long as he and her husband desired, and of course she mentioned his name no more to Mr Palliser; but from that time forth she regarded Mr Bott as an enemy, and felt also that Mr Bott regarded her in the same light.
When it was known among outside politicians that the Duke of St Bungay was staying at Matching Priory, outside politicians became more sure than ever that Mr Palliser would be the new Chancellor of the Exchequer. The old minister and the young minister were of course arranging matters together. But I doubt whether Mr Palliser and the Duke ever spoke on any such topic during the entire visit. Though Mr Bott was occasionally closeted with Mr Palliser, the Duke never troubled himself with such closetings. He went out shooting—on his pony, read his newspaper, wrote his notes, and looked with the eye of a connoisseur over all Mr Palliser’s farming apparatus. “You seem to have a good man, I should say,” said the Duke. “What! Hubbings? Yes;—he was a legacy from my uncle when he gave me up the Priory.” “A very good man, I should say. Of course he won’t make it pay; but he’ll make it look as though it did;—which is the next best thing. I could never get rent out of land that I farmed myself,—never.” “I suppose not,” said Mr Palliser, who did not care much about it. The Duke would have talked to him by the hour together about farming had Mr Palliser been so minded; but he talked to him very little about politics. Nor during the whole time of his stay at Matching did the Duke make any other allusion to Mr Palliser’s hopes as regarded the ministry, than that in which he had told Lady Glencora at the dinner-table that her husband’s ambition was the highest by which any man could be moved.
But Mr Bott was sometimes honoured by a few words with the Duke.
“We shall muster pretty strong, your Grace,” Mr Bott had said to him one day before dinner.
“That depends on how the changes go,” said the Duke.
“I suppose there will be a change?”
“Oh yes; there’ll be a change,—certainly, I should say. And it will be in your direction.”
“And in Palliser’s?”
“Yes; I should think so;—that is, if it suits him. By-the-by, Mr Bott—” Then there was a little whispered communication, in which perhaps Mr Bott was undertaking some commission of that nature which Lady Glencora had called “telling.”
Chapter XXV.
in Which Much of the History of the Pallisers Is Told
At the end of ten days Alice found herself quite comfortable at Matching Priory. She had now promised to remain there till the second week of December, at which time she was to go to Vavasor Hall,—there to meet her father and Kate. The Pallisers were to pass their Christmas with the Duke of Omnium in Barsetshire. “We always are to do that,” said Glencora. “It is the state occasion at Gatherum Castle, but it only lasts for one week. Then we go somewhere else. Oh dear!”
“Why do you say ‘oh dear’?”
“Because—; I don’t think I mean to tell you.”
“Then I’m sure I won’t ask.”
“That’s so like you, Alice. But I can be as firm as you, and I’m sure I won’t tell you unless you do ask.” But Alice did not ask, and it was not long before Lady Glencora’s firmness gave way.
But, as I have said, Alice had become quite comfortable at Matching Priory. Perhaps she was already growing upwards towards the light. At any rate she could listen with pleasure to the few words the Duke would say to her. She could even chat a little to the Duchess,—so that her Grace had observed to Lady Glencora that “her cousin was a very nice person,—a very nice person indeed. What a pity it was that she had been so illtreated by that gentleman in Oxfordshire!” Lady Glencora had to explain that the gentleman lived in Cambridgeshire, and that he, at any rate, had not treated anybody ill. “Do you mean that she—jilted him?” said the Duchess, almost whistling, and opening her eyes very wide. “Dear me, I’m sorry for that. I shouldn’t have thought it.” And when she next spoke to Alice she assumed rather a severe tone of emphasis;—but this was soon abandoned when Alice listened to her with complacency.
Alice also had learned to ride,—or rather had resumed her riding, which for years had been abandoned. Jeffrey Palliser had been her squire, and she had become intimate with him so as to learn to quarrel with him and to like him,—to such an extent that Lady Glencora had laughingly told her that she was going to do more.
“I rather think not,” said Alice.
“But what has thinking to do with it? Who ever thinks about it?”
“I don’t just at present,—at any rate.”
“Upon my word it would be very nice;—and then perhaps some day you’d be the Duchess.”
“Glencora, don’t talk such nonsense.”
“Those are the speculations which people make. Only I should spite you by killing myself, so that he might marry again.”
“How can you say such horrid things?”
“I think I shall,—some day. What right have I to stand in his way? He spoke to me the other day about Jeffrey’s altered position, and I knew what he meant;—or rather what he didn’t mean to say, but what he thought. But I shan’t kill myself.”
“I should think not.”
“I only know one other way,” said Lady Glencora.
“You are thinking of things which should never be in your thoughts,” said Alice vehemently. “Have you no trust in God’s providence? Cannot you accept what has been done for you?”
Mr Bott had gone away, much to Lady Glencora’s delight, but had unfortunately come back again. On his return Alice heard more of the feud between the Duchess and Mrs Conway Sparkes. “I did not tell you,” said Lady Glencora to her friend;—”I did not tell you before he went that I was right about his talebearing.”
“And did he bear tales?”
“Yes; I did get the scolding, and I know very well that it came through him, though Mr Palliser did not say so. But he told me that the Duchess had felt herself hurt by that other woman’s way of talking.”
“But it was not your fault.”
“No; that’s what I said. It was he who desired me to ask Mrs Conway Sparkes to come here. I didn’t want her. She goes everywhere, and it is thought a catch to get her; but if she had been drowned in the Red Sea I shouldn’t have minded. When I told him that, he said it was nonsense,—which of course it was; and then he said I ought to make her hold her tongue. Of course I said I couldn’t. Mrs Conway Sparkes wouldn’t care for me. If she quizzed me, myself, I told him that I could take care of myself, though she were ten times Mrs Conway Sparkes, and had written finer poetry than Tennyson.”
“It is fine;—some of it,” said Alice.
“Oh, I dare say! I know a great deal of it by heart, only I wouldn’t give her the pleasure of supposing that