knew, engaged to marry the Duke of Dumfriesshire, who, though twice her own age, was as yet childless, as soon as he should have completed his mourning for his first wife. Kate told her cousin that she did not at all know how she should ever stand up as one in a group with so august a person as this Lady Jane, and Alice herself felt that such an attendant would quite obliterate her. But Lady Jane and her mother were both harmless. The Marchioness never spoke to Kate and hardly spoke to Alice, and the Marchioness’s Lady Jane was quite as silent as her mother.
On the morning of this day,—the day on which these very august people came,—a telegram arrived at the Priory calling for Mr Palliser’s immediate presence in London. He came to Alice full of regret, and behaved himself very nicely. Alice now regarded him quite as a friend. “Of course I understand,” she said, “and I know that the business which takes you up to London pleases you.” “Well; yes;—it does please me. I am glad,—I don’t mind saying so to you. But it does not please me to think that I shall be away at your marriage. Pray make your father understand that it was absolutely unavoidable. But I shall see him, of course, when I come back. And I shall see you too before very long.”
“Shall you?”
“Oh yes.”
“And why so?”
“Because Mr Grey must be at Silverbridge for his election.—But perhaps I ought not tell you his secrets.” Then he took her into the breakfast-parlour and showed her his present. It was a service of Sèvres china,—very precious and beautiful. “I got you these things because Grey likes china.”
“So do I like china,” said she, with her face brighter than he had ever yet seen it.
“I thought you would like them best,” said he. Alice looking up at him with her eyes full of tears told him that she did like them best; and then, as he wished her all happiness, and as he was stooping over her to kiss her, Lady Glencora came in.
“I beg pardon,” said she, “I was just one minute too soon; was I not?”
“She would have them sent here and unpacked,” said Mr Palliser, “though I told her it was foolish.”
“Of course I would,” said Lady Glencora. “Everything shall be unpacked and shown. It’s easy to get somebody to pack them again.”
Much of the wedding tribute had already been deposited with the china, and among other things there were the jewels that Lady Midlothian had brought.
“Upon my word, her ladyship’s diamonds are not to be sneezed at,” said Lady Glencora.
“I don’t care for diamonds,” said Alice.
Then Lady Glencora took up the Countess’s trinkets, and shook her head and turned up her nose. There was a wonderfully comic expression on her face as she did so.
“To me they are just as good as the others,” said Alice.
“To me they are not, then,” said Lady Glencora. “Diamonds are diamonds, and garnets are garnets; and I am not so romantic but what I know the difference.”
On the evening before the marriage Alice and Lady Glencora walked for the last time through the Priory ruins. It was now September, and the evenings were still long, so that the ladies could get out upon the lawn after dinner. Whether Lady Glencora would have been allowed to walk through the ruins so late as half-past eight in the evening if her husband had been there may be doubtful, but her husband was away and she took this advantage of his absence.
“Do you remember that night we were here?” said Lady Glencora.
“When shall I forget it; or how is it possible that such a night should ever be forgotten?”
“No; I shall never forget it. Oh dear, what wonderful things have happened since that! Do you ever think of Jeffrey?”
“Yes;—of course I think of him. I did like him so much. I hope I shall see him some day.”
“And he liked you too, young woman; and, what was more, young woman, I thought at one time that, perhaps, you were going to like him in earnest.”
“Not in that way, certainly.”
“You’ve done much better, of course; especially as poor Jeffrey’s chance of promotion doesn’t look so good now. If I have a boy, I wonder whether he’ll hate me?”
“Why should he hate you?”
“I can’t help it, you know, if he does. Only think what it is to Plantagenet. Have you seen the difference it makes in him already?”
“Of course it makes a difference;—the greatest difference in the world.”
“And think what it will be to me, Alice. I used to lie in bed and wish myself dead, and make up my mind to drown myself,—if I could only dare. I shan’t think any more of that poor fellow now.” Then she told Alice what had been done for Burgo; how his uncle had paid his bills once again, and had agreed to give him a small income. “Poor fellow!” said Lady Glencora, “it won’t do more than buy him gloves, you know.”
The marriage was magnificent, greatly to the dismay of Alice and to the discomfort of Mr Vavasor, who came down on the eve of the ceremony,—arriving while his daughter and Lady Glencora were in the ruins. Mr Grey seemed to take it all very easily, and, as Lady Glencora said, played his part exactly as though he were in the habit of being married, at any rate, once a year. “Nothing on earth will ever put him out, so you need not try, my dear,” she said, as Alice stood with her a moment alone in the dressingroom upstairs before her departure.
“I know that,” said Alice, “and therefore I shall never try.”
Chapter LXXX.
The Story Is Finished Within the Halls of the Duke of Omnium
Mr Grey and wife were duly carried away from Matching Priory by post horses, and did their honeymoon, we may be quite sure, with much satisfaction. When Alice was first asked where she would go, she simply suggested that it should not be to Switzerland. They did, in truth, go by slow stages to Italy, to Venice, Florence, and on to Rome; but such had not been their intention when they first started on their journey. At that time Mr Grey believed that he would be wanted again in England, down at Silverbridge in Barsetshire, very shortly. But before he had married a week he learned that all that was to be postponed. The cup of fruition had not yet reached Mr Palliser’s lips. “There will be no vacancy either in the county or in the borough till Parliament meets.” That had been the message sent by Mr Palliser to Mr Grey. Lady Glencora’s message to Alice had been rather more full, having occupied three pages of note paper, the last of which had been crossed, but I do not know that it was more explicit. She had abused Lord Brock, had abused Mr Finespun, and had abused all public things and institutions, because the arrangements as now proposed would be very comfortable to Alice, but would not, as she was pleased to think, be very comfortable to herself. “You can go to Rome and see everything and enjoy yourself, which I was not allowed to do; and all this noise and bother, and crowd of electioneering, will take place down in Barsetshire just when I am in the middle of all my trouble.” There were many very long letters came from Lady Glencora to Rome during the winter,—letters
