five-and-twenty,” said Alice.
“Nonsense;—then I oughtn’t to have asked you. I am so sorry.”
“That’s nonsense at any rate. Why should you think I should be ashamed of my age?”
“I don’t know why, only somehow, people are; and I didn’t think you were so old. Five-and-twenty seems so old to me. It would be nothing if you were married; only, you see, you won’t get married.”
“Perhaps I may yet; some day.”
“Of course you will. You’ll have to give way. You’ll find that they’ll get the better of you. Your father will storm at you, and Lady Macleod will preach at you, and Lady Midlothian will jump upon you.”
“I’m not a bit afraid of Lady Midlothian.”
“I know what it is, my dear, to be jumped upon. We talked with such horror of the French people giving their daughters in marriage, just as they might sell a house or a field, but we do exactly the same thing ourselves. When they all come upon you in earnest how are you to stand against them? How can any girl do it?”
“I think I shall be able.”
“To be sure you’re older,—and you are not so heavily weighted. But never mind; I didn’t mean to talk about that;—not yet at any rate. Well, now, my dear, I must go down. The Duchess of St Bungay is here, and Mr Palliser will be angry if I don’t do pretty to her. The Duke is to be the new President of the Council, or rather, I believe he is President now. I try to remember it all, but it is so hard when one doesn’t really care two pence how it goes. Not but what I’m very anxious that Mr Palliser should be Chancellor of the Exchequer. And now, will you remain here, or will you come down with me, or will you go to your own room, and I’ll call for you when I go down to dinner? We dine at eight.”
Alice decided that she would stay in her own room till dinner time, and was taken there by Lady Glencora. She found her maid unpacking her clothes, and for a while employed herself in assisting at the work; but that was soon done, and then she was left alone. “I shall feel so strange, ma’am, among all those people downstairs,” said the girl. “They all seem to look at me as though they didn’t know who I was.”
“You’ll get over that soon, Jane.”
“I suppose I shall; but you see, they’re all like knowing each other, miss.”
Alice, when she sat down alone, felt herself to be very much in the same condition as her maid. What would the Duchess of St Bungay or Mr Jeffrey Palliser,—who himself might live to be a duke if things went well for him,—care for her? As to Mr Palliser, the master of the house, it was already evident to her that he would not put himself out of his way for her. Had she not done wrong to come there? If it were possible for her to fly away, back to the dullness of Queen Anne Street, or even to the preachings of Lady Macleod, would she not do so immediately? What business had she,—she asked herself,—to come to such a house as that? Lady Glencora was very kind to her, but frightened her even by her kindness. Moreover, she was aware that Lady Glencora could not devote herself especially to any such guest as she was. Lady Glencora must of course look after her duchesses, and do pretty, as she called it, to her husband’s important political alliances.
And then she began to think about Lady Glencora herself. What a strange, weird nature she was,—with her round blue eyes and wavy hair, looking sometimes like a child and sometimes almost like an old woman! And how she talked! What things she said, and what terrible forebodings she uttered of stranger things that she meant to say! Why had she at their first meeting made that allusion to the mode of her own betrothal,—and then, checking herself for speaking of it so soon, almost declare that she meant to speak more of it hereafter? “She should never mention it to any one,” said Alice to herself. “If her lot in life has not satisfied her, there is so much the more reason why she should not mention it.” Then Alice protested to herself that no father, no aunt, no Lady Midlothian should persuade her into a marriage of which she feared the consequences. But Lady Glencora had made for herself excuses which were not altogether untrue. She had been very young, and had been terribly weighted with her wealth.
And it seemed to Alice that her cousin had told her everything in that hour and a half that they had been together. She had given a whole history of her husband and of herself. She had said how indifferent he was to her pleasures, and how vainly she strove to interest herself in his pursuits. And then, as yet, she was childless and without prospect of a child, when, as she herself had said,—”so much depended on it.” It was very strange to Alice that all this should have been already told to her. And why should Lady Glencora think of Alice when she walked out among the priory ruins by moonlight?
The two hours seemed to her very long,—as though she were passing her time in absolute seclusion at Matching. Of course she did not dare to go downstairs. But at last her maid came to dress her.
“How do you get on below, Jane?” her mistress asked her.
“Why, miss, they are uncommon civil, and I don’t think after all it will be so bad. We had our teas very comfortable in the housekeeper’s room. There are five or six of us altogether, all ladies’-maids, miss; and there’s nothing on earth to do all the day long, only sit and do a little needlework over the fire.”
A few minutes before eight Lady Glencora knocked at Alice’s door, and took her arm to lead her to the drawing-room. Alice saw that she was magnificently dressed, with an enormous expanse of robe, and that her locks had been so managed that no one could suspect the presence of a grey hair. Indeed, with all her magnificence, she looked almost a child. “Let me see,” she said, as they went downstairs together. “I’ll tell Jeffrey to take you in to dinner. He’s about the easiest young man we have here. He rather turns up his nose at everything, but that doesn’t make him the less agreeable; does it, dear?—unless he turns up his nose at you, you know.”
“But perhaps he will.”
“No; he won’t do that. That would be uncourteous,—and he’s the most courteous man in the world. There’s nobody here, you see,” she said as they entered the room, “and I didn’t suppose there would be. It’s always proper to be first in one’s own house. I do so try to be proper,—and it is such trouble. Talking of people earning their bread, Alice;—I’m sure I earn mine. Oh dear!—what fun it would be to be sitting somewhere in Asia, eating a chicken with one’s fingers, and lighting a big fire outside one’s tent to keep off the lions and tigers. Fancy your being on one side of the fire and the lions and tigers on the other, grinning at you through the flames!” Then Lady Glencora strove to look like a lion, and grinned at herself in the glass.
“That sort of grin wouldn’t frighten me,” said Alice.
“I dare say not. I have been reading about it in that woman’s travels. Oh, here they are, and I mustn’t make any more faces. Duchess, do come to the fire. I hope you’ve got warm again. This is my cousin, Miss Vavasor.”
The Duchess made a stiff little bow of condescension, and then declared that she was charmingly warm. “I don’t know how you manage in your house, but the staircases are so comfortable. Now at Longroyston we’ve taken all the trouble in the world,—put down hot-water pipes all over the house, and everything else that could be thought of, and yet, you can’t move about the place without meeting with draughts at every corner of the passages.” The Duchess spoke with an enormous emphasis on every other word, sometimes putting so great a stress on some special syllable, as almost to bring her voice to a whistle. This she had done with the word “pipes” to a great degree,—so that Alice never afterwards forgot the
