LITMIR.BIZ

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how he has longed for this office;—how he has worked for it day and night, wearing his eyes out with figures when everybody else has been asleep, shutting himself up with such creatures as Mr Bott when other men have been shooting and hunting and flirting and spending their money. He has been a slave to it for years,—all his life I believe,—in order that he might sit in the Cabinet, and be a minister and a Chancellor of the Exchequer. He has hoped and feared, and has been, I believe, sometimes half-mad with expectation. This has been his excitement,—what racing and gambling are to other men. At last, the place was there, ready for him, and they offered it to him. They begged him to take it, almost on their knees. The Duke of St Bungay was here all one morning about it; but Mr Palliser sent him away, and refused the place. It’s all over now, and the other man, whom they all hate so much, is to remain in.”

      “But why did he refuse it?”

      “I keep on telling you—because of me. He found that I wanted looking after, and that Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott between them couldn’t do it.”

      “Oh, Cora! how can you talk in that way?”

      “If you knew all, you might well ask how I could. You remember about Lady Monk’s ball, that you would not go to,—as you ought to have done. If you had gone, Mr Palliser would have been Chancellor of the Exchequer at this minute; he would, indeed. Only think of that! But though you did not go, other people did who ought to have remained at home. I went for one,—and you know who was there for another.”

      “What difference could that make to you?” said Alice, angrily.

      “It might have made a great deal of difference. And, for the matter of that, so it did. Mr Palliser was there too, but, of course, he went away immediately. I can’t tell you all the trouble there had been about Mrs Marsham,—whether I was to take her with me or not. However, I wouldn’t take her, and didn’t take her. The carriage went for her first, and there she was when we got there; and Mr Bott was there too. I wonder whether I shall ever make you understand it all.”

      “There are some things I don’t want to understand.”

      “There they both were watching me,—looking at me the whole evening; and, of course, I resolved that I would not be put down by them.”

      “I think, if I had been you, I would not have allowed their presence to make any difference to me.”

      “That is very easily said, my dear, but by no means so easily done. You can’t make yourself unconscious of eyes that are always looking at you. I dared them, at any rate, to do their worst, for I stood up to dance with Burgo Fitzgerald.”

      “Oh, Cora!”

      “Why shouldn’t I? At any rate I did; and I waltzed with him for half an hour. Alice, I never will waltz again;—never. I have done with dancing now. I don’t think, even in my maddest days, I ever kept it up so long as I did then. And I knew that everybody was looking at me. It was not only Mrs Marsham and Mr Bott, but everybody there. I felt myself to be desperate,—mad, like a wild woman. There I was, going round and round and round with the only man for whom I ever cared two straws. It seemed as though everything had been a dream since the old days. Ah! how well I remember the first time I danced with him,—at his aunt’s house in Cavendish Square. They had only just brought me out in London then, and I thought that he was a god.”

      “Cora! I cannot bear to hear you talk like that.”

      “I know well enough that he is no god now; some people say that he is a devil, but he was like Apollo to me then. Did you ever see anyone so beautiful as he is?”

      “I never saw him at all.”

      “I wish you could have seen him; but you will some day. I don’t know whether you care for men being handsome.” Alice thought of John Grey, who was the handsomest man that she knew, but she made no answer. “I do; or, rather, I used to do,” continued Lady Glencora. “I don’t think I care much about anything now; but I don’t see why handsome men should not be run after as much as handsome women.”

      “But you wouldn’t have a girl run after any man, would you; whether handsome or ugly?”

      “But they do, you know. When I saw him the other night he was just as handsome as ever;—the same look, half wild and half tame, like an animal you cannot catch, but which you think would love you so if you could catch him. In a little while it was just like the old time, and I had made up my mind to care nothing for the people looking at me.”

      “And you think that was right?”

      “No, I don’t. Yes, I do; that is. It wasn’t right to care about dancing with him, but it was right to disregard all the people gaping round. What was it to them? Why should they care who I danced with?”

      “That is nonsense, dear, and you must know that it is so. If you were to see a woman misbehaving herself in public, would not you look on and make your comments? Could you help doing so if you were to try?”

      “You are very severe, Alice. Misbehaving in public!”

      “Yes, Cora. I am only taking your own story. According to that, you were misbehaving in public.”

      Lady Glencora got up from her chair near the window, on which she had been crouching close to Alice’s knees, and walked away towards the fireplace. “What am I to say to you, or how am I to talk to you?” said Alice. “You would not have me tell you a lie?”

      “Of all things in the world, I hate a prude the most,” said Lady Glencora.

      “Cora, look here. If you consider it prudery on my part to disapprove of your waltzing with Mr Fitzgerald in the manner you have described,—or, indeed, in any other manner,—you and I must differ so totally about the meaning of words and the nature of things that we had better part.”

      “Alice, you are the unkindest creature that ever lived. You are as cold as stone. I sometimes think that you can have no heart.”

      “I don’t mind your saying that. Whether I have a heart or not I will leave you to find out for yourself; but I won’t be called a prude by you. You know you were wrong to dance with that man. What has come of it? What have you told me yourself this morning? In order to preserve you from misery and destruction, Mr Palliser has given up all his dearest hopes. He has had to sacrifice himself that he might save you. That, I take it, is about the truth of it,—and yet you tell me that you have done no wrong.”

      “I never said so.” Now she had come back to her chair by the window, and was again sitting in that crouching form. “I never said that I was not wrong. Of course I was wrong. I have been so wrong throughout that I have never been right yet. Let me tell it on to the end, and then you can go away if you like, and tell me that I am too wicked for your friendship.”

      “Have I ever said anything like that, Cora?”

      “But you will, I dare say, when I have done. Well; what do you think my senior duenna did,—the female one, I mean? She took my own carriage, and posted off after Mr Palliser as hard as ever she could, leaving the male duenna on the watch. I was dancing as hard as I could, but I knew what was going on all the time as well as though I had heard them talking. Of course Mr Palliser came after me. I don’t know what else he could do, unless, indeed, he had left me to my fate. He came there, and behaved so well,—so much like a perfect gentleman. Of course I went home, and I was prepared to tell him everything, if he spoke a word to me,—that I intended to leave him, and that cart-ropes should not hold me!”

      “To leave him, Cora!”

      “Yes, and go with that other man whose name you won’t let me mention. I had a letter from him in my pocket asking me to go. He asked me a dozen times that night. I cannot think how it was that I did not consent.”

      “That you did not consent to your own ruin and disgrace?”

      “That I did not consent to go off with him,—anywhere. Of course it would have been my own destruction. I’m not such a fool as not to know

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