Of all this Lord Chiltern understood nothing, but Lady Chiltern understood it all. To his thinking the young man had behaved so badly that it was incumbent on them all to send him away and so have done with him. If the young man wanted to quarrel with anyone, there was he to be quarrelled with. The thing was a trouble, and the sooner they got to the end of it the better. But Lady Chiltern understood more than that. She could not prevent the quarrel as it came—or was coming; but she knew that “the quarrel of lovers is the renewal of love.” At any rate, the woman always desires that it may be so, and endeavours to reconcile the parted ones. “You’ll see him in London,” Lady Chiltern had said to her friend.
“I do not want to see him,” said Adelaide proudly.
“But he’ll want to see you, and then—after a time—you’ll want to see him. I don’t believe in quarrels, you know.”
“It is better that we should part, Lady Chiltern, if marrying will cause him—dismay. I begin to feel that we are too poor to be married.”
“A great deal poorer people than you are married every day. Of course people can’t be equally rich. You’ll do very well if you’ll only be patient, and not refuse to speak to him when he comes to you.” This was said at Harrington after Lady Chiltern had returned from her first journey up to London. That visit had been very short, and Miss Palliser had been left alone at the hall. We already know how Mr. Spooner took advantage of her solitude. After that, Miss Palliser was to accompany the Chilterns to London, and she was there with them when Phineas Finn was acquitted. By that time she had brought herself to acknowledge to her friend Lady Chiltern that it would perhaps be desirable that Mr. Maule should return. If he did not do so, and that at once, there must come an end to her life in England. She must go away to Italy—altogether beyond the reach of Gerard Maule. In such case all the world would have collapsed for her, and she would become the martyr of a shipwreck. And yet the more that she confessed to herself that she loved the man so well that she could not part with him, the more angry she was with him for having told her that, when married, they must live at Boulogne.
The house in Portman Square had been practically given up by Lord Brentford to his son; but nevertheless the old Earl and Lady Laura had returned to it when they reached England from Dresden. It was, however, large, and now the two families—if the Earl and his daughter can be called a family—were lodging there together. The Earl troubled them but little, living mostly in his own rooms, and Lady Laura never went out with them. But there was something in the presence of the old man and the widow which prevented the house from being gay as it might have been. There were no parties in Portman Square. Now and then a few old friends dined there; but at the present moment Gerard Maule could not be admitted as an old friend. When Adelaide had been a fortnight in London she had not as yet seen Gerard Maule or heard a word from him. She had been to balls and concerts, to dinner parties and the play; but no one had as yet brought them together. She did know that he was in town. She was able to obtain so much information of him as that. But he never came to Portman Square, and had evidently concluded that the quarrel—was to be a quarrel.
Among other balls in London that July there had been one at the Duchess of Omnium’s. This had been given after the acquittal of Phineas Finn, though fixed before that great era. “Nothing on earth should have made me have it while he was in prison,” the Duchess had said. But Phineas was acquitted, and cakes and ale again became permissible. The ball had been given, and had been very grand. Phineas had been asked, but of course had not gone. Madame Goesler, who was a great heroine since her successful return from Prague, had shown herself there for a few minutes. Lady Chiltern had gone, and of course taken Adelaide. “We are first cousins,” the Duke said to Miss Palliser—for the Duke did steal a moment from his work in which to walk through his wife’s drawing-room. Adelaide smiled and nodded, and looked pleased as she gave her hand to her great relative. “I hope we shall see more of each other than we have done,” said the Duke. “We have all been sadly divided, haven’t we?” Then he said a word to his wife, expressing his opinion that Adelaide Palliser was a nice girl, and asking her to be civil to so near a relative.
The Duchess had heard all about Gerard Maule and the engagement. She always did hear all about everything. And on this evening she asked a question or two from Lady Chiltern. “Do you know,” she said, “I have an appointment tomorrow with your husband?”
“I did not know;—but I won’t interfere to prevent it, now you are generous enough to tell me.”
“I wish you would, because I don’t know what to say to him. He is to come about that horrid wood, where the foxes won’t get
