“But we have quarrelled,” she said. “Then the best thing you can do is to make it up again, my dear,” said the Duchess. Miss Palliser was undoubtedly of that opinion herself, but she hardly believed that so terrible an evil as a quarrel with her lover could be composed by so rough a remedy as this. The Duchess, who had become used to all the disturbing excitements of life, and who didn’t pay so much respect as some do to the niceties of a young lady’s feelings, thought that it would be only necessary to bring the young people together again. If she could do that, and provide them with an income, of course they would marry. On the present occasion Phineas was told off to take Miss Palliser down to dinner. “You saw the Chilterns before they left town, I know,” she said.
“Oh, yes. I am constantly in Portman Square.”
“Of course. Lady Laura has gone down to Scotland;—has she not;—and all alone?”
“She is alone now, I believe.”
“How dreadful! I do not know anyone that I pity so much as I do her. I was in the house with her some time, and she gave me the idea of being the most unhappy woman I had ever met with. Don’t you think that she is very unhappy?”
“She has had very much to make her so,” said Phineas. “She was obliged to leave her husband because of the gloom of his insanity;—and now she is a widow.”
“I don’t suppose she ever really—cared for him; did she?” The question was no sooner asked than the poor girl remembered the whole story which she had heard some time back—the rumour of the husband’s jealousy and of the wife’s love, and she became as red as fire, and unable to help herself. She could think of no word to say, and confessed her confusion by her sudden silence.
Phineas saw it all, and did his best for her. “I am sure she cared for him,” he said, “though I do not think it was a well-assorted marriage. They had different ideas about religion, I fancy. So you saw the hunting in the Brake country to the end? How is our old friend, Mr. Spooner?”
“Don’t talk of him, Mr. Finn.”
“I rather like Mr. Spooner;—and as for hunting the country, I don’t think Chiltern could get on without him. What a capital fellow your cousin the Duke is.”
“I hardly know him.”
“He is such a gentleman;—and, at the same time, the most abstract and the most concrete man that I know.”
“Abstract and concrete!”
“You are bound to use adjectives of that sort now, Miss Palliser, if you mean to be anybody in conversation.”
“But how is my cousin concrete? He is always abstracted when I speak to him, I know.”
“No Englishman whom I have met is so broadly and intuitively and unceremoniously imbued with the simplicity of the character of a gentleman. He could no more lie than he could eat grass.”
“Is that abstract or concrete?”
“That’s abstract. And I know no one who is so capable of throwing himself into one matter for the sake of accomplishing that one thing at a time. That’s concrete.” And so the red colour faded away from poor Adelaide’s face, and the unpleasantness was removed.
“What do you think of Laurence’s wife?” Erle said to him late in the evening.
“I have only just seen her. The money is there, I suppose.”
“The money is there, I believe; but then it will have to remain there. He can’t touch it. There’s about £2,000 a-year, which will have to go back to her family unless they have children.”
“I suppose she’s—forty?”
“Well; yes, or perhaps forty-five. You were locked up at the time, poor fellow—and had other things to think of; but all the interest we had for anything beyond you through May and June was devoted to Laurence and his prospects. It was off and on, and on and off, and he was in a most wretched condition. At last she wouldn’t consent unless she was to be asked here.”
“And who managed it?”
“Laurence came and told it all to the Duchess, and she gave him the invitation at once.”
“Who told you?”
“Not the Duchess—nor yet Laurence. So it may be untrue, you know;—but I believe it. He did ask me whether he’d have to stand another election at his marriage. He has been going in and out of office so often, and always going back to the Co. Mayo at the expense of half a year’s salary, that his mind had got confused, and he didn’t quite know what did and what did not vacate his seat. We must all come to it sooner or later, I suppose, but the question is whether we could do better than an annuity of £2,000 a year on the life of the lady. Office isn’t very permanent, but one has not to attend the House above six months a year, while you can’t get away from a wife much above a week at a time. It has crippled him in appearance very much, I think.”
“A man always looks changed when he’s married.”
“I hope, Mr. Finn, that you owe me no grudge,” said Sir Gregory, the Attorney-General.
“Not in the least; why should I?”
“It was a very painful duty that I had to perform—the most painful that ever befell me. I had no alternative but to do it, of course, and to do it in the hope of reaching the truth. But a counsel for the prosecution must always appear to the accused and his friends like a hound running down his game, and anxious for blood. The habitual and almost necessary acrimony of the defence creates acrimony in the attack. If you were accustomed
