But though Lady Monk was in this way enabled to rest herself during her labours, there was much in her night’s work which was not altogether exhilarating. Ladies would come into her small room and sit there by the hour, with whom she had not the slightest wish to hold conversation. The Duchess of St. Bungay would always be there—so that there was a special seat in one corner of the room which was called the Duchess’ stool. “I shouldn’t care a straw about her,” Lady Monk had been heard to complain, “if she would talk to anybody. But nobody will talk to her, and then she listens to everything.”
There had been another word or two between Burgo Fitzgerald and his aunt before the evening came, a word or two in the speaking of which she had found some difficulty. She was prepared with the money—with that two hundred pounds for which he had asked—obtained with what wiles, and lies, and baseness of subterfuge I need not stop here to describe. But she was by no means willing to give this over into her nephew’s hands without security. She was willing to advance him this money; she had been willing even to go through unusual dirt to get it for him; but she was desirous that he should have it only for a certain purpose. How could she bind him down to spend it as she would have it spent? Could she undertake to hand it to him as soon as Lady Glencora should be in his power? Even though she could have brought herself to say as much—and I think she might also have done so after what she had said—she could not have carried out such a plan. In that case the want would be instant, and the action must be rapid. She therefore had no alternative but to entrust him with the banknotes at once. “Burgo,” she said, “if I find that you deceive me now, I will never trust you again.” “All right,” said Burgo, as he barely counted the money before he thrust it into his breast-pocket. “It is lent to you for a certain purpose, should you happen to want it,” she said, solemnly. “I do happen to want it very much,” he answered. She did not dare to say more; but as her nephew turned away from her with a step that was quite light in its gaiety, she almost felt that she was already cozened. Let Burgo’s troubles be as heavy as they might be, there was something to him ecstatic in the touch of ready money which always cured them for the moment.
On the morning of Lady Monk’s party a few very uncomfortable words passed between Mr. Palliser and his wife.
“Your cousin is not going, then?” said he.
“Alice is not going.”
“Then you can give Mrs. Marsham a seat in your carriage?”
“Impossible, Plantagenet. I thought I had told you that I had promised my cousin Jane.”
“But you can take three.”
“Indeed I can’t—unless you would like me to sit out with the coachman.”
There was something in this—a tone of loudness, a touch of what he called to himself vulgarity—which made him very angry. So he turned away from her, and looked as black as a thundercloud.
“You must know, Plantagenet,” she went on, “that it is impossible for three women dressed to go out in one carriage. I am sure you wouldn’t like to see me afterwards if I had been one of them.”
“You need not have said anything to Lady Jane when Miss Vavasor refused. I had asked you before that.”
“And I had told you that I liked going with young women, and not with old ones. That’s the long and the short of it.”
“Glencora, I wish you would not use such expressions.”
“What! not the long and the short? It’s good English. Quite as good as Mr. Bott’s, when he said in the House the other night that the Government kept their accounts in a higgledy-piggledy way. You see, I have been studying the debates, and you shouldn’t be angry with me.”
“I am not angry with you. You speak like a child to say so. Then, I suppose, the carriage must go for Mrs. Marsham after it has taken you?”
“It shall go before. Jane will not be in a hurry, and I am sure I shall not.”
“She will think you very uncivil; that is all. I told her that she could go with you when I heard that Miss Vavasor was not to be there.”
“Then, Plantagenet, you
