“I have never scolded you.”
“Yes, you have. You have told me that I was uncivil.”
“I said that she would think you so.”
“Then, if it’s only what she thinks, I don’t care two straws about it. She may have the carriage to herself if she likes, but she shan’t have me in it—not unless I’m ordered to go. I don’t like her, and I won’t pretend to like her. My belief is that she follows me about to tell you if she thinks that I do wrong.”
“Glencora!”
“And that odious baboon with the red bristles does the same thing—only he goes to her because he doesn’t dare to go to you.”
Plantagenet Palliser was struck wild with dismay. He understood well who it was whom his wife intended to describe; but that she should have spoken of any man as a baboon with red bristles, was terrible to his mind! He was beginning to think that he hardly knew how to manage his wife. And the picture she had drawn was very distressing to him. She had no mother; neither had he; and he had wished that Mrs. Marsham should give to her some of that matronly assistance and guidance which a mother does give to her young married daughter. It was true, too, as he knew, that a word or two as to some socially domestic matters had filtered through to him from Mr. Bott, down at Matching Priory, but only in such a way as to enable him to see what counsel it was needful that he should give. As for espionage over his wife—no man could despise it more than he did! No man would be less willing to resort to it! And now his wife was accusing him of keeping spies, both male and female.
“Glencora!” he said again; and then he stopped, not knowing what to say to her.
“Well, my dear, it’s better you should know at once what I feel about it. I don’t suppose I’m very good; indeed I dare say I’m bad enough, but these people about me won’t make me any better. The duennas don’t make the Spanish ladies worth much.”
“Duennas!” After that, Lady Glencora sat herself down, and Mr. Palliser stood for some moments looking at her.
It ended in his making her a long speech, in which he said a good deal of his own justice and forbearance, and something also of her frivolity and childishness. He told her that his only complaint of her was that she was too young, and, as he did so, she made a little grimace—not to him, but to herself, as though saying to herself that that was all he knew about it. He did not notice it, or, if he did, his notice did not stop his eloquence. He assured her that he was far from keeping any watch over her, and declared that she had altogether mistaken Mrs. Marsham’s character. Then there was another little grimace. “There’s somebody has mistaken it worse than I have,” the grimace said. Of the bristly baboon he condescended to say nothing, and he wound up by giving her a cold kiss, and saying that he would meet her at Lady Monk’s.
When the evening came—or rather the night—the carriage went first for Mrs. Marsham, and having deposited her at Lady Monk’s, went back to Park Lane for Lady Glencora. Then she had herself driven to St. James’s Square, to pick up Lady Jane, so that altogether the coachman and horses did not have a good time of it. “I wish he’d keep a separate carriage for her,” Lady Glencora said to her cousin Jane—having perceived that her servants were not in a good humour. “That would be expensive,” said Lady Jane. “Yes, it would be expensive,” said Lady Glencora. She would not condescend to make any remark as to the non-importance of such expense to a man so wealthy as her husband, knowing that his wealth was, in fact, hers. Never to him or to any other—not even to herself—had she hinted that much was due to her because she had been magnificent as an heiress. There were many things about this woman that were not altogether what a husband might wish. She was not softly delicate in all her ways; but in disposition and temper she was altogether generous. I do not know that she was at all points a lady, but had Fate so willed it she would have been a thorough gentleman.
Mrs. Marsham was by no means satisfied with the way in which she was treated. She would not have cared to go at all to Lady Monk’s party had she supposed that she would have to make her entry there alone. With Lady Glencora she would have seemed to receive some of that homage which would certainly have been paid to her companion. The carriage called, moreover, before she was fully ready, and the footman, as he stood at the door to hand her in, had been very sulky. She understood it all. She knew that Lady Glencora had positively declined her companionship; and if she resolved to be revenged, such resolution on her part was only natural. When she reached Lady Monk’s house, she had to make her way upstairs all alone. The servants called her Mrs. Marsh, and under that name she got passed on into the front drawing-room. There she sat down, not having seen Lady Monk, and meditated over her injuries.
It was past eleven before Lady Glencora arrived, and Burgo Fitzgerald had begun to think that his evil stars intended that he should never see her again. He had been wickedly baulked at Monkshade, by what influence he had
