“Mrs. Marsham has gone home,” he replied.
“Have you seen her?”
“Yes.”
“When did you see her?”
“She came to Park Lane.”
“What made her do that?”
These questions were asked and answered as he was putting her into the carriage. She got in just as she asked the last, and he, as he took his seat, did not find it necessary to answer it. But that would not serve her turn. “What made Mrs. Marsham go to you at Park Lane after she left Lady Monk’s?” she asked again. Mr. Palliser sat silent, not having made up his mind what he would say on the subject. “I suppose she went,” continued Lady Glencora, “to tell you that I was dancing with Mr. Fitzgerald. Was that it?”
“I think, Glencora, we had better not discuss it now.”
“I don’t mean to discuss it now, or ever. If you did not wish me to see Mr. Fitzgerald you should not have sent me to Lady Monk’s. But, Plantagenet, I hope you will forgive me if I say that no consideration shall induce me to receive again as a guest, in my own house, either Mrs. Marsham or Mr. Bott.”
Mr. Palliser absolutely declined to say anything on the subject on that occasion, and the evening of Lady Monk’s party in this way came to an end.
LI
Bold Speculations on Murder
George Vavasor was not in a very happy mood when he left Queen Anne Street, after having flung his gift ring under the grate. Indeed there was much in his condition, as connected with the house which he was leaving, which could not but make him unhappy. Alice was engaged to be his wife, and had as yet said nothing to show that she meditated any breach of that engagement, but she had treated him in a way which made him long to throw her promise in her teeth. He was a man to whom any personal slight from a woman was unendurable. To slights from men, unless they were of a nature to provoke offence, he was indifferent. There was no man living for whose liking or disliking George Vavasor cared anything. But he did care much for the good opinion, or rather for the personal favour, of any woman to whom he had endeavoured to make himself agreeable. “I will marry you,” Alice had said to him—not in words, but in acts and looks, which were plainer than words—“I will marry you for certain reasons of my own, which in my present condition make it seem that that arrangement will be more convenient to me than any other that I can make; but pray understand that there is no love mixed up with this. There is another man whom I love;—only, for those reasons above hinted, I do not care to marry him.” It was thus that he read Alice’s present treatment of him, and he was a man who could not endure this treatment with ease.
But though he could throw his ring under the grate in his passion, he could not so dispose of her. That he would have done so had his hands been free, we need not doubt. And he would have been clever enough to do so in some manner that would have been exquisitely painful to Alice, willing as she might be to be released from her engagement. But he could not do this to a woman whose money he had borrowed, and whose money he could not repay;—to a woman, more of whose money he intended to borrow immediately. As to that latter part of it, he did say to himself over and over again, that he would have no more of it. As he left the house in Queen Anne Street, on that occasion, he swore, that under no circumstances would he be indebted to her for another shilling. But before he had reached Great Marlborough Street, to which his steps took him, he had reminded himself that everything depended on a further advance. He was in Parliament, but Parliament would be dissolved within three months. Having sacrificed so much for his position, should he let it all fall from him now—now, when success seemed to be within his reach? That wretched old man in Westmoreland, who seemed gifted almost with immortality—why could he not die and surrender his paltry acres to one who could use them? He turned away from Regent Street into Hanover Square before he crossed to Great Marlborough Street, giving vent to his passion rather than arranging his thoughts. As he walked the four sides of the square he considered how good it would be if some accident should befall the old man. How he would rejoice were he to hear tomorrow that one of the trees of the “accursed place,” had fallen on the “obstinate old idiot,” and put an end to him! I will not say that he meditated the murder of his grandfather. There was a firm conviction on his mind, as he thought of all this, that such a deed as that would never come in his way. But he told himself, that if he chose to make the attempt, he would certainly be able to carry it through without detection. Then he remembered Rush and Palmer—the openly bold murderer and the secret poisoner. Both of them, in Vavasor’s estimation, were great men. He had often said so in company. He had declared that the courage of Rush had never been surpassed. “Think of him,” he would say with admiration, “walking into a man’s house, with pistols sufficient to shoot everyone there, and doing it as though he were killing rats! What was Nelson at Trafalgar to that? Nelson had nothing to fear!” And of Palmer he declared that he was a man
