elieve."

"I shall miss her, if she has to stay away long. I know you don't
like her."

"I do like her. She has always behaved well, both to me and to my
uncle."

"She was an angel to him,--and to you too, if you only knew it. I
dare say you're sending him to Ireland so as to get her away from
me." This she said with a smile, as though not meaning it altogether,
but yet half meaning it.

"I have asked him to undertake the office," said the Duke solemnly,
"because I am told that he is fit for it. But I did have some
pleasure in proposing it to him because I thought that it would
please you."

"It does please me, and I won't be cross any more, and the Duchess
of ---- may wear her clothes just as she pleases, or go without them.
And as for Mrs. Finn, I don't see why she should be with him always
when he goes. You can quite understand how necessary she is to me.
But she is in truth the only woman in London to whom I can say what I
think. And it is a comfort, you know, to have some one."

In this way the domestic peace of the Prime Minister was readjusted,
and that sympathy and co-operation for which he had first asked
was accorded to him. It may be a question whether on the whole the
Duchess did not work harder than he did. She did not at first dare to
expound to him those grand ideas which she had conceived in regard to
magnificence and hospitality. She said nothing of any extraordinary
expenditure of money. But she set herself to work after her own
fashion, making to him suggestions as to dinners and evening
receptions, to which he objected only on the score of time. "You must
eat your dinner somewhere," she said, "and you need only come in just
before we sit down, and go into your own room if you please without
coming upstairs at all. I can at any rate do that part of it for
you." And she did do that part of it with marvellous energy all
through the month of May,--so that by the end of the month, within
six weeks of the time at which she first heard of the Coalition
Ministry, all the world had begun to talk of the Prime Minister's
dinners, and of the receptions given by the Prime Minister's wife.

CHAPTER IX

Mrs. Dick's Dinner Party.--No. I

Our readers must not forget the troubles of poor Emily Wharton
amidst the gorgeous festivities of the new Prime Minister. Throughout
April and May she did not see Ferdinand Lopez. It may be remembered
that on the night when the matter was discussed between her a