t recognise the possibility of changing. Though she had
told him that he might go if he pleased, to her his going would be
the loss of everything. What would life be without a lover,--without
the prospect of marriage? And there could be no other lover. There
could be no further prospect should he take her at her word.

Of all this Lord Chiltern understood nothing, but Lady Chiltern
understood it all. To his thinking the young man had behaved so badly
that it was incumbent on them all to send him away and so have done
with him. If the young man wanted to quarrel with any one, there was
he to be quarrelled with. The thing was a trouble, and the sooner
they got to the end of it the better. But Lady Chiltern understood
more than that. She could not prevent the quarrel as it came,--or was
coming; but she knew that "the quarrel of lovers is the renewal of
love." At any rate, the woman always desires that it may be so, and
endeavours to reconcile the parted ones. "You'll see him in London,"
Lady Chiltern had said to her friend.

"I do not want to see him," said Adelaide proudly.

"But he'll want to see you, and then,--after a time,--you'll want to
see him. I don't believe in quarrels, you know."

"It is better that we should part, Lady Chiltern, if marrying will
cause him--dismay. I begin to feel that we are too poor to be
married."

"A great deal poorer people than you are married every day. Of course
people can't be equally rich. You'll do very well if you'll only be
patient, and not refuse to speak to him when he comes to you." This
was said at Harrington after Lady Chiltern had returned from her
first journey up to London. That visit had been very short, and Miss
Palliser had been left alone at the hall. We already know how Mr.
Spooner took advantage of her solitude. After that, Miss Palliser was
to accompany the Chilterns to London, and she was there with them
when Phineas Finn was acquitted. By that time she had brought herself
to acknowledge to her friend Lady Chiltern that it would perhaps be
desirable that Mr. Maule should return. If he did not do so, and that
at once, there must come an end to her life in England. She must go
away to Italy,--altogether beyond the reach of Gerard Maule. In such
case all the world would have collapsed for her, and she would become
the martyr of a shipwreck. And yet the more that she confessed to
herself that she loved the man so well that she could not part with
him, the more ang