bring you."

"Pray don't do any such thing, for I certainly shall not go. I can't
conceive why you should wish it."

"Mr Fitzgerald will be there," said Lady Glencora, altering her voice
altogether, and speaking in that low tone with which she used to win
Alice's heart down at Matching. She was sitting close over the fire,
leaning low, holding up her little hands as a screen to her face, and
looking at her companion earnestly. "I'm sure that he will be there,
though nobody has told me."

"That may be a reason for your staying away," said Alice, slowly,
"but hardly a reason for my going with you."

Lady Glencora would not condescend to tell her friend in so many
words that she wanted her protection. She could not bring herself to
say that, though she wished it to be understood. "Ah! I thought you
would have gone," said she.

"It would be contrary to all my habits," said Alice: "I never go to
people's houses when I don't know them. It's a kind of society which
I don't like. Pray do not ask me."

"Oh! very well. If it must be so, I won't press it." Lady Glencora
had moved the position of one of her hands so as to get it to her
pocket, and there had grasped a letter, which she still carried; but
when Alice said those last cold words, "Pray do not ask me," she
released the grasp, and left the letter where it was. "I suppose he
won't bite me, at any rate," she said, and she assumed that look of
childish drollery which she would sometimes put on, almost with a
grimace, but still with so much prettiness that no one who saw her
would regret it.

"He certainly can't bite you, if you will not let him."

"Do you know, Alice, though they all say that Plantagenet is one of
the wisest men in London, I sometimes think that he is one of the
greatest fools. Soon after we came to town I told him that we had
better not go to that woman's house. Of course he understood me. He
simply said that he wished that I should do so. 'I hate anything out
of the way,' he said. 'There can be no reason why my wife should not
go to Lady Monk's house as well as to any other.' There was an end of
it, you know, as far as anything I could do was concerned. But there
wasn't an end of it with him. He insists that I shall go, but he
sends my duenna with me. Dear Mrs Marsham is to be there!"

"She'll do you no harm, I suppose?"

"I'm not so sure of that, Alice. In the first place, one doesn't like
to be followed everywhere by a policeman, even though