pared to go up-stairs. "I have work still to do to-night,
and I will not disturb you by coming to your room."

"You won't want me to be very early?" said his wife.

"No," said he, with more of anger in his voice than he had yet shown.
"What hour will suit you? I must say something of what has occurred
to-night before I leave you to-morrow."

"I don't know what you can have got to say about to-night, but I'll
be down by half-past eleven, if that will do?" Mr Palliser said that
he would make it do, and then they parted.

Lady Glencora had played her part very well before her husband. She
had declined to be frightened by him; had been the first to mention
Burgo's name, and had done so with no tremor in her voice, and had
boldly declared her irreconcilable enmity to the male and female
duennas who had dared to take her in charge. While she was in the
carriage with her husband she felt some triumph in her own strength;
and as she wished him good night on the staircase, and slowly walked
up to her room, without having once lowered her eyes before his,
something of this consciousness of triumph still supported her. And
even while her maid remained with her she held herself up, as it
were, inwardly, telling herself that she would not yield,--that she
would not be cowed either by her husband or by his spies. But when
she was left alone all her triumph departed from her.

She bade her maid go while she was still sitting in her
dressing-gown; and when the girl was gone she got close over the
fire, sitting with her slippers on the fender, with her elbows on
her knees, and her face resting on her hands. In this position she
remained for an hour, with her eyes fixed on the altering shapes of
the hot coals. During this hour her spirit was by no means defiant,
and her thoughts of herself anything but triumphant. Mr Bott and
Mrs Marsham she had forgotten altogether. After all, they were but
buzzing flies, who annoyed her by their presence. Should she choose
to leave her husband, they could not prevent her leaving him. It was
of her husband and of Burgo that she was thinking,--weighing them one
against the other, and connecting her own existence with theirs, not
as expecting joy or the comfort of love from either of them, but with
an assured conviction that on either side there must be misery for
her. But of that shame before all the world which must be hers for
ever, should she break her vows and consent to live with a man who
was