he should
say to her husband on the following morning,--she had not yet begun
to think of that.

Exactly at half-past eleven she entered the little breakfast parlour
which looked out over the park. It was the prettiest room in the
house, and now, at this springtide, when the town trees were putting
out their earliest greens, and were fresh and bright almost as
country trees, it might be hard to find a prettier chamber. Mr
Palliser was there already, sitting with the morning paper in his
hand. He rose when she entered, and, coming up to her, just touched
her with his lips. She put her cheek up to him, and then took her
place at the breakfast table.

"Have you any headache this morning?" he asked.

"Oh, no," she said. Then he took his tea and his toast, spoke some
word to her about the fineness of the weather, told her some scraps
of news, and soon returned to the absorbing interest of a speech made
by the leader of the Opposition in the House of Lords. The speech was
very interesting to Mr Palliser, because in it the noble lord alluded
to a break-up in the present Cabinet, as to which the rumours were,
he said, so rife through the country as to have destroyed all that
feeling of security in the existing Government which the country so
much valued and desired. Mr Palliser had as yet heard no official
tidings of such a rupture; but if such rupture were to take place,
it must be in his favour. He felt himself at this moment to be full
of politics,--to be near the object of his ambition, to have affairs
upon his hands which required all his attention. Was it absolutely
incumbent on him to refer again to the incidents of last night? The
doing so would be odious to him. The remembrance of the task now
immediately before him destroyed all his political satisfaction. He
did not believe that his wife was in any serious danger. Might it not
yet be possible for him to escape from the annoyance, and to wash
his mind clean of all suspicion? He was not jealous; he was indeed
incapable of jealousy. He knew what it would be to be dishonoured,
and he knew that under certain circumstances the world would expect
him to exert himself in a certain way. But the thing that he had now
to do was a great trouble to him. He would rather have to address
the House of Commons with ten columns of figures than utter a word
of remonstrance to his wife. But she had defied him,--defied him
by saying that she would see his friends no more; and it was t