p-stairs, sitting
close by the window. They had not as yet met since the evening of
Lady Monk's party, nor had Lady Glencora seen Alice in the mourning
which she now wore for her grandfather. "Oh, dear, what a change it
makes in you," she said. "I never thought of your being in black."

"I don't know what it is you want, but shan't I do in mourning as
well as I would in colours?"

"You'll do in anything, dear. But I have so much to tell you, and I
don't know how to begin. And I've so much to ask of you, and I'm so
afraid you won't do it."

"You generally find me very complaisant."

"No I don't, dear. It is very seldom you will do anything for me.
But I must tell you everything first. Do take your bonnet off, for
I shall be hours in doing it."

"Hours in telling me!"

"Yes; and in getting your consent to what I want you to do. But I
think I'll tell you that first. I'm to be taken abroad immediately."

"Who is to take you?"

"Ah, you may well ask that. If you could know what questions I have
asked myself on that head! I sometimes say things to myself as though
they were the most proper and reasonable things in the world, and
then within an hour or two I hate myself for having thought of them."

"But why don't you answer me? Who is going abroad with you?"

"Well; you are to be one of the party."

"I!"

"Yes; you. When I have named so very respectable a chaperon for my
youth, of course you will understand that my husband is to take us."

"But Mr Palliser can't leave London at this time of the year?"

"That's just it. He is to leave London at this time of the year.
Don't look in that way, for it's all settled. Whether you go with
me or not, I've got to go. To-day is Tuesday. We are to be off next
Tuesday night, if you can make yourself ready. We shall breakfast in
Paris on Wednesday morning, and then it will be to us all just as if
we were in a new world. Mr Palliser will walk up and down the new
court of the Louvre, and you will be on his left arm, and I shall be
on his right,--just like English people,--and it will be the most
proper thing that ever was seen in life. Then we shall go on to
Basle"--Alice shuddered as Basle was mentioned, thinking of the
balcony over the river--"and so to Lucerne--. But no; that was the
first plan, and Mr Palliser altered it. He spent a whole day up here
with maps and Bradshaw's and Murray's guide-books, and he scolded
me so because I didn't care whether we went first to Ba