now. Come, Alice; the
fact of the offer having come from himself should disarm you of any
such objection as that. As he has held out his hand to you, you have
no alternative but to take it."

"I will take his hand willingly."

"And for my sake you will go with us? He understands himself that I
am not fit to be his companion, and to have no companion but him. Now
there is a spirit of wisdom about you that will do for him, and a
spirit of folly that will suit me. I can manage to put myself on a
par with a girl who has played such a wild game with her lovers as
you have done."

Alice would give no promise then. Her first objection was that
she had undertaken to go down to Westmoreland and comfort Kate
in the affliction of her broken arm. "And I must go," said Alice,
remembering how necessary it was that she should plead her own cause
with George Vavasor's sister. But she acknowledged that she had not
intended to stay long in Westmoreland, probably not more than a week,
and it was at last decided that the Pallisers should postpone their
journey for four or five days, and that Alice should go with them
immediately upon her return from Vavasor Hall.

"I have no objection;" said her father, speaking with that voice
of resignation which men use when they are resolved to consider
themselves injured whatever may be done. "I can get along in
lodgings. I suppose we had better leave the house, as you have given
away so much of your own fortune?" Alice did not think it worth her
while to point out to him, in answer to this, that her contribution
to their joint housekeeping should still remain the same as ever.
Such, however, she knew would be the fact, and she knew also that she
would find her father in the old house when she returned from her
travels. To her, in her own great troubles, the absence from London
would be as serviceable as it could be to Lady Glencora. Indeed, she
had already begun to feel the impossibility of staying quietly at
home. She could lecture her cousin, whose faults were open, easy to
be defined, and almost loud in their nature; but she was not on that
account the less aware of her own. She knew that she too had cause to
be ashamed of herself. She was half afraid to show her face among her
friends, and wept grievously over her own follies. Those cruel words
of her father rang in her ears constantly:--"Things of that sort are
so often over with you." The reproach, though cruel, was true, and
what reproac