e with her. Whether or no she were right in her
suspicions John Grey did not take advantage of the opportunity
offered to him. Her father came up first, and had seated himself
silently in his arm-chair before the visitor was announced.

As Mr Grey entered the room Alice knew that she was flurried, but
still she managed to carry herself with some dignity. His bearing was
perfect. But then, as she declared to herself afterwards, no possible
position in life would put him beside himself. He came up to her
with his usual quiet smile,--a smile that was genial even in its
quietness, and took her hand. He took it fairly and fully into his;
but there was no squeezing, no special pressure, no love-making.
And when he spoke to her he called her Alice, as though his doing
so was of all things the most simply a matter of course. There was
no tell-tale hesitation in his voice. When did he ever hesitate at
anything? "I hear you are going abroad," he said, "with your cousin,
Lady Glencora Palliser."

"Yes," said Alice; "I am going with them for a long tour. We shall
not return, I fancy, till the end of next winter."

"Plans of that sort are as easily broken as they are made," said her
father. "You won't be your own mistress; and I advise you not to
count too surely upon getting further than Baden."

"If Mr Palliser changes his mind of course I shall come home," said
Alice, with a little attempt at a smile.

"I should think him a man not prone to changes," said Grey. "But all
London is talking about his change of mind at this moment. They say
at the clubs that he might have been in the Cabinet if he would, but
that he has taken up this idea of going abroad at the moment when he
was wanted."

"It's his wife's doing, I take it," said Mr Vavasor.

"That's the worst of being in Parliament," said Grey. "A man can't do
anything without giving a reason for it. There must be men for public
life, of course; but, upon my word, I think we ought to be very much
obliged to them."

Alice, as she took her old lover's arm, and walked down with him to
dinner, thought of all her former quarrels with him on this very
subject. On this very point she had left him. He had never argued the
matter with her. He had never asked her to argue with him. He had not
condescended so far as that. Had he done so, she thought that she
would have brought herself to think as he thought. She would have
striven, at any rate, to do so. But she could not become unam