rt of equipage with which they were about to travel. Lady
Glencora was taking her own carriage. "Not that I shall ever use it,"
she said to Alice, "but he insists upon it, to show that I am not
supposed to be taken away in disgrace. He is so good;--isn't he?"

"Very good," said Alice. "I know no one better."

"And so dull!" said Lady Glencora. "But I fancy that all husbands are
dull from the nature of their position. If I were a young woman's
husband, I shouldn't know what to say to her that wasn't dull."

Two women and two men servants were to be taken. Alice had received
permission to bring her own maid--"or a dozen, if you want them,"
Lady Glencora had said. "Mr Palliser in his present mood would think
nothing too much to do for you. If you were to ask him to go among
the Kurds, he'd go at once;--or on to Crim Tartary, if you made a
point of it." But as both Lady Glencora's servants spoke French, and
as her own did not, Alice trusted herself in that respect to her
cousin. "You shall have one all to yourself," said Lady Glencora. "I
only take two for the same reason that I take the carriage,--just as
you let a child go out in her best frock, for a treat, after you've
scolded her."

When Alice asked why it was supposed that Mr Palliser was so
specially devoted to her, the thing was explained to her. "You see,
my dear, I have told him everything. I always do tell everything.
Nobody can say I am not candid. He knows about your not letting me
come to your house in the old days. Oh, Alice!--you were wrong then;
I shall always say that. But it's done and gone; and things that are
done and gone shall be done and gone for me. And I told him all that
you said,--about you know what. I have had nothing else to do but
make confessions for the last ten days, and when a woman once begins,
the more she confesses the better. And I told him that you refused
Jeffrey."

"You didn't?"

"I did indeed, and he likes you the better for that. I think he'd
let Jeffrey marry you now if you both wished it;--and then, oh
dear!--supposing that you had a son and that we adopted it?"

"Cora, if you go on in that way I will not remain with you."

"But you must, my dear. You can't escape now. At any rate, you can't
when we once get to Paris. Oh dear! you shouldn't grudge me my little
naughtinesses. I have been so proper for the last ten days. Do you
know I got into a way of driving Dandy and Flirt at the rate of six
miles an hour, till I'm s