ure the poor beasts thought they were always
going to a funeral. Poor Dandy and poor Flirt! I shan't see them now
for another year."

On the following morning they breakfasted early, because Mr Palliser
had got into an early habit. He had said that early hours would be
good for them. "But he never tells me why," said Lady Glencora.
"I think it is pleasant when people are travelling," said Alice.
"It isn't that," her cousin answered; "but we are all to be such
particularly good children. It's hardly fair, because he went to
sleep last night after dinner while you and I kept ourselves awake:
but we needn't do that another night, to be sure." After breakfast
they all three went to work to do nothing. It was ludicrous and
almost painful to see Mr Palliser wandering about and counting the
boxes, as though he could do any good by that. At this special crisis
of his life he hated his papers and figures and statistics, and
could not apply himself to them. He, whose application had been
so unremitting, could apply himself now to nothing. His world had
been brought to an abrupt end, and he was awkward at making a new
beginning. I believe that they all three were reading novels before
one o'clock. Lady Glencora and Alice had determined that they would
not leave the house throughout the day. "Nothing has been said about
it, but I regard it as part of the bond that I'm not to go out
anywhere. Who knows but what I might be found in Gloucester Square?"
There was, however, no absolute necessity that Mr Palliser should
remain with them; and, at about three, he prepared himself for a
solitary walk. He would not go down to the House. All interest in the
House was over with him for the present. He had the Speaker's leave
to absent himself for the season. Nor would he call on anyone. All
his friends knew, or believed they knew, that he had left town. His
death and burial had been already chronicled, and were he now to
reappear, he could reappear only as a ghost. He was being talked
of as the departed one;--or rather, such talk on all sides had now
come nearly to an end. The poor Duke of St Bungay still thought of
him with regret when more than ordinarily annoyed by some special
grievance coming to him from Mr Finespun; but even the Duke had
become almost reconciled to the present order of things. Mr Palliser
knew better than to disturb all this by showing himself again in
public; and prepared himself, therefore, to take another walk under