ot heard the whole story. "I believe he
misbehaved himself, my dear," Lady Glencora said; "but then, you
know, he always does that. I believe that he saw Mr Grey and insulted
him. Perhaps you had better not ask anything about it till by-and-by.
You'll be able to get anything out of him then." In answer to this
Alice made her usual protest, and Lady Glencora, as was customary,
told her that she was a fool.

I am inclined to think that Mr Grey knew what he was about. Lady
Glencora once scolded him very vehemently for not bringing the affair
to an end. "We shall be going on to Italy before it's settled," she
said; "and I don't suppose you can go with us, unless it is settled."
Mr Grey protested that he had no intention of going to Italy in
either case.

"Then it will be put off for another year or two, and you are both of
you as old as Adam and Eve already."

"We ancient people are never impatient," said Grey, laughing.

"If I were you I would go to her and tell her, roundly, that she
should marry me, and then I would shake her. If you were to scold
her, till she did not know whether she stood on her head or her
heels, she would come to reason."

"Suppose you try that, Lady Glencora!"

"I can't. It's she that always scolds me,--as you will her, when
she's your wife. You and Mr Palliser are very much alike. You're both
of you so very virtuous that no woman would have a chance of picking
a hole in your coats."

But Lady Glencora was wrong. Alice would, no doubt, have submitted
herself patiently to her lover's rebukes, and would have confessed
her own sins towards him with any amount of self-accusation that he
might have required; but she would not, on that account, have been
more willing to obey him in that one point, as to which he now
required present obedience. He understood that she must be taught
to forgive herself for the evil she had done,--to forgive herself,
at any rate in part,--before she could be induced to return to
her old allegiance to him. Thus they went on together at Lucerne,
passing quiet, idle days,--with some pretence of reading, with a
considerable amount of letter-writing, with boat excursions and pony
excursions,--till the pony excursions came to a sudden end by means
of a violent edict, as to which, and the cause of it, a word or two
must be said just now. During these days of the boats and the ponies,
the carriage which Lady Glencora hated so vehemently was shut up in
limbo, and things wen