een
forced to give him up, but said what kind words she could, and she
of the waving hair and light blue eyes had been pacified. Then she
had come again,--had come daily while the sagacious heads were at
work,--and Alice in her trouble had been a comfort to her.

But the sagacious heads were victorious, as we know, and Lady
Glencora M'Cluskie became Lady Glencora Palliser with all the
propriety in the world, instead of becoming wife to poor Burgo, with
all imaginable impropriety. And then she wrote a letter to Alice,
very short and rather sad; but still with a certain sweetness in it.
"She had been counselled that it was not fitting for her to love as
she had thought to love, and she had resolved to give up her dream.
Her cousin Alice, she knew, would respect her secret. She was going
to become the wife of the best man, she thought, in all the world;
and it should be the one care of her life to make him happy." She
said not a word in all her letter of loving this newly found lord.
"She was to be married at once. Would Alice be one among the bevy of
bridesmaids who were to grace the ceremony?"

Alice wished her joy heartily,--"heartily," she said, but had
declined that office of bridesmaid. She did not wish to undergo the
cold looks of the Lady Julias and Lady Janes who all would know each
other, but none of whom would know her. So she sent her cousin a
little ring, and asked her to keep it amidst all the wealthy tribute
of marriage gifts which would be poured forth at her feet.

From that time to this present Alice had heard no more of Lady
Glencora. She had been married late in the preceding season and
had gone away with Mr Palliser, spending her honeymoon amidst the
softnesses of some Italian lake. They had not returned to England
till the time had come for them to encounter the magnificent
Christmas festivities of Mr Palliser's uncle, the Duke. On this
occasion Gatherum Castle, the vast palace which the Duke had built at
a cost of nearly a quarter of a million, was opened, as it had never
been opened before;--for the Duke's heir had married to the Duke's
liking, and the Duke was a man who could do such things handsomely
when he was well pleased. Then there had been a throng of bridal
guests, and a succession of bridal gaieties which had continued
themselves even past the time at which Mr Palliser was due at
Westminster;--and Mr Palliser was a legislator who served his
country with the utmost assiduity. So the Lon