for their women, they know everything. But I hated them, and I intend
to hate them. You haven't been there?"

"Oh no."

"Then I will make bold to say that any English lady who spent a month
with them and didn't hate them would have very singular tastes. I
begin to think they'll eat each other up, and then there'll come an
entirely new set of people of a different sort. I always regarded the
States as a Sodom and Gomorrah, prospering in wickedness, on which
fire and brimstone were sure to fall sooner or later."

"I think that's wicked."

"I am wicked, as Topsy used to say. Do you hunt?"

"No."

"Do you shoot?"

"Shoot! What; with a gun?"

"Yes. I was staying in a house last week with a lady who shot a good
deal."

"No; I don't shoot."

"Do you ride?"

"No; I wish I did. I have never ridden because I've no one to ride
with me."

"Do you drive?"

"No; I don't drive either."

"Then what do you do?"

"I sit at home, and--"

"Mend your stockings?"

"No; I don't do that, because it's disagreeable; but I do work a good
deal. Sometimes I have amused myself by reading."

"Ah; they never do that here. I have heard that there is a library,
but the clue to it has been lost, and nobody now knows the way. I
don't believe in libraries. Nobody ever goes into a library to read,
any more than you would into a larder to eat. But there is this
difference;--the food you consume does come out of the larders, but
the books you read never come out of the libraries."

"Except Mudie's," said Alice.

"Ah, yes; he is the great librarian. And you mean to read all the
time you are here, Miss Vavasor?"

"I mean to walk about the priory ruins sometimes."

"Then you must go by moonlight, and I'll go with you. Only isn't it
rather late in the year for that?"

"I should think it is,--for you, Mr Palliser."

Then the Duke spoke to her again, and she found that she got on very
well during dinner. But she could not but feel angry with herself in
that she had any fear on the subject;--and yet she could not divest
herself of that fear. She acknowledged to herself that she was
conscious of a certain inferiority to Lady Glencora and to Mr Jeffrey
Palliser, which almost made her unhappy. As regarded the Duke on the
other side of her, she had no such feeling. He was old enough to be
her father, and was a Cabinet Minister; therefore he was entitled
to her reverence. But how was it that she could not help accepting
the other peop