le round her as being indeed superior to herself? Was
she really learning to believe that she could grow upwards by their
sunlight?

"Jeffrey is a pleasant fellow, is he not?" said Lady Glencora to her
as they passed back through the billiard-room to the drawing-room.

"Very pleasant;--a little sarcastic, perhaps."

"I should think you would soon find yourself able to get the better
of that if he tries it upon you," said Lady Glencora; and then the
ladies were all in the drawing-room together.

"It is quite deliciously warm, coming from one room to another," said
the Duchess, putting her emphasis on the "one" and the "other."

"Then we had better keep continually moving," said a certain Mrs
Conway Sparkes, a literary lady, who had been very handsome, who was
still very clever, who was not perhaps very good-natured, and of whom
the Duchess of St Bungay was rather afraid.

"I hope we may be warm here too," said Lady Glencora.

"But not deliciously warm," said Mrs Conway Sparkes.

"It makes me tremble in every limb when Mrs Sparkes attacks her,"
Lady Glencora said to Alice in Alice's own room that night, "for I
know she'll tell the Duke; and he'll tell that tall man with red hair
whom you see standing about, and the tall man with red hair will tell
Mr Palliser, and then I shall catch it."

"And who is the tall man with red hair?"

"He's a political link between the Duke and Mr Palliser. His name is
Bott, and he's a Member of Parliament."

"But why should he interfere?"

"I suppose it's his business. I don't quite understand all the ins
and outs of it. I believe he's to be one of Mr Palliser's private
secretaries if he becomes Chancellor of the Exchequer. Perhaps he
doesn't tell;--only I think he does all the same. He always calls me
Lady Glen-cowrer. He comes out of Lancashire, and made calico as long
as he could get any cotton." But this happened in the bedroom, and we
must go back for a while to the drawing-room.

The Duchess had made no answer to Mrs Sparkes, and so nothing further
was said about the warmth. Nor, indeed, was there any conversation
that was comfortably general. The number of ladies in the room was
too great for that, and ladies do not divide themselves nicely into
small parties, as men and women do when they are mixed. Lady Glencora
behaved pretty by telling the Duchess all about her pet pheasants;
Mrs Conway Sparkes told ill-natured tales of some one to Miss
Euphemia Palliser; one of the