think I mean to tell you."

"Then I'm sure I won't ask."

"That's so like you, Alice. But I can be as firm as you, and I'm sure
I won't tell you unless you do ask." But Alice did not ask, and it
was not long before Lady Glencora's firmness gave way.

But, as I have said, Alice had become quite comfortable at Matching
Priory. Perhaps she was already growing upwards towards the light.
At any rate she could listen with pleasure to the few words the Duke
would say to her. She could even chat a little to the Duchess,--so
that her Grace had observed to Lady Glencora that "her cousin was a
very nice person,--a very nice person indeed. What a pity it was that
she had been so ill-treated by that gentleman in Oxfordshire!" Lady
Glencora had to explain that the gentleman lived in Cambridgeshire,
and that he, at any rate, had not treated anybody ill. "Do you mean
that she--jilted him?" said the Duchess, almost whistling, and
opening her eyes very wide. "Dear me, I'm sorry for that. I shouldn't
have thought it." And when she next spoke to Alice she assumed rather
a severe tone of emphasis;--but this was soon abandoned when Alice
listened to her with complacency.

Alice also had learned to ride,--or rather had resumed her riding,
which for years had been abandoned. Jeffrey Palliser had been her
squire, and she had become intimate with him so as to learn to
quarrel with him and to like him,--to such an extent that Lady
Glencora had laughingly told her that she was going to do more.

"I rather think not," said Alice.

"But what has thinking to do with it? Who ever thinks about it?"

"I don't just at present,--at any rate."

"Upon my word it would be very nice;--and then perhaps some day you'd
be the Duchess."

"Glencora, don't talk such nonsense."

"Those are the speculations which people make. Only I should spite
you by killing myself, so that he might marry again."

"How can you say such horrid things?"

"I think I shall,--some day. What right have I to stand in his way?
He spoke to me the other day about Jeffrey's altered position, and I
knew what he meant;--or rather what he didn't mean to say, but what
he thought. But I shan't kill myself."

"I should think not."

"I only know one other way," said Lady Glencora.

"You are thinking of things which should never be in your thoughts,"
said Alice vehemently. "Have you no trust in God's providence? Cannot
you accept what has been done for you?"

Mr Bott had gone awa