"You'll come to us in the winter, Mr. Finn?"

"I should like."

"You must. No one was truer to you than we were, you know. Indeed, regarding you as we do, how should we not have been true? It was impossible to me that my old friend should have been--"

"Oh, Lady Chiltern!"

"Of course you'll come. You owe it to us to come. And may I say this?

If there be anybody to come with you, that will make it only so much the better. If it should be so, of course there will be letters written?" To this question, however, Phineas Finn made no answer.

CHAPTER LXXVI

Madame Goesler's Legacy

One morning, very shortly after her return to Harrington, Lady Chiltern was told that Mr. Spooner of Spoon Hall had called, and desired to see her. She suggested that the gentleman had probably asked for her husband,--who, at that moment, was enjoying his recovered supremacy in the centre of Trumpeton Wood; but she was a.s.sured that on this occasion Mr. Spooner's mission was to herself.

She had no quarrel with Mr. Spooner, and she went to him at once.

After the first greeting he rushed into the subject of the great triumph. "So we've got rid of Mr. Fothergill, Lady Chiltern."

"Yes; Mr. Fothergill will not, I believe, trouble us any more. He is an old man, it seems, and has retired from the Duke's service."

"I can't tell you how glad I am, Lady Chiltern. We were afraid that Chiltern would have thrown it up, and then I don't know where we should have been. England would not have been England any longer, to my thinking, if we hadn't won the day. It'd have been just like a French revolution. n.o.body would have known what was coming or where he was going."

That Mr. Spooner should be enthusiastic on any hunting question was a matter of course; but still it seemed to be odd that he should have driven himself over from Spoon Hall to pour his feelings into Lady Chiltern's ear. "We shall go on very nicely now, I don't doubt," said she; "and I'm sure that Lord Chiltern will be glad to find that you are pleased."

"I am very much pleased, I can tell you." Then he paused, and the tone of his voice was changed altogether when he spoke again. "But I didn't come over only about that, Lady Chiltern. Miss Palliser has not come back with you, Lady Chiltern?"

"We left Miss Palliser at Matching. You know she is the Duke's cousin."

"I wish she wasn't, with all my heart."

"Why should you want to rob her of her relations, Mr. Spooner?"

"Because--because--. I don't want to say a word against her, Lady Chiltern. To me she is perfect as a star;--beautiful as a rose."

Mr. Spooner as he said this pointed first to the heavens and then to the earth. "But perhaps she wouldn't have been so proud of her grandfather hadn't he been a Duke."

"I don't think she is proud of that."

"People do think of it, Lady Chiltern; and I don't say that they ought not. Of course it makes a difference, and when a man lives altogether in the country, as I do, it seems to signify so much more. But if you go back to old county families, Lady Chiltern, the Spooners have been here pretty nearly as long as the Pallisers,--if not longer. The Desponders, from whom we come, came over with William the Conqueror."

"I have always heard that there isn't a more respectable family in the county."

"That there isn't. There was a grant of land, which took their name, and became the Manor of Despond; there's where Spoon Hall is now. Sir Thomas Desponder was one of those who demanded the Charter, though his name wasn't always given because he wasn't a baron. Perhaps Miss Palliser does not know all that."

"I doubt whether she cares about those things."

"Women do care about them,--very much. Perhaps she has heard of the two spoons crossed, and doesn't know that that was a stupid vulgar practical joke. Our crest is a knight's head bowed, with the motto, 'Desperandum.' Soon after the Conquest one of the Desponders fell in love with the Queen, and never would give it up, though it wasn't any good. Her name was Matilda, and so he went as a Crusader and got killed. But wherever he went he had the knight's head bowed, and the motto on the shield."

"What a romantic story, Mr. Spooner!"

"Isn't it? And it's quite true. That's the way we became Spooners. I never told her of it, but, somehow I wish I had now. It always seemed that she didn't think that I was anybody."

"The truth is, Mr. Spooner, that she was always thinking that somebody else was everything. When a gentleman is told that a lady's affections have been pre-engaged, however much he may regret the circ.u.mstances, he cannot, I think, feel any hurt to his pride. If I understand the matter, Miss Palliser explained to you that she was engaged when first you spoke to her."

"You are speaking of young Gerard Maule."

"Of course I am speaking of Mr. Maule."

"But she has quarrelled with him, Lady Chiltern."

"Don't you know what such quarrels come to?"

"Well, no. That is to say, everybody tells me that it is really broken off, and that he has gone n.o.body knows where. At any rate he never shows himself. He doesn't mean it, Lady Chiltern."

"I don't know what he means."

"And he can't afford it, Lady Chiltern. I mean it, and I can afford it. Surely that might go for something."

"I cannot say what Mr. Maule may mean to do, Mr. Spooner, but I think it only fair to tell you that he is at present staying at Matching, under the same roof with Miss Palliser."

"Maule staying at the Duke's!" When Mr. Spooner heard this there came a sudden change over his face. His jaw fell, and his mouth was opened, and the redness of his cheeks flew up to his forehead.

"He was expected there yesterday, and I need hardly suggest to you what will be the end of the quarrel."

"Going to the Duke's won't give him an income."

"I know nothing about that, Mr. Spooner. But it really seems to me that you misinterpret the nature of the affections of such a girl as Miss Palliser. Do you think it likely that she should cease to love a man because he is not so rich as another?"

"People, when they are married, want a house to live in, Lady Chiltern. Now at Spoon Hall--"

"Believe me, that is in vain, Mr. Spooner."

"You are quite sure of it?"

"Quite sure."

"I'd have done anything for her,--anything! She might have had what settlements she pleased. I told Ned that he must go, if she made a point of it. I'd have gone abroad, or lived just anywhere. I'd come to that, that I didn't mind the hunting a bit."

"I'm sorry for you,--I am indeed."

"It cuts a fellow all to pieces so! And yet what is it all about? A slip of a girl that isn't anything so very much out of the way after all. Lady Chiltern, I shouldn't care if the horse kicked the trap all to pieces going back to Spoon Hall, and me with it."

"You'll get over it, Mr. Spooner."

"Get over it! I suppose I shall; but I shall never be as I was. I've been always thinking of the day when there must be a lady at Spoon Hall, and putting it off, you know. There'll never be a lady there now;--never. You don't think there's any chance at all?"