"And I think about poor Mrs. Arch, who hasn't got any rank at all."

"A great prelate having a wife does seem to be an absurdity," said Madame Max, who had pa.s.sed some years of her life in a Catholic country.

"And the man is a cad;--is he?" asked the duke.

"A Bohemian Jew, duke,--an impostor who has come over here to make a fortune. We hear that he has a wife in Prague, and probably two or three elsewhere. But he has got poor little Lizzie Eustace and all her money into his grasp, and they who know him say that he's likely to keep it."

"Dear, dear, dear!"

"Barrington says that the best spec he knows out, for a younger son, would be to go to Prague for the former wife, and bring her back with evidence of the marriage. The poor little woman could not fail of being grateful to the hero who would liberate her."

"Dear, dear, dear!" said the duke. "And the diamonds never turned up after all. I think that was a pity, because I knew the late man's father very well. We used to be together a good deal at one time. He had a fine property, and we used to live--but I can't just tell you how we used to live. He, he, he!"

"You had better tell us nothing about it, duke," said Madame Max.

The affairs of our heroine were again discussed that evening in another part of the Priory. They were in the billiard-room in the evening, and Mr. Bonteen was inveighing against the inadequacy of the law as it had been brought to bear against the sinners who, between them, had succeeded in making away with the Eustace diamonds. "It was a most unworthy conclusion to such a plot," he said. "It always happens that they catch the small fry, and let the large fish escape."

"Whom did you specially want to catch?" asked Lady Glencora.

"Lady Eustace, and Lord George de Bruce Carruthers,--as he calls himself."

"I quite agree with you, Mr. Bonteen, that it would be very nice to send the brother of a marquis to Botany Bay, or wherever they go now; and that it would do a deal of good to have the widow of a baronet locked up in the Penitentiary; but you see, if they didn't happen to be guilty, it would be almost a shame to punish them for the sake of the example."

"They ought to have been guilty," said Barrington Erle.

"They were guilty," protested Mr. Bonteen.

Mr. Palliser was enjoying ten minutes of recreation before he went back to his letters. "I can't say that I attended to the case very closely," he observed, "and perhaps, therefore, I am not ent.i.tled to speak about it."

"If people only spoke about what they attended to, how very little there would be to say,--eh, Mr. Bonteen?" This observation came, of course, from Lady Glencora.

"But as far as I could hear," continued Mr. Palliser, "Lord George Carruthers cannot possibly have had anything to do with it. It was a stupid mistake on the part of the police."

"I'm not quite so sure, Mr. Palliser," said Bonteen.

"I know Coldfoot told me so." Now Sir Harry Coldfoot was at this time Secretary of State for the Home affairs, and in a matter of such importance of course had an opinion of his own.

"We all know that he had money dealings with Benjamin, the Jew," said Mrs. Bonteen.

"Why didn't he come forward as a witness when he was summoned?" asked Mr. Bonteen triumphantly. "And as for the woman, does anybody mean to say that she should not have been indicted for perjury?"

"The woman, as you are pleased to call her, is my particular friend,"

said Lady Glencora. When Lady Glencora made any such statement as this,--and she often did make such statements,--no one dared to answer her. It was understood that Lady Glencora was not to be snubbed, though she was very much given to snubbing others. She had attained this position for herself by a mixture of beauty, rank, wealth, and courage;--but the courage had, of the four, been her greatest mainstay.

Then Lord Chiltern, who was playing billiards with Barrington Erle, rapped his cue down on the floor, and made a speech. "I never was so sick of anything in my life as I am of Lady Eustace. People have talked about her now for the last six months."

"Only three months, Lord Chiltern," said Lady Glencora, in a tone of rebuke.

"And all that I can hear of her is, that she has told a lot of lies and lost a necklace."

"When Lady Chiltern loses a necklace worth ten thousand pounds there will be talk of her," said Lady Glencora.

At that moment Madame Max Goesler entered the room and whispered a word to the hostess. She had just come from the duke, who could not bear the racket of the billiard-room. "Wants to go to bed, does he?

Very well. I'll go to him."

"He seems to be quite fatigued with his fascination about Lady Eustace."

"I call that woman a perfect G.o.d-send. What should we have done without her?" This Lady Glencora said almost to herself as she prepared to join the duke. The duke had only one more observation to make before he retired for the night. "I'm afraid, you know, that your friend hasn't what I call a good time before her, Glencora."

In this opinion of the Duke of Omnium, the readers of this story will perhaps agree.