“What a fool I have been to have that woman in the house,” said the countess, before the door was closed behind her guest’s back.

“Indeed you have,” said Lady Julia, screaming back through the passage.  Then there was a long silence, then a suppressed titter, and after that a loud laugh.

“Oh, mamma, what shall we do?” said Lady Amelia.

“Do!” said Margaretta; “why should we do anything?  She has heard the truth for once in her life.”

“Dear Lady Dumbello, what will you think of us?” said the countess, turning round to another guest, who was also just about to depart.  “Did any one ever know such a woman before?”

“I think she’s very nice,” said Lady Dumbello, smiling.

“I can’t quite agree with you there,” said Lady Clandidlem.  “But I do believe she means to do her best.  She is very charitable, and all that sort of thing.”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Rosina.  “I asked her for a subscription to the mission for putting down the Papists in the west of Ireland, and she refused me point-blank.”

“Now, my dear, if you’re quite ready,” said Lord Dumbello, coming into the room.  Then there was another departure; but on this occasion the countess waited till the doors were shut, and the retreating footsteps were no longer heard.  “Have you observed,” said she to Lady Clandidlem, “that she has not held her head up since Mr Palliser went away?”

“Indeed I have,” said Lady Clandidlem.  “As for poor Dumbello, he’s the blindest creature I ever saw in my life.”

“We shall hear of something before next May,” said Lady de Courcy, shaking her head; “but for all that she’ll never be Duchess of Omnium.”

“I wonder what your mamma will say of me when I go away to-morrow,” said Lady Clandidlem to Margaretta, as they walked across the hall together.

“She won’t say that you are going to run away with any gentleman,” said Margaretta.

“At any rate not with the earl,” said Lady Clandidlem.  “Ha, ha, ha!  Well, we are all very good-natured, are we not?  The best is that it means nothing.”

Thus by degrees all the guests went, and the family of the de Courcys was left to the bliss of their own domestic circle.  This, we may presume, was not without its charms, seeing that there were so many feelings in common between the mother and her children.  There were drawbacks to it, no doubt, arising perhaps chiefly from the earl’s bodily infirmities.  “When your father speaks to me,” said Mrs George to her husband, “he puts me in such a shiver that I cannot open my mouth to answer him.”

“You should stand up to him,” said George.  “He can’t hurt you, you know.  Your money’s your own; and if I’m ever to be the heir, it won’t be by his doing.”

“But he gnashes his teeth at me.”

“You shouldn’t care for that, if he don’t bite.  He used to gnash them at me; and when I had to ask him for money I didn’t like it; but now I don’t mind him a bit.  He threw the peerage at me one day, but it didn’t go within a yard of my head.”