n way to the repudiation. All her grand
aspirations were at an end. All her triumphs were over. And worse
than that, there was present to her a conviction that she never had
really triumphed. There never had come the happy moment in which she
had felt herself to be dominant over other women. She had toiled and
struggled, she had battled and occasionally submitted; and yet there
was present to her a feeling that she had stood higher in public
estimation as Lady Glencora Palliser,--whose position had been all
her own and had not depended on her husband,--than now she had done
as Duchess of Omnium, and wife of the Prime Minister of England. She
had meant to be something, she knew not what, greater than had been
the wives of other Prime Ministers and other Dukes; and now she
felt that in her failure she had been almost ridiculous. And the
failure, she thought, had been his,--or hers,--rather than that of
circumstances. If he had been less scrupulous and more persistent
it might have been different,--or if she had been more discreet.
Sometimes she felt her own failing so violently as to acquit him
almost entirely. At other times she was almost beside herself with
anger because all her losses seemed to have arisen from want of
stubbornness on his part. When he had told her that he and his
followers had determined to resign because they had beaten their foes
by a majority only of nine, she took it into her head that he was in
fault. Why should he go while his supporters were more numerous than
his opponents? It was useless to bid him think it over again. Though
she was far from understanding all the circumstances of the game,
she did know that he could not remain after having arranged with
his colleagues that he would go. So she became cross and sullen;
and while he was going to Windsor and back and setting his house
in order, and preparing the way for his successor,--whoever that
successor might be,--she was moody and silent, dreaming over some
impossible condition of things in accordance with which he might have
remained Prime Minister--almost for ever.

On the Sunday after the fatal division,--the division which the
Duchess would not allow to have been fatal,--she came across him
somewhere in the house. She had hardly spoken to him since he had
come into her room that night and told her that all was over. She had
said that she was unwell and had kept out of sight; and he had been
here and there, between Windsor and the Tre