at I shall call again as soon
as ever she is Mrs. Fletcher, though I don't think she repaid either
of the last two visits I made her."

"You must make excuses for her, Duchess."

"Of course. I know. After all she is a most fortunate woman. And as
for you,--I regard you as a hero among lovers."

"I'm getting used to it," she said one day to Mrs. Finn.

"Of course you'll get used to it. We get used to anything that chance
sends us in a marvellously short time."

"What I mean is that I can go to bed, and sleep, and get up and eat
my meals without missing the sound of the trumpets so much as I did
at first. I remember hearing of people who lived in a mill, and
couldn't sleep when the mill stopped. It was like that with me when
our mill stopped at first. I had got myself so used to the excitement
of it, that I could hardly live without it."

"You might have all the excitement still, if you pleased. You need
not be dead to politics because your husband is not Prime Minister."

"No; never again,--unless he should come back. If any one had told me
ten years ago that I should have taken an interest in this or that
man being in the Government, I should have laughed him to scorn. It
did not seem possible to me then that I should care what became of
such men as Sir Timothy Beeswax and Mr. Roby. But I did get to be
anxious about it when Plantagenet was shifted from one office to
another."

"Of course you did. Do you think I am not anxious about Phineas?"

"But when he became Prime Minister, I gave myself up to it
altogether. I shall never forget what I felt when he came to me and
told me that perhaps it might be so;--but told me also that he would
escape from it if it were possible. I was the Lady Macbeth of the
occasion all over;--whereas he was so scrupulous, so burdened with
conscience! As for me, I would have taken it by any means. Then it
was that the old Duke played the part of the three witches to a
nicety. Well, there hasn't been any absolute murder, and I haven't
quite gone mad."

"Nor need you be afraid, though all the woods of Gatherum should come
to Matching."

"God forbid! I will never see anything of Gatherum again. What annoys
me most is, and always was, that he wouldn't understand what I felt
about it;--how proud I was that he should be Prime Minister, how
anxious that he should be great and noble in his office;--how I
worked for him, and not at all for any pleasure of my own."

"I think he did feel i