sk no questions, my dear, and you'll hear no stories. You haven't
been married twice without knowing that women can't have everything
smooth. He only said one word. It was rather hard to bear, but it has
passed away."

That afternoon there was quite a crowd. Among the first comers were
Mr. and Mrs. Roby, and Mr. and Mrs. Rattler. And there were Sir
Orlando and Lady Drought, Lord Ramsden, and Sir Timothy Beeswax.
These gentlemen with their wives represented, for the time, the
Ministry of which the Duke was the head, and had been asked in order
that their fealty and submission might be thus riveted. There were
also there Mr. and Mrs. Boffin, with Lord Thrift and his daughter
Angelica, who had belonged to former Ministries,--one on the Liberal
and the other on the Conservative side,--and who were now among the
Duke's guests, in order that they and others might see how wide the
Duke wished to open his hands. And there was our friend Ferdinand
Lopez, who had certainly made the best use of his opportunities in
securing for himself so great a social advantage as an invitation to
Gatherum Castle. How could any father, who was simply a barrister,
refuse to receive as his son-in-law a man who had been a guest at the
Duke of Omnium's country house? And then there were certain people
from the neighbourhood;--Frank Gresham of Greshamsbury, with his wife
and daughter, the master of the hounds in those parts, a rich squire
of old blood, and head of the family to which one of the aspirant
Prime Ministers of the day belonged. And Lord Chiltern, another
master of fox hounds, two counties off,--and also an old friend of
ours,--had been asked to meet him, and had brought his wife. And
there was Lady Rosina De Courcy, an old maid, the sister of the
present Earl De Courcy, who lived not far off and had been accustomed
to come to Gatherum Castle on state occasions for the last thirty
years,--the only relic in those parts of a family which had lived
there for many years in great pride of place; for her elder brother,
the Earl, was a ruined man, and her younger brothers were living with
their wives abroad, and her sisters had married, rather lowly in the
world, and her mother now was dead, and Lady Rosina lived alone in
a little cottage outside the old park palings, and still held fast
within her bosom all the old pride of the De Courcys. And then
there were Captain Gunner and Major Pountney, two middle-aged young
men, presumably belonging to