requent and as large as ever. Indeed it was all party with
her. The Duchess possessed a pretty little villa down at Richmond, on
the river, called The Horns, and gave parties there when there were
none in London. She had picnics, and flower parties, and tea parties,
and afternoons, and evenings, on the lawn,--till half London was
always on its way to Richmond or back again. How she worked! And yet
from day to day she swore that the world was ungrateful, and that she
would work no more! I think that the world was ungrateful. Everybody
went. She was so far successful that nobody thought of despising
her parties. It was quite the thing to go to the Duchess's, whether
at Richmond or in London. But people abused her and laughed at
her. They said that she intrigued to get political support for her
husband,--and, worse than that, they said that she failed. She
did not fail altogether. The world was not taken captive as she
had intended. Young members of Parliament did not become hotly
enthusiastic in support of her and her husband as she had hoped that
they would do. She had not become an institution of granite, as her
dreams had fondly told her might be possible;--for there had been
moments in which she had almost thought that she could rule England
by giving dinner and supper parties, by ices and champagne. But in a
dull, phlegmatic way, they who ate the ices and drank the champagne
were true to her. There was a feeling abroad that "Glencora" was
a "good sort of fellow" and ought to be supported. And when the
ridicule became too strong, or the abuse too sharp, men would take
up the cudgels for her, and fight her battles;--a little too openly,
perhaps, as they would do it under her eyes, and in her hearing, and
would tell her what they had done, mistaking on such occasions her
good humour for sympathy. There was just enough of success to prevent
that abandonment of her project which she so often threatened, but
not enough to make her triumphant. She was too clever not to see
that she was ridiculed. She knew that men called her Glencora among
themselves. She was herself quite alive to the fact that she herself
was wanting in dignity, and that with all the means at her disposal,
with all her courage and all her talent, she did not quite play the
part of the really great lady. But she did not fail to tell herself
that labour continued would at last be successful, and she was strong
to bear the buffets of the ill-natured. She did