o as much, Duchess, if you were free as I am. It isn't a
matter of love at all. It's womanly enthusiasm for the cause one has
taken up."

"I'm quite as enthusiastic,--only I shouldn't like to go to Prague in
June."

"I'd go to Siberia in January if I could find out that that horrid
man really committed the murder."

"Who are going with you?"

"We shall be quite a company. We have got a detective policeman, and
an interpreter who understands Czech and German to go about with the
policeman, and a lawyer's clerk, and there will be my own maid."

"Everybody will know all about it before you get there."

"We are not to go quite together. The policeman and the interpreter
are to form one party, and I and my maid another. The poor clerk is
to be alone. If they get the coat, of course you'll telegraph to me."

"Who is to have the coat?"

"I suppose they'll take it to Mr. Wickerby. He says he doesn't want
it,--that it would do no good. But I think that if we could show that
the man might very easily have been out of the house,--that he had
certainly provided himself with means of getting out of the house
secretly,--the coat would be of service. I am going at any rate; and
shall be in Paris to-morrow morning."

"I think it very grand of you, my dear; and for your sake I hope
he may live to be Prime Minister. Perhaps, after all, he may give
Plantagenet his 'Garter.'"

When the old Duke died, a Garter became vacant, and had of course
fallen to the gift of Mr. Gresham. The Duchess had expected that it
would be continued in the family, as had been the Lieutenancy of
Barsetshire, which also had been held by the old Duke. But the Garter
had been given to Lord Cantrip, and the Duchess was sore. With all
her Radical propensities and inclination to laugh at dukes and
marquises, she thought very much of Garters and Lieutenancies;--but
her husband would not think of them at all, and hence there were
words between them. The Duchess had declared that the Duke should
insist on having the Garter. "These are things that men do not ask
for," the Duke had said.

"Don't tell me, Plantagenet, about not asking. Everybody asks for
everything nowadays."

"Your everybody is not correct, Glencora. I never yet asked for
anything,--and never shall. No honour has any value in my eyes unless
it comes unasked." Thereupon it was that the Duchess now suggested
that Phineas Finn, when Prime Minister, might perhaps bestow a Garter
upon her husban