ll about everything. And on this evening she asked a
question or two from Lady Chiltern. "Do you know," she said, "I have
an appointment to-morrow with your husband?"

"I did not know;--but I won't interfere to prevent it, now you are
generous enough to tell me."

"I wish you would, because I don't know what to say to him. He is to
come about that horrid wood, where the foxes won't get themselves
born and bred as foxes ought to do. How can I help it? I'd send down
a whole Lying-in Hospital for the foxes if I thought that that would
do any good."

"Lord Chiltern thinks it's the shooting."

"But where is a person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods?
Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not
hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw
it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in
the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to
do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?--for he tells me that I must
settle it."

"Lord Chiltern says that Mr. Fothergill has the foxes destroyed. I
suppose Mr. Fothergill may do as he pleases if the Duke gives him
permission."

"I hate Mr. Fothergill, if that'll do any good," said the Duchess;
"and we wish we could get rid of him altogether. But that, you know,
is impossible. When one has an old man on one's shoulders one never
can get rid of him. He is my incubus; and then you see Trumpeton Wood
is such a long way from us at Matching that I can't say I want the
shooting for myself. And I never go to Gatherum if I can help it.
Suppose we made out that the Duke wanted to let the shooting?"

"Lord Chiltern would take it at once."

"But the Duke wouldn't really let it, you know. I'll lay awake at
night and think about it. And now tell me about Adelaide Palliser. Is
she to be married?"

"I hope so,--sooner or later."

"There's a quarrel or something;--isn't there? She's the Duke's first
cousin, and we should be so sorry that things shouldn't go pleasantly
with her. And she's a very good-looking girl, too. Would she like to
come down to Matching?"

"She has some idea of going back to Italy."

"And leaving her lover behind her! Oh, dear, that will be very bad.
She'd much better come to Matching, and then I'd ask the man to come
too. Mr. Maud, isn't he?"

"Gerard Maule."

"Ah, yes; Maule. If it's the kind of thing that ought to be, I'd
manage it in a week. If you get a young man down i