have been much better. Why shouldn't Adelaide Palliser have it?"

"How on earth should I give Adelaide Palliser what doesn't belong to
me? If you choose to make her a present, you can, but such a sum as
that would, I should say, be out of the question."

The Duchess had achieved quite as much as she had anticipated. She
knew her husband well, and was aware that she couldn't carry her
point at once. To her mind it was "all nonsense" his saying that the
money was not his. If Madame Goesler wouldn't take it, it must be
his; and nobody could make a woman take money if she did not choose.
Adelaide Palliser was the Duke's first cousin, and it was intolerable
that the Duke's first cousin should be unable to marry because she
would have nothing to live upon. It became, at least, intolerable
as soon as the Duchess had taken it into her head to like the first
cousin. No doubt there were other first cousins as badly off, or
perhaps worse, as to whom the Duchess would care nothing whether
they were rich or poor,--married or single; but then they were first
cousins who had not had the advantage of interesting the Duchess.

"My dear," said the Duchess to her friend, Madame Goesler, "you know
all about those Maules?"

"What makes you ask?"

"But you do?"

"I know something about one of them," said Madame Goesler. Now, as
it happened, Mr. Maule, senior, had on that very day asked Madame
Goesler to share her lot with his, and the request had been--almost
indignantly, refused. The general theory that the wooing of widows
should be quick had, perhaps, misled Mr. Maule. Perhaps he did not
think that the wooing had been quick. He had visited Park Lane with
the object of making his little proposition once before, and had
then been stopped in his course by the consternation occasioned by
the arrest of Phineas Finn. He had waited till Phineas had been
acquitted, and had then resolved to try his luck. He had heard of the
lady's journey to Prague, and was acquainted of course with those
rumours which too freely connected the name of our hero with that of
the lady. But rumours are often false, and a lady may go to Prague on
a gentleman's behalf without intending to marry him. All the women in
London were at present more or less in love with the man who had been
accused of murder, and the fantasy of Madame Goesler might be only as
the fantasy of others. And then, rumour also said that Phineas Finn
intended to marry Lady Laura Kennedy. At an