'I know all about it,' said the Duchess, smiling.She generally did contrive to learn 'all about' people whom she chose to take by the hand.'We have a Hertfordshire gentleman sitting for,--Imust not say our borough of Silverbridge.' She was anxious to make some allusion to Arthur Fletcher, but it was difficult to travel on that Silverbridge ground, as Lopez had been her chosen candidate when she still wished to claim the borough as an appanage of the Palliser family.Emily, however, kept her countenance and did not show by any sign that her thoughts were running in that direction.'And though we don't presume to regard Mr Fletcher,' continued the Duchess, 'as in any way connected with our local interests, he has always supported the Duke, and I hope has become a friend of ours.I think he is a neighbour of yours in that county.'

'Oh yes.My cousin is married to his brother.'

'I knew there was something of that kind.He told me that there was some close alliance.' The Duchess as she looked at the woman to whom she wanted to be kind did not as yet dare to express a wish that there might be at some no very distant time a closer alliance.She had come there intending to do so; and had still some hope that she might do it before the interview was over.

But at any rate she would not do it yet.'Have I not heard,' she said, 'something of another marriage?'

'My brother is going to marry his cousin, Sir Alured Wharton's daughter.'

'Ah;--I though it had been one of the Fletchers.It was our member who told me, and spoke as if they were all his very dear friends.'

'They are our very dear friends,--very.' Poor Emily still didn't know whether to call her Duchess, my Lady, or Grace,--and yet she felt the need of calling her by some special name.

'Exactly.I supposed it was so.They tell me Mr Fletcher will become quite a favourite of the House.At this present moment nobody knows on which side anybody is going to sit to-morrow.It may be that Mr Fletcher will become the dire enemy of all the Duke's friends.'

'I hope not.'

'Of course I'm speaking of political enemies.Political enemies are often the best friends in the world; and I can assure you from my own experience that political friends are often the bitterest enemies.I never hated any people so much as some of our supporters.' The Duchess made a grimace, and Emily could not refrain from smiling.'Yes, indeed.There's an old saying that misfortune makes strange bedfellows, but political friendship makes stranger alliances than misfortune.Perhaps you have never heard of Sir Timothy Beeswax.'

'Never.'

'Well;--don't.But, as I was saying, there is no knowing who may support whom now.If I were asked who would be Prime Minister to-morrow, I should take half-dozen names and shake them in a bag.'

'Is it not settled then?'

'Settled! No, indeed.Nothing is settled.' At that moment indeed everything was settled, though the Duchess did not know it.'And so we none of us can tell how Mr Fletcher may stand with us when things are arranged.I suppose he calls himself a Conservative?'

'Oh, yes!'

'All the Whartons are, I suppose, Conservatives,--and all the Fletchers.'

'Very nearly.Papa calls himself a Tory.'

'A very much better name to my thinking.We are all Whigs, of course.A Palliser who is not a Whig would be held to have disgraced himself for ever.Are not politics odd? A few years ago I only barely knew what the word meant, and that not correctly.I have been so eager about it, that there hardly seems to be anything else worth living for.I suppose it's wrong, but a state of pugnacity seems to me the greatest bliss which we can reach here on earth.'

'I shouldn't like to be always fighting.'

'That's because you haven't known Sir Timothy Beeswax and two or three other gentlemen whom I could name.The day will come, Idare say, when you will care for politics.'

Emily was about to answer, hardly knowing what to say, when the door was opened and Mrs Roby came into the room.The lady was not announced and Emily had heard no knock at the door.She was forced to go through some ceremony of introduction.'This is my aunt, Mrs Roby,' she said, 'Aunt Harriet, the Duchess of Omnium.'