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He began to doubt whether a country house, where all the people were thrown together, was the best place in the world for such manoeuvring. Lady Dumbello was very handsome, and he liked to look at her, but he could not find any subject on which to interest her in that drawing-room at Hartlebury.
It was not only that he would be glad to see the Gazebees, or glad to stay in the same house with that great master in the high art of fashionable life, Lady Dumbello, or glad to renew his friendship with the Ladies Margaretta and Alexandrina.
Lord Dumbello had frowned latterly when his eyes fell on the tall figure of the duke's heir; and the duke himself, that potentate, generally so mighty in his silence, the duke himself had spoken. Lady de Courcy and Lady Clandidlem were, both of them, absolutely certain that the thing had been fully arranged.
After that, he found himself in the back part of the drawing-room, away from the elder people, standing with Lady Alexandrina, with Miss Gresham, a cousin of the de Courcys, and sundry other of the younger portion of the assembled community. "So you have Lady Dumbello here?" said Crosbie. "Oh, yes; the dear creature!" said Lady Margaretta. "It was so good of her to come, you know."
Lord Dumbello had remained silent one whole evening in London with ineffable disgust, because Lord Lufton had been rather particular in his attentions; but then Lord Dumbello's muteness was his most eloquent mode of expression. Both Lady Hartletop and Mrs. Grantly, when they saw him, knew very well what he meant. But that match would not exactly have suited Mrs. Grantly's views.
It is true that rumour went on to say that Lord Dumbello was about to form close connexions with Barsetshire. He was on the eve of marrying a young lady, from the other division indeed, and was now engaged, so it was said, in completing arrangements with the Government for the purchase of that noble Crown property usually known as the Chace of Chaldicotes.
Griselda did not seem to be in any way annoyed by this absence of the usual sign of love, and went on steadily with her great duties. "Nothing," as she told her mother, "had been said about writing, and, therefore, she did not expect it." But the archdeacon was not quite at his ease. "Keep Dumbello up to his p's and q's, you know," a friend of his had whispered to him at his club. By heavens, yes.
Tickler had been given to her Olivia, Lord Dumbello had been taken away from the archdeacon's Griselda. The happy couple then went in Mrs. Proudie's carriage to the nearest railway station but one, and from thence proceeded to Malvern, and there spent the honeymoon. And a great comfort it was, I am sure, to Mrs.
Proudie's, and it did so come to pass that Griselda was seated at a corner of a sofa close to which was a vacant space in which his lordship could "group himself." They had not been long there before Lord Dumbello did group himself. "Fine day," he said, coming up and occupying the vacant position by Miss Grantly's elbow. "We were driving to-day, and we thought it rather cold," said Griselda.
There had not been much that was dangerous in the conversation between Mr Palliser and Lady Dumbello, but I cannot say the same as to that which was going on at the same moment between Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina. She, as I have said, walked away in almost open dudgeon when Lady Julia recommenced her attack about poor Lily, nor did she return to the general circle during the evening.
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