"Then we'll remain at Matching. You don't hate Matching."
"Ah dear! There are memories there too. But you like it."
"My books are there."
"Blue-books," said the Duchess.
"And there is plenty of room if you wish to have friends."
"I suppose we must have somebody. You can't live without your Mentor."
"You can ask whom you please," he said almost fretfully.
"Lady Rosina, of course," suggested the Duchess. Then he turned to the papers before him and wouldn't say another word. The matter ended in a party much as usual being collected at Matching about the middle of October,—Telemachus having spent the early part of the autumn with Mentor at Long Royston. There might perhaps be a dozen guests in the house, and among them of course were Phineas Finn and his wife. And Mr. Grey was there, having come back from his eastern mission,—whose unfortunate abandonment of his seat at Silverbridge had caused so many troubles,—and Mrs. Grey, who in days now long passed had been almost as necessary to Lady Glencora as was now her later friend Mrs. Finn,—and the Cantrips, and for a short time the St. Bungays. But Lady Rosina De Courcy on this occasion was not present. There were few there whom my patient readers have not seen at Matching before; but among those few was Arthur Fletcher.
"So it is to be," said the Duchess to the member for Silverbridge one morning. She had by this time become intimate with "her member," as she would sometimes call him in joke, and had concerned herself much as to his matrimonial prospects.
"Yes, Duchess; it is to be,—unless some unforeseen circumstance should arise."