Then she had come again,--had come daily while the sagacious heads were at work,--and Alice in her trouble had been a comfort to her.
But the sagacious heads were victorious, as we know, and Lady Glencora M'Cluskie became Lady Glencora Palliser with all the propriety in the world, instead of becoming wife to poor Burgo, with all imaginable impropriety.

And then she wrote a letter to Alice, very short and rather sad; but still with a certain sweetness in it.
"She had been counselled that it was not fitting for her to love as she had thought to love, and she had resolved to give up her dream.
Her cousin Alice, she knew, would respect her secret.

She was going to become the wife of the best man, she thought, in all the world; and it should be the one care of her life to make him happy." She said not a word in all her letter of loving this newly found lord.
"She was to be married at once.

Would Alice be one among the bevy of bridesmaids who were to grace the ceremony ?" Alice wished her joy heartily,--"heartily," she said, but had declined that office of bridesmaid.

She did not wish to undergo the cold looks of the Lady Julias and Lady Janes who all would know each other, but none of whom would know her.