So the London season commenced, progressed, and was consumed; and still Alice heard nothing more of her friend and cousin Lady Glencora.
But this had troubled her not at all.

A chance circumstance, the story of which she had told to no one, had given her a short intimacy with this fair child of the gold mines, but she had felt that they two could not live together in habits of much intimacy.

She had, when thinking of the young bride, only thought of that wild love episode in the girl's life.

It had been strange to her that she should in one week have listened to the most passionate protestations from her friend of love for one man, and then have been told in the next that another man was to be her friend's husband! But she reflected that her own career was much the same,--only with the interval of some longer time.
But her own career was not the same.

Glencora had married Mr Palliser,--had married him without pausing to doubt;--but Alice had gone on doubting till at last she had resolved that she would not marry Mr Grey.