The Duchess had heard all about Gerard Maule and the engagement. She
always did hear all about everything. And on this evening she asked a
question or two from Lady Chiltern. "Do you know," she said, "I have
an appointment to-morrow with your husband?"
"I did not know;--but I won't interfere to prevent it, now you are
generous enough to tell me."
"I wish you would, because I don't know what to say to him. He is to
come about that horrid wood, where the foxes won't get themselves
born and bred as foxes ought to do. How can I help it? I'd send down
a whole Lying-in Hospital for the foxes if I thought that that would
do any good."
"Lord Chiltern thinks it's the shooting."
"But where is a person to shoot if he mayn't shoot in his own woods?
Not that the Duke cares about the shooting for himself. He could not
hit a pheasant sitting on a haystack, and wouldn't know one if he saw
it. And he'd rather that there wasn't such a thing as a pheasant in
the world. He cares for nothing but farthings. But what is a man to
do? Or, rather, what is a woman to do?--for he tells me that I must
settle it.
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