But there was no room for action
this year in reference to Irish Tenant-right, and therefore any deep
consideration of that discomfort might be legitimately postponed. If
he did by chance open his mouth on the subject to Mr. Monk, even Mr.
Monk discouraged him.
In the early days of July, when the weather was very hot, and people
were beginning to complain of the Thames, and members were becoming
thirsty after grouse, and the remaining days of parliamentary work
were being counted up, there came to him news,--news that was soon
known throughout the fashionable world,--that the Duke of Omnium was
going to give a garden party at a certain villa residence on the
banks of the Thames above Richmond. It was to be such a garden party
as had never been seen before. And it would be the more remarkable
because the Duke had never been known to do such a thing. The villa
was called The Horns, and had, indeed, been given by the Duke to
Lady Glencora on her marriage; but the party was to be the Duke's
party, and The Horns, with all its gardens, conservatories, lawns,
shrubberies, paddocks, boat-houses, and boats, was to be made bright
and beautiful for the occasion. Scores of workmen were about the
place through the three first weeks of July. The world at large did
not at all know why the Duke was doing so unwonted a thing,--why
he should undertake so new a trouble.
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