."

"Barrington says that they will certainly re-elect you."

"We shall see. You may be sure at any rate of this,--that I shall
never ask them to do so. Things seem to be so different now from what
they did. I don't care for the seat. It all seems to be a bore and a
trouble. What does it matter who sits in Parliament? The fight goes
on just the same. The same falsehoods are acted. The same mock truths
are spoken. The same wrong reasons are given. The same personal
motives are at work."

"And yet, of all believers in Parliament, you used to be the most
faithful."

"One has time to think of things, Lady Laura, when one lies in
Newgate. It seems to me to be an eternity of time since they locked
me up. And as for that trial, which they tell me lasted a week, I
look back at it till the beginning is so distant that I can hardly
remember it. But I have resolved that I will never talk of it again.
Lady Chiltern is out probably."

"Yes;--she and Oswald are dining with the Baldocks."

"She is well?"

"Yes;--and most anxious to see you. Will you go to their place in
September?"

He had almost made up his mind that if he went anywhere in September
he would go to Matching Priory, accepting the offer of the Duchess
of Omnium; but he did not dare to say so to Lady Laura, because she
would have known that Madame Goesler also would be there. And he had
not as yet accepted the invitation, and was still in doubt whether he
would not escape by himself instead of attempting to return into the
grooves of society. "I think not;--I am hardly as yet sufficiently
master of myself to know what I shall do."

"They will be much disappointed."

"And you?--what will you do?"

"I shall not go there. I am told that I ought to visit Loughlinter,
and I suppose I shall. Oswald has promised to go down with me before
the end of the month, but he will not remain above a day or two."

"And your father?"

"We shall leave him at Saulsby. I cannot look it all in the face
yet. It is not possible that I should remain all alone in that great
house. The people all around would hate and despise me. I think
Violet will come down with me, but of course she cannot remain there.
Oswald must go to Harrington because of the hunting. It has become
the business of his life. And she must go with him."

"You will return to Saulsby."

"I cannot say. They seem to think that I should live at
Loughlinter;--but I cannot live there alone."

He soon took leave