t me. If, looking on
from a distance, I can see you succeed, I shall try once
more to care for the questions of the day. When you have
succeeded, as I know you will, it will be some consolation
to me to think that I also helped a little.

I suppose I must not ask you to come to Loughlinter? But
you will know best. If you will do so I shall care nothing
for what any one may say. Oswald hardly mentions your
name in my hearing, and of course I know of what he is
thinking. When I am with him I am afraid of him, because
it would add infinitely to my grief were I driven to
quarrel with him; but I am my own mistress as much as he
is his own master, and I will not regulate my conduct by
his wishes. If you please to come you will be welcome as
the flowers in May. Ah, how weak are such words in giving
any idea of the joy with which I should see you!

God bless you, Phineas.

Your most affectionate friend,

LAURA KENNEDY.

Write to me at Loughlinter. I shall long to hear that you
have taken your seat immediately on your re-election. Pray
do not lose a day. I am sure that all your friends will
advise you as I do.

Throughout her whole letter she was struggling to tell him once again
of her love, and yet to do it in some way of which she need not be
ashamed. It was not till she had come to the last words that she
could force her pen to speak of her affection, and then the words did
not come freely as she would have had them. She knew that he would
not come to Loughlinter. She felt that were he to do so he could come
only as a suitor for her hand, and that such a suit, in these early
days of her widowhood, carried on in her late husband's house, would
be held to be disgraceful. As regarded herself, she would have faced
all that for the sake of the thing to be attained. But she knew
that he would not come. He had become wise by experience, and would
perceive the result of such coming,--and would avoid it. His answer
to her letter reached Loughlinter before she did:--

Great Marlborough Street,
Monday night.

DEAR LADY LAURA,--

I should have called in the Square last night, only that
I feel that Lady Chiltern must be weary of the woes of so
doleful a person as myself. I dined and spent the evening
with the Lows, and was quite aware that I disgraced myself
with them by being perpetually lachrymose. As a rule I do
not think t