t believed."

"You were always in earnest, Oswald."

"I was."

"To the extent of the three minutes which you allowed yourself. It
sufficed, however;--did it not? You are glad you persevered?"

"What fools women are."

"Never mind that. Say you are glad. I like you to tell me so. Let me
be a fool if I will."

"What made you so obstinate?"

"I don't know. I never could tell. It wasn't that I didn't dote upon
you, and think about you, and feel quite sure that there never could
be any other one than you."

"I've no doubt it was all right;--only you very nearly made me shoot
a fellow, and now I've got to find horses for him. I wonder whether
he could ride Dandolo?"

"Don't put him up on anything very hard."

"Why not? His wife is dead, and he hasn't got a child, nor yet an
acre of property. I don't know who is entitled to break his neck if
he is not. And Dandolo is as good a horse as there is in the stable,
if you can once get him to go. Mind, I have to start to-morrow at
nine, for it's all eighteen miles." And so the Master of the Brake
Hounds took himself to his repose.

Lady Laura Kennedy had written to Barrington Erle respecting her
friend's political interests, and to her sister-in-law, Lady
Chiltern, as to his social comfort. She could not bear to think that
he should be left alone in London till Parliament should meet, and
had therefore appealed to Lady Chiltern as to the memory of many past
events. The appeal had been unnecessary and superfluous. It cannot
be said that Phineas and his affairs were matters of as close an
interest to Lady Chiltern as to Lady Laura. If any woman loved her
husband beyond all things Lord Chiltern's wife did, and ever had done
so. But there had been a tenderness in regard to the young Irish
Member of Parliament, which Violet Effingham had in old days shared
with Lady Laura, and which made her now think that all good things
should be done for him. She believed him to be addicted to hunting,
and therefore horses must be provided for him. He was a widower, and
she remembered of old that he was fond of pretty women, and she knew
that in coming days he might probably want money;--and therefore she
had asked Madame Max Goesler to spend a fortnight at Harrington Hall.
Madame Max Goesler and Phineas Finn had been acquainted before, as
Lady Chiltern was well aware. But perhaps Lady Chiltern, when she
summoned Madame Max into the country, did not know how close the
acquaintance had b