onest now in voting with them, apparently in opposition to the
pledges he had given at Tankerville. But he knew also that it would
behove him to abstain from speaking of himself unless he could do so
in close reference to some point specially in dispute between the two
parties. When he returned to eat a mutton chop at Great Marlborough
Street at three o'clock he was painfully conscious that all his
morning had been wasted. He had allowed his mind to run revel,
instead of tying it down to the formation of sentences and
construction of arguments.

He entered the House with the Speaker at four o'clock, and took his
seat without uttering a word to any man. He seemed to be more than
ever disjoined from his party. Hitherto, since he had been seated
by the Judge's order, the former companions of his Parliamentary
life,--the old men whom he had used to know,--had to a certain degree
admitted him among them. Many of them sat on the front Opposition
bench, whereas he, as a matter of course, had seated himself behind.
But he had very frequently found himself next to some man who had
held office and was living in the hope of holding it again, and had
felt himself to be in some sort recognised as an aspirant. Now it
seemed to him that it was otherwise. He did not doubt but that
Bonteen had shown the correspondence to his friends, and that the
Ratlers and Erles had conceded that he, Phineas, was put out of
court by it. He sat doggedly still, at the end of a bench behind Mr.
Gresham, and close to the gangway. When Mr. Gresham entered the House
he was received with much cheering; but Phineas did not join in the
cheer. He was studious to avoid any personal recognition of the
future giver-away of places, though they two were close together; and
he then fancied that Mr. Gresham had specially and most ungraciously
abstained from any recognition of him. Mr. Monk, who sat near him,
spoke a kind word to him. "I shan't be very long," said Phineas; "not
above twenty minutes, I should think." He was able to assume an air
of indifference, and yet at the moment he heartily wished himself
back in Dublin. It was not now that he feared the task immediately
before him, but that he was overcome by the feeling of general
failure which had come upon him. Of what use was it to him or to any
one else that he should be there in that assembly, with the privilege
of making a speech that would influence no human being, unless his
being there could be made a s