of Lady Laura Kennedy, who was in love
with Phineas Finn. She had gone on her knees to Mr. Gresham to get
a place for her friend's favourite, and Mr. Gresham had refused.
Consequently, at her bidding, half-a-dozen embryo Ministers--her
husband among the number--had refused to be amenable to Mr. Gresham.
Mr. Gresham had at last consented to sacrifice Mr. Bonteen, who had
originally instigated him to reject the claims of Phineas Finn. That
the degradation of the one man had been caused by the exclusion of
the other all the world knew.

"It shuts the door to me for ever and ever," said Phineas to Madame
Goesler.

"I don't see that."

"Of course it does. Such an affair places a mark against a man's name
which will never be forgotten."

"Is your heart set upon holding some trifling appointment under a
Minister?"

"To tell you the truth, it is;--or rather it was. The prospect of
office to me was more than perhaps to any other expectant. Even this
man, Bonteen, has some fortune of his own, and can live if he be
excluded. I have given up everything for the chance of something in
this line."

"Other lines are open."

"Not to me, Madame Goesler. I do not mean to defend myself. I have
been very foolish, very sanguine, and am now very unhappy."

"What shall I say to you?"

"The truth."

"In truth, then, I do not sympathise with you. The thing lost is too
small, too mean to justify unhappiness."

"But, Madame Goesler, you are a rich woman."

"Well?"

"If you were to lose it all, would you not be unhappy? It has been
my ambition to live here in London as one of a special set which
dominates all other sets in our English world. To do so a man
should have means of his own. I have none; and yet I have tried
it,--thinking that I could earn my bread at it as men do at other
professions. I acknowledge that I should not have thought so. No man
should attempt what I have attempted without means, at any rate to
live on if he fail; but I am not the less unhappy because I have been
silly."

"What will you do?"

"Ah,--what? Another friend asked me that the other day, and I told
her that I should vanish."

"Who was that friend?"

"Lady Laura."

"She is in London again now?"

"Yes; she and her father are in Portman Square."

"She has been an injurious friend to you."

"No, by heaven," exclaimed Phineas. "But for her I should never have
been here at all, never have had a seat in Parliament, never have
been in offic