home should see that he was depressed.
And Mary, his own Mary, should at any rate have no cause to think
that her love and his own engagement had ever been the cause to him
of depression. Did he not value her love more than anything in the
world? A thousand times he told himself that he did.

She was there in the old house at Killaloe to greet him. Her
engagement was an affair known to all the county, and she had no
idea that it would become her to be coy in her love. She was in his
arms before he had spoken to his father and mother, and had made her
little speech to him,--very inaudibly indeed,--while he was covering
her sweet face with kisses. "Oh, Phineas, I am so proud of you; and
I think you are so right, and I am so glad you have done it." Again
he covered her face with kisses. Could he ever have had such
satisfaction as this had he allowed Madame Goesler's hand to remain
in his?

On the first night of his arrival he sat for an hour downstairs
with his father talking over his plans. He felt,--he could not but
feel,--that he was not the hero now that he had been when he was last
at Killaloe,--when he had come thither with a Cabinet Minister under
his wing. And yet his father did his best to prevent the growth of
any such feeling. The old doctor was not quite as well off as he had
been when Phineas first started with his high hopes for London. Since
that day he had abandoned his profession and was now living on the
fruits of his life's labour. For the last two years he had been
absolved from the necessity of providing an income for his son, and
had probably allowed himself to feel that no such demand upon him
would again be made. Now, however, it was necessary that he should do
so. Could his son manage to live on two hundred a-year? There would
then be four hundred a-year left for the wants of the family at home.
Phineas swore that he could fight his battle on a hundred and fifty,
and they ended the argument by splitting the difference. He had been
paying exactly the same sum of money for the rooms he had just left
in London; but then, while he held those rooms, his income had been
two thousand a-year. Tenant-right was a very fine thing, but could it
be worth such a fall as this?

"And about dear Mary?" said the father.

"I hope it may not be very long," said Phineas.

"I have not spoken to her about it, but your mother says that Mrs.
Flood Jones is very averse to a long engagement."

"What can I do? She wo