a rich man in order that she might be
able to do something in the world;--and now that she was this rich
man's wife she found that she could do nothing. The rich man thought
it to be quite enough for her to sit at home and look after his
welfare. In the meantime young Phoebus,--her Phoebus as he had
been once,--was thinking altogether of some one else.

"Phineas," she said, slowly, "I have in you such perfect confidence
that I will tell you the truth;--as one man may tell it to another. I
wish you would go from here."

"What, at once?"

"Not to-day, or to-morrow. Stay here now till the election; but do
not return. He will ask you to come, and press you hard, and will be
hurt;--for, strange to say, with all his coldness, he really likes
you. He has a pleasure in seeing you here. But he must not have that
pleasure at the expense of trouble to me."

"And why is it a trouble to you?" he asked. Men are such fools;--so
awkward, so unready, with their wits ever behind the occasion by a
dozen seconds or so! As soon as the words were uttered, he knew that
they should not have been spoken.

"Because I am a fool," she said. "Why else? Is not that enough for
you?"

"Laura--," he said.

"No,--no; I will have none of that. I am a fool, but not such a fool
as to suppose that any cure is to be found there."

"Only say what I can do for you, though it be with my entire life,
and I will do it."

"You can do nothing,--except to keep away from me."

"Are you earnest in telling me that?" Now at last he had turned
himself round and was looking at her, and as he looked he saw the hat
of a man appearing up the path, and immediately afterwards the face.
It was the hat and face of the laird of Loughlinter. "Here is Mr.
Kennedy," said Phineas, in a tone of voice not devoid of dismay and
trouble.

"So I perceive," said Lady Laura. But there was no dismay or trouble
in the tone of her voice.

In the countenance of Mr. Kennedy, as he approached closer, there was
not much to be read,--only, perhaps, some slight addition of gloom,
or rather, perhaps, of that frigid propriety of moral demeanour for
which he had always been conspicuous, which had grown upon him at his
marriage, and which had been greatly increased by the double action
of being made a Cabinet Minister and being garrotted. "I am glad that
your headache is better," he said to his wife, who had risen from
her seat to meet him. Phineas also had risen, and was now looking
s