rcumstances of his life, which were
so imperious to him. He was not in love with Lady Laura, and yet he
hoped that his intimacy with her might come to much. He had more than
once asked himself how he would feel when somebody else came to be
really in love with Lady Laura,--for she was by no means a woman to
lack lovers,--when some one else should be in love with her, and be
received by her as a lover; but this question he had never been able
to answer. There were many questions about himself which he usually
answered by telling himself that it was his fate to walk over
volcanoes. "Of course, I shall be blown into atoms some fine day," he
would say; "but after all, that is better than being slowly boiled
down into pulp."

The House had met on a Friday, again on the Saturday morning, and
the debate on the Address had been adjourned till the Monday. On
the Sunday, Phineas determined that he would see Lady Laura. She
professed to be always at home on Sunday, and from three to four in
the afternoon her drawing-room would probably be half full of people.
There would, at any rate, be comers and goers, who would prevent
anything like real conversation between himself and her. But for a
few minutes before that he might probably find her alone, and he was
most anxious to see whether her reception of him, as a member of
Parliament, would be in any degree warmer than that of his other
friends. Hitherto he had found no such warmth since he came to
London, excepting that which had glowed in the bosom of Mrs. Bunce.

Lady Laura Standish was the daughter of the Earl of Brentford, and
was the only remaining lady of the Earl's family. The Countess had
been long dead; and Lady Emily, the younger daughter, who had been
the great beauty of her day, was now the wife of a Russian nobleman
whom she had persisted in preferring to any of her English suitors,
and lived at St. Petersburg. There was an aunt, old Lady Laura, who
came up to town about the middle of May; but she was always in the
country except for some six weeks in the season. There was a certain
Lord Chiltern, the Earl's son and heir, who did indeed live at the
family town house in Portman Square; but Lord Chiltern was a man of
whom Lady Laura's set did not often speak, and Phineas, frequently
as he had been at the house, had never seen Lord Chiltern there. He
was a young nobleman of whom various accounts were given by various
people; but I fear that the account most readily accep