replied, "not a word when you speak to me like
that. There is the carriage. Come;--we will join them." Then she
cantered on, and he followed her till they reached the Earl and Lady
Baldock and Miss Boreham. "I have done my devotions now," said Miss
Effingham, "and am ready to return to ordinary life."

Phineas could not find another moment in which to speak to her.
Though he spent the evening with her, and stood over her as she sang
at the Earl's request, and pressed her hand as she went to bed, and
was up to see her start in the morning, he could not draw from her
either a word or a look.

CHAPTER XXXV

Mr. Monk upon Reform

Phineas Finn went to Ireland immediately after his return from
Saulsby, having said nothing further to Violet Effingham, and having
heard nothing further from her than what is recorded in the last
chapter. He felt very keenly that his position was unsatisfactory,
and brooded over it all the autumn and early winter; but he could
form no plan for improving it. A dozen times he thought of writing
to Miss Effingham, and asking for an explicit answer. He could not,
however, bring himself to write the letter, thinking that written
expressions of love are always weak and vapid,--and deterred also
by a conviction that Violet, if driven to reply in writing, would
undoubtedly reply by a refusal. Fifty times he rode again in his
imagination his ride in Saulsby Wood, and he told himself as often
that the syren's answer to him,--her no, no, no,--had been, of all
possible answers, the most indefinite and provoking. The tone of her
voice as she galloped away from him, the bearing of her countenance
when he rejoined her, her manner to him when he saw her start from
the Castle in the morning, all forbade him to believe that his words
to her had been taken as an offence. She had replied to him with a
direct negative, simply with the word "no;" but she had so said it
that there had hardly been any sting in the no; and he had known at
the moment that whatever might be the result of his suit, he need not
regard Violet Effingham as his enemy.

But the doubt made his sojourn in Ireland very wearisome to him.
And there were other matters which tended also to his discomfort,
though he was not left even at this period of his life without a
continuation of success which seemed to be very wonderful. And,
first, I will say a word of his discomfort. He heard not a line from
Lord Chiltern in answer to the letter w