a handsome youth without allowing the
feeling to be a rock before her big enough and sharp enough for the
destruction of her entire barque? Could not she command, if not her
heart, at any rate her mind, so that she might safely assure herself
that, whether this man or any man was here or there, her course would
be unaltered? What though Phineas Finn had been in the same house
with her throughout all the winter, could not she have so lived with
him on terms of friendship, that every deed and word and look of her
friendship might have been open to her husband,--or open to all
the world? She could have done so. She told herself that that was
not,--need not have been her great calamity. Whether she could endure
the dull, monotonous control of her slow but imperious lord,--or
whether she must not rather tell him that it was not to be
endured,--that was her trouble. So she told herself, and again
admitted Phineas to her intimacy in London. But, nevertheless,
Phineas, had he not been beautifully ignorant and most blind to his
own achievements, would not have expected from Lady Laura Kennedy
assistance with Miss Violet Effingham.

Phineas knew when to find Lady Laura alone, and he came upon her one
day at the favourable hour. The two first clauses of the bill had
been passed after twenty fights and endless divisions. Two points had
been settled, as to which, however, Mr. Gresham had been driven to
give way so far and to yield so much, that men declared that such
a bill as the Government could consent to call its own could never
be passed by that Parliament in that session. Immediately on his
entrance into her room Lady Laura began about the third clause. Would
the House let Mr. Gresham have his way about the--? Phineas stopped
her at once. "My dear friend," he said, "I have come to you in a
private trouble, and I want you to drop politics for half an hour. I
have come to you for help."

"A private trouble, Mr. Finn! Is it serious?"

"It is very serious,--but it is no trouble of the kind of which you
are thinking. But it is serious enough to take up every thought."

"Can I help you?"

"Indeed you can. Whether you will or no is a different thing."

"I would help you in anything in my power, Mr. Finn. Do you not know
it?"

"You have been very kind to me!"

"And so would Mr. Kennedy."

"Mr. Kennedy cannot help me here."

"What is it, Mr. Finn?"

"I suppose I may as well tell you at once,--in plain language, I do
not