ow was he to explain all this to Lady Laura? "Mr. Finn," said Lady
Laura, "I can hardly believe this of you, even when you tell it me
yourself."

"Listen to me, Lady Laura, for a moment."

"Certainly, I will listen. But that you should come to me for
assistance! I cannot understand it. Men sometimes become harder than
stones."

"I do not think that I am hard." Poor blind fool! He was still
thinking only of Violet, and of the accusation made against him that
he was untrue to his friendship for Lord Chiltern. Of that other
accusation which could not be expressed in open words he understood
nothing,--nothing at all as yet.

"Hard and false,--capable of receiving no impression beyond the
outside husk of the heart."

"Oh, Lady Laura, do not say that. If you could only know how true I
am in my affection for you all."

"And how do you show it?--by coming in between Oswald and the only
means that are open to us of reconciling him to his father;--means
that have been explained to you exactly as though you had been one of
ourselves. Oswald has treated you as a brother in the matter, telling
you everything, and this is the way you would repay him for his
confidence!"

"Can I help it, that I have learnt to love this girl?"

"Yes, sir,--you can help it. What if she had been Oswald's
wife;--would you have loved her then? Do you speak of loving a woman
as if it were an affair of fate, over which you have no control? I
doubt whether your passions are so strong as that. You had better put
aside your love for Miss Effingham. I feel assured that it will never
hurt you." Then some remembrance of what had passed between him and
Lady Laura Standish near the falls of the Linter, when he first
visited Scotland, came across his mind. "Believe me," she said with a
smile, "this little wound in your heart will soon be cured."

He stood silent before her, looking away from her, thinking over it
all. He certainly had believed himself to be violently in love with
Lady Laura, and yet when he had just now entered her drawing-room, he
had almost forgotten that there had been such a passage in his life.
And he had believed that she had forgotten it,--even though she
had counselled him not to come to Loughlinter within the last nine
months! He had been a boy then, and had not known himself;--but now
he was a man, and was proud of the intensity of his love. There came
upon him some passing throb of pain from his shoulder, reminding him
of the