on me,--193, Park Lane. I
dare say you know the little cottage." Then he put Madame Max Goesler
into her carriage, and walked away to his club.

CHAPTER XLII

Lady Baldock Does Not Send a Card to Phineas Finn

Lady Baldock's house in Berkeley Square was very stately,--a large
house with five front windows in a row, and a big door, and a huge
square hall, and a fat porter in a round-topped chair;--but it was
dingy and dull, and could not have been painted for the last ten
years, or furnished for the last twenty. Nevertheless, Lady Baldock
had "evenings," and people went to them,--though not such a crowd of
people as would go to the evenings of Lady Glencora. Now Mr. Phineas
Finn had not been asked to the evenings of Lady Baldock for the
present season, and the reason was after this wise.

"Yes, Mr. Finn," Lady Baldock had said to her daughter, who, early in
the spring, was preparing the cards. "You may send one to Mr. Finn,
certainly."

"I don't know that he is very nice," said Augusta Boreham, whose eyes
at Saulsby had been sharper perhaps than her mother's, and who had
her suspicions.

But Lady Baldock did not like interference from her daughter. "Mr.
Finn, certainly," she continued. "They tell me that he is a very
rising young man, and he sits for Lord Brentford's borough. Of course
he is a Radical, but we cannot help that. All the rising young men
are Radicals now. I thought him very civil at Saulsby."

"But, mamma--"

"Well!"

"Don't you think that he is a little free with Violet?"

"What on earth do you mean, Augusta?"

"Have you not fancied that he is--fond of her?"

"Good gracious, no!"

"I think he is. And I have sometimes fancied that she is fond of him,
too."

"I don't believe a word of it, Augusta,--not a word. I should have
seen it if it was so. I am very sharp in seeing such things. They
never escape me. Even Violet would not be such a fool as that. Send
him a card, and if he comes I shall soon see." Miss Boreham quite
understood her mother, though she could never master her,--and the
card was prepared. Miss Boreham could never master her mother by her
own efforts; but it was, I think, by a little intrigue on her part
that Lady Baldock was mastered, and, indeed, altogether cowed, in
reference to our hero, and that this victory was gained on that very
afternoon in time to prevent the sending of the card.

When the mother and daughter were at tea, before dinner, Lord Baldock
cam