a Treasury bench I shall sit there by special invitation, having
been summoned to take a high place because of my professional
success. It is but a dream after all, and I would not have you repeat
what I have said to any one. I had no intention to talk about
myself."

"I am sure that you will succeed," said Phineas.

"Yes;--I shall succeed. I am succeeding. I live upon what I earn,
like a gentleman, and can already afford to be indifferent to work
that I dislike. After all, the other part of it,--that of which I
dream,--is but an unnecessary adjunct; the gilding on the
gingerbread. I am inclined to think that the cake is more wholesome
without it."

Phineas did not go up-stairs into Mrs. Low's drawing-room on that
evening, nor did he stay very late with Mr. Low. He had heard enough
of counsel to make him very unhappy,--to shake from him much of the
audacity which he had acquired for himself during his morning's
walk,--and to make him almost doubt whether, after all, the
Chiltern Hundreds would not be for him the safest escape from his
difficulties. But in that case he must never venture to see Lady
Laura Standish again.

CHAPTER VI

Lord Brentford's Dinner

No;--in such case as that,--should he resolve upon taking the advice
of his old friend Mr. Low, Phineas Finn must make up his mind never
to see Lady Laura Standish again! And he was in love with Lady Laura
Standish;--and, for aught he knew, Lady Laura Standish might be in
love with him. As he walked home from Mr. Low's house in Bedford
Square, he was by no means a triumphant man. There had been much more
said between him and Mr. Low than could be laid before the reader
in the last chapter. Mr. Low had urged him again and again, and had
prevailed so far that Phineas, before he left the house, had promised
to consider that suicidal expedient of the Chiltern Hundreds. What a
by-word he would become if he were to give up Parliament, having sat
there for about a week! But such immediate giving up was one of the
necessities of Mr. Low's programme. According to Mr. Low's teaching,
a single year passed amidst the miasma of the House of Commons would
be altogether fatal to any chance of professional success. And Mr.
Low had at any rate succeeded in making Phineas believe that he
was right in this lesson. There was his profession, as to which Mr.
Low assured him that success was within his reach; and there was
Parliament on the other side, as to which he knew