e,--as far as he could see,--that he was
presuming at all, or pushing himself out of his own sphere, in asking
Violet Effingham to be his wife. No;--he would trust his luck, would
persevere, and would succeed. Such had been his resolution on that
very morning,--and now there had come this letter to dash him to the
ground.

There were moments in which he declared to himself that he would not
believe the letter,--not that there was any moment in which there
was in his mind the slightest spark of real hope. But he would tell
himself that he would still persevere. Violet might have been driven
to accept that violent man by violent influence,--or it might be
that she had not in truth accepted him, that Chiltern had simply so
asserted. Or, even if it were so, did women never change their minds?
The manly thing would be to persevere to the end. Had he not before
been successful, when success seemed to be as far from him? But he
could buoy himself up with no real hope. Even when these ideas were
present to his mind, he knew,--he knew well,--at those very moments,
that his back was broken.

Some one had come in and lighted the candles and drawn down the
blinds while he was sitting there, and now, as he looked at his
watch, he found that it was past five o'clock. He was engaged to dine
with Madame Max Goesler at eight, and in his agony he half-resolved
that he would send an excuse. Madame Max would be full of wrath, as
she was very particular about her little dinner-parties;--but, what
did he care now about the wrath of Madame Max Goesler? And yet only
this morning he had been congratulating himself, among his other
successes, upon her favour, and had laughed inwardly at his own
falseness,--his falseness to Violet Effingham,--as he did so. He
had said something to himself jocosely about lovers' perjuries, the
remembrance of which was now very bitter to him. He took up a sheet
of note-paper and scrawled an excuse to Madame Goesler. News from the
country, he said, made it impossible that he should go out to-night.
But he did not send the note. At about half-past five he opened the
door of his private secretary's room and found the young man fast
asleep, with a cigar in his mouth. "Halloa, Charles," he said.

"All right!" Charles Standish was a first cousin of Lady Laura's,
and, having been in the office before Phineas had joined it, and
being a great favourite with his cousin, had of course become the
Under-Secretary's private