When he got home he did not know how to speak of the matter otherwise than triumphantly to his wife and daughters.  Though he desired to curse, his mouth would speak blessings.  Before that evening was over the prospects of Phineas at Loughshane were spoken of with open enthusiasm before the doctor, and by the next day’s post a letter was written to him by Matilda, informing him that the Earl was prepared to receive him with open arms.  “Papa has been over there and managed it all,” said Matilda.

“I’m told George Morris isn’t going to stand,” said Barrington Erle to Phineas the night before his departure.

“His brother won’t support him.  His brother means to support me,” said Phineas.

“That can hardly be so.”

“But I tell you it is.  My father has known the Earl these twenty years, and has managed it.”

“I say, Finn, you’re not going to play us a trick, are you?” said Mr. Erle, with something like dismay in his voice.

“What sort of trick?”

“You’re not coming out on the other side?”

“Not if I know it,” said Phineas, proudly.  “Let me assure you I wouldn’t change my views in politics either for you or for the Earl, though each of you carried seats in your breeches pockets.  If I go into Parliament, I shall go there as a sound Liberal,—­not to support a party, but to do the best I can for the country.  I tell you so, and I shall tell the Earl the same.”

Barrington Erle turned away in disgust.  Such language was to him simply disgusting.  It fell upon his ears as false maudlin sentiment falls on the ears of the ordinary honest man of the world.  Barrington Erle was a man ordinarily honest.  He would not have been untrue to his mother’s brother, William Mildmay, the great Whig Minister of the day, for any earthly consideration.  He was ready to work with wages or without wages.  He was really zealous in the cause, not asking very much for himself.  He had some undefined belief that it was much better for the country that Mr. Mildmay should be in power than that Lord de Terrier should be there.  He was convinced that Liberal politics were good for Englishmen, and that Liberal politics and the Mildmay party were one and the same thing.  It would be unfair to Barrington Erle to deny to him some praise for patriotism.  But he hated the very name of independence in Parliament, and when he was told of any man, that that man intended to look to measures and not to men, he regarded that man as being both unstable as water and dishonest as the wind.  No good could possibly come from such a one, and much evil might and probably would come.  Such a politician was a Greek to Barrington Erle, from whose hands he feared to accept even the gift of a vote.  Parliamentary hermits were distasteful to him, and dwellers in political caves were regarded by him with aversion as being either knavish or impractical.  With a good Conservative opponent he could shake hands