“I shall never try again,” he said.

“It will be better so,” she replied.

“There is something to me unmanly in a man’s persecuting a girl.  Just tell Laura, will you, that it is all over; and she may as well tell my father.  Good-bye.”

She then tendered her hand to him, but he did not take it,—­probably did not see it, and at once left the room and the house.

“And yet I believe you love him,” Lady Laura said to her friend in her anger, when they discussed the matter immediately on Lord Chiltern’s departure.

“You have no right to say that, Laura.”

“I have a right to my belief, and I do believe it.  I think you love him, and that you lack the courage to risk yourself in trying to save him.”

“Is a woman bound to marry a man if she love him?”

“Yes, she is,” replied Lady Laura impetuously, without thinking of what she was saying; “that is, if she be convinced that she also is loved.”

“Whatever be the man’s character;—­whatever be the circumstances?  Must she do so, whatever friends may say to the contrary?  Is there to be no prudence in marriage?”

“There may be a great deal too much prudence,” said Lady Laura.

“That is true.  There is certainly too much prudence if a woman marries prudently, but without love.”  Violet intended by this no attack upon her friend,—­had not had present in her mind at the moment any idea of Lady Laura’s special prudence in marrying Mr. Kennedy; but Lady Laura felt it keenly, and knew at once that an arrow had been shot which had wounded her.

“We shall get nothing,” she said, “by descending to personalities with each other.”

“I meant none, Laura.”

“I suppose it is always hard,” said Lady Laura, “for any one person to judge altogether of the mind of another.  If I have said anything severe of your refusal of my brother, I retract it.  I only wish that it could have been otherwise.”

Lord Chiltern, when he left his sister’s house, walked through the slush and dirt to a haunt of his in the neighbourhood of Covent Garden, and there he remained through the whole afternoon and evening.  A certain Captain Clutterbuck joined him, and dined with him.  He told nothing to Captain Clutterbuck of his sorrow, but Captain Clutterbuck could see that he was unhappy.

“Let’s have another bottle of ‘cham,’” said Captain Clutterbuck, when their dinner was nearly over. “‘Cham’ is the only thing to screw one up when one is down a peg.”

“You can have what you like,” said Lord Chiltern; “but I shall have some brandy-and-water.”

“The worst of brandy-and-water is, that one gets tired of it before the night is over,” said Captain Clutterbuck.

Nevertheless, Lord Chiltern did go down to Peterborough the next day by the hunting train, and rode his horse Bonebreaker so well in that famous run from Sutton springs to Gidding that after the run young Piles,—­of the house of Piles, Sarsnet, and Gingham,—­offered him three hundred pounds for the animal.