Lady Baldock had evenings.  People went to her house, and stood about the room and on the stairs, talked to each other for half an hour, and went away.  In these March days there was no crowding, but still there were always enough of people there to show that Lady Baldock was successful.  Why people should have gone to Lady Baldock’s I cannot explain;—­but there are houses to which people go without any reason.  Phineas received a little card asking him to go, and he always went.

“I think you like my friend, Mr. Finn,” Lady Laura said to Miss Effingham, after the first of these evenings.

“Yes, I do.  I like him decidedly.”

“So do I. I should hardly have thought that you would have taken a fancy to him.”

“I hardly know what you call taking a fancy,” said Violet.  “I am not quite sure I like to be told that I have taken a fancy for a young man.”

“I mean no offence, my dear.”

“Of course you don’t But, to speak truth, I think I have rather taken a fancy to him.  There is just enough of him, but not too much.  I don’t mean materially,—­in regard to his inches; but as to his mental belongings.  I hate a stupid man who can’t talk to me, and I hate a clever man who talks me down.  I don’t like a man who is too lazy to make any effort to shine; but I particularly dislike the man who is always striving for effect.  I abominate a humble man, but yet I love to perceive that a man acknowledges the superiority of my sex, and youth, and all that kind of thing.”

“You want to be flattered without plain flattery.”

“Of course I do.  A man who would tell me that I am pretty, unless he is over seventy, ought to be kicked out of the room.  But a man who can’t show me that he thinks me so without saying a word about it, is a lout.  Now in all those matters, your friend, Mr. Finn, seems to know what he is about.  In other words, he makes himself pleasant, and, therefore, one is glad to see him.”

“I suppose you do not mean to fall in love with him?”

“Not that I know of, my dear.  But when I do, I’ll be sure to give you notice.”

I fear that there was more of earnestness in Lady Laura’s last question than Miss Effingham had supposed.  She had declared to herself over and over again that she had never been in love with Phineas Finn.  She had acknowledged to herself, before Mr. Kennedy had asked her hand in marriage, that there had been danger,—­that she could have learned to love the man if such love would not have been ruinous to her,—­that the romance of such a passion would have been pleasant to her.  She had gone farther than this, and had said to herself that she would have given way to that romance, and would have been ready to accept such love if offered to her, had she not put it out of her own power to marry a poor man by her generosity to her brother.  Then she had thrust the thing aside, and had clearly understood,—­she thought that she had clearly understood,—­that