How singular would it be if this affair of the duel should pass away, and no one be a bit the wiser but those four men who had been with him on the sands at Blankenberg!  Again he wondered at his own luck.  He had told himself that a duel with Lord Chiltern must create a quarrel between him and Lord Chiltern’s relations, and also between him and Violet Effingham; that it must banish him from his comfortable seat for Loughton, and ruin him in regard to his political prospects.  And now he had fought his duel, and was back in town,—­and the thing seemed to have been a thing of nothing.  He had not as yet seen Lady Laura or Violet, but he had no doubt but they both were as much in the dark as other people.  The day might arrive, he thought, on which it would be pleasant for him to tell Violet Effingham what had occurred, but that day had not come as yet.  Whither Lord Chiltern had gone, or what Lord Chiltern intended to do, he had not any idea; but he imagined that he should soon hear something of her brother from Lady Laura.  That Lord Chiltern should say a word to Lady Laura of what had occurred,—­or to any other person in the world,—­he did not in the least suspect.  There could be no man more likely to be reticent in such matters than Lord Chiltern,—­or more sure to be guided by an almost exaggerated sense of what honour required of him.  Nor did he doubt the discretion of his friend Fitzgibbon;—­if only his friend might not damage the secret by being too discreet.  Of the silence of the doctor and the captain he was by no means equally sure; but even though they should gossip, the gossiping would take so long a time in oozing out and becoming recognised information, as to have lost much of its power for injuring him.  Were Lady Laura to hear at this moment that he had been over to Belgium, and had fought a duel with Lord Chiltern respecting Violet, she would probably feel herself obliged to quarrel with him; but no such obligation would rest on her, if in the course of six or nine months she should gradually have become aware that such an encounter had taken place.

Lord Chiltern, during their interview at the rooms in Great Marlborough Street, had said a word to him about the seat in Parliament;—­had expressed some opinion that as he, Phineas Finn, was interfering with the views of the Standish family in regard to Miss Effingham, he ought not to keep the Standish seat, which had been conferred upon him in ignorance of any such intended interference.  Phineas, as he thought of this, could not remember Lord Chiltern’s words, but there was present to him an idea that such had been their purport.  Was he bound, in circumstances as they now existed, to give up Loughton?  He made up his mind that he was not so bound unless Lord Chiltern should demand from him that he should do so; but, nevertheless, he was uneasy in his position.  It was quite true that the seat now was his for this session by all parliamentary law, even though the electors themselves might wish to be rid of him, and that Lord Brentford could not even open his mouth upon the matter in a tone more loud than that of a whisper.  But Phineas, feeling that he had consented to accept the favour of a corrupt seat from Lord Brentford, felt also that he was bound to give up the spoil if it were demanded from him.  If it were demanded from him, either by the father or the son, it should be given up at once.