“Because in this matter you have been his chosen friend,—­and mine.  We have told you everything, trusting to you.  We have believed in your honour.  We have thought that with you, at any rate, we were safe.”  These words were very bitter to Phineas, and yet when he had written his letter at Loughton, he had intended to be so perfectly honest, chivalrously honest!  Now Lady Laura spoke to him and looked at him as though he had been most basely false—­most untrue to that noble friendship which had been lavished upon him by all her family.  He felt that he would become the prey of her most injurious thoughts unless he could fully explain his ideas, and he felt, also, that the circumstances did not admit of his explaining them.  He could not take up the argument on Violet’s side, and show how unfair it would be to her that she should be debarred from the homage due to her by any man who really loved her, because Lord Chiltern chose to think that he still had a claim,—­or at any rate a chance.  And Phineas knew well of himself,—­or thought that he knew well,—­that he would not have interfered had there been any chance for Lord Chiltern.  Lord Chiltern had himself told him more than once that there was no such chance.  How was he to explain all this to Lady Laura?  “Mr. Finn,” said Lady Laura, “I can hardly believe this of you, even when you tell it me yourself.”

“Listen to me, Lady Laura, for a moment.”

“Certainly, I will listen.  But that you should come to me for assistance!  I cannot understand it.  Men sometimes become harder than stones.”

“I do not think that I am hard.”  Poor blind fool!  He was still thinking only of Violet, and of the accusation made against him that he was untrue to his friendship for Lord Chiltern.  Of that other accusation which could not be expressed in open words he understood nothing,—­nothing at all as yet.

“Hard and false,—­capable of receiving no impression beyond the outside husk of the heart.”

“Oh, Lady Laura, do not say that.  If you could only know how true I am in my affection for you all.”

“And how do you show it?—­by coming in between Oswald and the only means that are open to us of reconciling him to his father;—­means that have been explained to you exactly as though you had been one of ourselves.  Oswald has treated you as a brother in the matter, telling you everything, and this is the way you would repay him for his confidence!”

“Can I help it, that I have learnt to love this girl?”

“Yes, sir,—­you can help it.  What if she had been Oswald’s wife;—­would you have loved her then?  Do you speak of loving a woman as if it were an affair of fate, over which you have no control?  I doubt whether your passions are so strong as that.  You had better put aside your love for Miss Effingham.  I feel assured that it will never hurt you.”  Then some remembrance of what had passed between him and Lady Laura Standish near the falls of the Linter, when he first visited Scotland, came across his mind.  “Believe me,” she said with a smile, “this little wound in your heart will soon be cured.”