Phineas again paused a moment before he replied.  “Let him try,” he said.

“He is away,—­in Brussels.”

“Send to him, and bid him return.  I will be patient, Lady Laura.  Let him come and try, and I will bide my time.  I confess that I have no right to interfere with him if there be a chance for him.  If there is no chance, my right is as good as that of any other.”

There was something in this which made Lady Laura feel that she could not maintain her hostility against this man on behalf of her brother;—­and yet she could not force herself to be other than hostile to him.  Her heart was sore, and it was he that had made it sore.  She had lectured herself, schooling herself with mental sackcloth and ashes, rebuking herself with heaviest censures from day to day, because she had found herself to be in danger of regarding this man with a perilous love; and she had been constant in this work of penance till she had been able to assure herself that the sackcloth and ashes had done their work, and that the danger was past.  “I like him still and love him well,” she had said to herself with something almost of triumph, “but I have ceased to think of him as one who might have been my lover.”  And yet she was now sick and sore, almost beside herself with the agony of the wound, because this man whom she had been able to throw aside from her heart had also been able so to throw her aside.  And she felt herself constrained to rebuke him with what bitterest words she might use.  She had felt it easy to do this at first, on her brother’s score.  She had accused him of treachery to his friendship,—­both as to Oswald and as to herself.  On that she could say cutting words without subjecting herself to suspicion even from herself.  But now this power was taken away from her, and still she wished to wound him.  She desired to taunt him with his old fickleness, and yet to subject herself to no imputation.  “Your right!” she said.  “What gives you any right in the matter?”

“Simply the right of a fair field, and no favour.”

“And yet you come to me for favour,—­to me, because I am her friend.  You cannot win her yourself, and think I may help you!  I do not believe in your love for her.  There!  If there were no other reason, and I could help you, I would not, because I think your heart is a sham heart.  She is pretty, and has money—­”

“Lady Laura!”

“She is pretty, and has money, and is the fashion.  I do not wonder that you should wish to have her.  But, Mr. Finn, I believe that Oswald really loves her;—­and that you do not.  His nature is deeper than yours.”

He understood it all now as he listened to the tone of her voice, and looked into the lines of her face.  There was written there plainly enough that spretae injuria formae of which she herself was conscious, but only conscious.  Even his eyes, blind as he had been, were opened,—­and he knew that he had been a fool.