“Yes,—­it is I. Is anything wrong?”

“Very much is wrong.”

“What is it, Laura?”

“You cannot help me.”

“If you are in trouble you should tell me what it is, and leave it to me to try to help you.”

“Nonsense!” she said, shaking her head.

“Laura, that is uncourteous,—­not to say undutiful also.”

“I suppose it was,—­both.  I beg your pardon, but I could not help it.”

“Laura, you should help such words to me.”

“There are moments, Robert, when even a married woman must be herself rather than her husband’s wife.  It is so, though you cannot understand it.”

“I certainly do not understand it.”

“You cannot make a woman subject to you as a dog is so.  You may have all the outside and as much of the inside as you can master.  With a dog you may be sure of both.”

“I suppose this means that you have secrets in which I am not to share.”

“I have troubles about my father and my brother which you cannot share.  My brother is a ruined man.”

“Who ruined him?”

“I will not talk about it any more.  I will not speak to you of him or of papa.  I only want you to understand that there is a subject which must be secret to myself, and on which I may be allowed to shed tears,—­if I am so weak.  I will not trouble you on a matter in which I have not your sympathy.”  Then she left him, standing in the middle of the room, depressed by what had occurred,—­but not thinking of it as of a trouble which would do more than make him uncomfortable for that day.

CHAPTER XL

Madame Max Goesler

Day after day, and clause after clause, the bill was fought in committee, and few men fought with more constancy on the side of the Ministers than did the member for Loughton.  Troubled though he was by his quarrel with Lord Chiltern, by his love for Violet Effingham, by the silence of his friend Lady Laura,—­for since he had told her of the duel she had become silent to him, never writing to him, and hardly speaking to him when she met him in society,—­nevertheless Phineas was not so troubled but what he could work at his vocation.  Now, when he would find himself upon his legs in the House, he would wonder at the hesitation which had lately troubled him so sorely.  He would sit sometimes and speculate upon that dimness of eye, upon that tendency of things to go round, upon that obtrusive palpitation of heart, which had afflicted him so seriously for so long a time.  The House now was no more to him than any other chamber, and the members no more than other men.  He guarded himself from orations, speaking always very shortly,—­because he believed that policy and good judgment required that he should be short.  But words were very easy to him, and he would feel as though he could talk for ever.  And there quickly came to him a reputation for practical usefulness.  He was a man with strong