opinions, who could yet be submissive.  And no man seemed to know how his reputation had come.  He had made one good speech after two or three failures.  All who knew him, his whole party, had been aware of his failure; and his one good speech had been regarded by many as no very wonderful effort.  But he was a man who was pleasant to other men,—­not combative, not self-asserting beyond the point at which self-assertion ceases to be a necessity of manliness.  Nature had been very good to him, making him comely inside and out,—­and with this comeliness he had crept into popularity.

The secret of the duel was, I think, at this time, known to a great many men and women.  So Phineas perceived; but it was not, he thought, known either to Lord Brentford or to Violet Effingham.  And in this he was right.  No rumour of it had yet reached the ears of either of these persons;—­and rumour, though she flies so fast and so far, is often slow in reaching those ears which would be most interested in her tidings.  Some dim report of the duel reached even Mr. Kennedy, and he asked his wife.  “Who told you?” said she, sharply.

“Bonteen told me that it was certainly so.”

“Mr. Bonteen always knows more than anybody else about everything except his own business.”

“Then it is not true?”

Lady Laura paused,—­and then she lied.  “Of course it is not true.  I should be very sorry to ask either of them, but to me it seems to be the most improbable thing in life.”  Then Mr. Kennedy believed that there had been no duel.  In his wife’s word he put absolute faith, and he thought that she would certainly know anything that her brother had done.  As he was a man given to but little discourse, he asked no further questions about the duel either in the House or at the Clubs.

At first, Phineas had been greatly dismayed when men had asked him questions tending to elicit from him some explanation of the mystery;—­but by degrees he became used to it, and as the tidings which had got abroad did not seem to injure him, and as the questionings were not pushed very closely, he became indifferent.  There came out another article in the People’s Banner in which Lord C——­n and Mr. P——­s F——­n were spoken of as glaring examples of that aristocratic snobility,—­that was the expressive word coined, evidently with great delight, for the occasion,—­which the rotten state of London society in high quarters now produced.  Here was a young lord, infamously notorious, quarrelling with one of his boon-companions, whom he had appointed to a private seat in the House of Commons, fighting duels, breaking the laws, scandalising the public,—­and all this was done without punishment to the guilty!  There were old stories afloat,—­so said the article—­of what in a former century had been done by Lord Mohuns and Mr. Bests; but now, in 186—­, &c. &c. &c.  And so the article went on.  Any reader may fill in without difficulty the concluding indignation and virtuous appeal for reform in social morals as well as Parliament.  But Phineas had so far progressed that he had almost come to like this kind of thing.