“That will be two things, Mr. Finn; but I will answer both questions as well as I can.  You have not met her before, because she was in Germany last spring and summer, and in the year before that you were not about so much as you have been since.  Still you must have seen her, I think.  She is the widow of an Austrian banker, and has lived the greater part of her life at Vienna.  She is very rich, and has a small house in Park Lane, where she receives people so exclusively that it has come to be thought an honour to be invited by Madame Max Goesler.  Her enemies say that her father was a German Jew, living in England, in the employment of the Viennese bankers, and they say also that she has been married a second time to an Austrian Count, to whom she allows ever so much a year to stay away from her.  But of all this, nobody, I fancy, knows anything.  What they do know is that Madame Max Goesler spends seven or eight thousand a year, and that she will give no man an opportunity of even asking her to marry him.  People used to be shy of her, but she goes almost everywhere now.”

“She has not been at Portman Square?”

“Oh no; but then Lady Glencora is so much more advanced than we are!  After all, we are but humdrum people, as the world goes now.”

Then Phineas began to roam about the rooms, striving to find an opportunity of engrossing five minutes of Miss Effingham’s attention.  During the time that Lady Laura was giving him the history of Madame Max Goesler his eyes had wandered round, and he had perceived that Violet was standing in the further corner of a large lobby on to which the stairs opened,—­so situated, indeed, that she could hardly escape, because of the increasing crowd, but on that very account almost impossible to be reached.  He could see, also, that she was talking to Lord Fawn, an unmarried peer of something over thirty years of age, with an unrivalled pair of whiskers, a small estate, and a rising political reputation.  Lord Fawn had been talking to Violet through the whole dinner, and Phineas was beginning to think that he should like to make another journey to Blankenberg, with the object of meeting his lordship on the sands.  When Lady Laura had done speaking, his eyes were turned through a large open doorway towards the spot on which his idol was standing.  “It is of no use, my friend,” she said, touching his arm.  “I wish I could make you know that it is of no use, because then I think you would be happier.”  To this Phineas made no answer, but went and roamed about the rooms.  Why should it be of no use?  Would Violet Effingham marry any man merely because he was a lord?

Some half-hour after this he had succeeded in making his way up to the place in which Violet was still standing, with Lord Fawn beside her.  “I have been making such a struggle to get to you,” he said.

“And now you are here, you will have to stay, for it is impossible to get out,” she answered.  “Lord Fawn has made the attempt half-a-dozen times, but has failed grievously.”