“I am so glad to see you, Mary,” he said, coming and taking a chair by her side.  He had been specially warned not to single Mary out for his attention, and yet there was the chair left vacant as though it were expected that he would fall into it.

“Thank you.  We did not happen to meet last year, did we,—­Mr. Finn?”

“Do not call me Mr. Finn, Mary.”

“You are such a great man now!”

“Not at all a great man.  If you only knew what little men we understrappers are in London you would hardly speak to me.”

“But you are something—­of State now;—­are you not?”

“Well;—­yes.  That’s the name they give me.  It simply means that if any member wants to badger some one in the House about the Colonies, I am the man to be badgered.  But if there is any credit to be had, I am not the man who is to have it.”

“But it is a great thing to be in Parliament and in the Government too.”

“It is a great thing for me, Mary, to have a salary, though it may only be for a year or two.  However, I will not deny that it is pleasant to have been successful.”

“It has been very pleasant to us, Phineas.  Mamma has been so much rejoiced.”

“I am so sorry not to see her.  She is at Floodborough, I suppose.”

“Oh, yes;—­she is at home.  She does not like coming out at night in winter.  I have been staying here you know for two days, but I go home to-morrow.”

“I will ride over and call on your mother.”  Then there was a pause in the conversation for a moment.  “Does it not seem odd, Mary, that we should see so little of each other?”

“You are so much away, of course.”

“Yes;—­that is the reason.  But still it seems almost unnatural.  I often wonder when the time will come that I shall be quietly at home again.  I have to be back in my office in London this day week, and yet I have not had a single hour to myself since I have been at Killaloe.  But I will certainly ride over and see your mother.  You will be at home on Wednesday I suppose.”

“Yes,—­I shall be at home.”

Upon that he got up and went away, but again in the evening he found himself near her.  Perhaps there is no position more perilous to a man’s honesty than that in which Phineas now found himself;—­that, namely, of knowing himself to be quite loved by a girl whom he almost loves himself.  Of course he loved Violet Effingham; and they who talk best of love protest that no man or woman can be in love with two persons at once.  Phineas was not in love with Mary Flood Jones; but he would have liked to take her in his arms and kiss her;—­he would have liked to gratify her by swearing that she was dearer to him than all the world; he would have liked to have an episode,—­and did, at the moment, think that it might be possible to have one life in London and another life altogether different at Killaloe.  “Dear Mary,” he said as he pressed her hand that night, “things will get themselves settled at last, I suppose.”  He was behaving very ill to her, but he did not mean to behave ill.