“Not lately.”

“Nor Mr. Kennedy?”

“I sometimes see him in the House.”  The visit to the Colonial Office of which the reader has been made aware had not at that time as yet been made.

“I am sorry for all that,” she said.  Upon which Phineas smiled and shook his head.  “I am very sorry that there should be a quarrel between you two.”

“There is no quarrel.”

“I used to think that you and he might do so much for each other,—­that is, of course, if you could make a friend of him.”

“He is a man of whom it is very hard to make a friend,” said Phineas, feeling that he was dishonest to Mr. Kennedy in saying so, but thinking that such dishonesty was justified by what he owed to Lady Laura.

“Yes;—­he is hard, and what I call ungenial.  We won’t say anything about him,—­will we?  Have you seen much of the Earl?” This she asked as though such a question had no reference whatever to Lord Chiltern.

“Oh dear,—­alas, alas!”

“You have not quarrelled with him too?”

“He has quarrelled with me.  He has heard, Miss Effingham, of what happened last year, and he thinks that I was wrong.”

“Of course you were wrong, Mr. Finn.”

“Very likely.  To him I chose to defend myself, but I certainly shall not do so to you.  At any rate, you did not think it necessary to quarrel with me.”

“I ought to have done so.  I wonder why my aunt does not come.”  Then she rang the bell.

“Now I have told you all about myself,” said he; “you should tell me something of yourself.”

“About me?  I am like the knife-grinder, who had no story to tell,—­none at least to be told.  We have all, no doubt, got our little stories, interesting enough to ourselves.”

“But your story, Miss Effingham,” he said, “is of such intense interest to me.”  At that moment, luckily, Lady Baldock came into the room, and Phineas was saved from the necessity of making a declaration at a moment which would have been most inopportune.

Lady Baldock was exceedingly gracious to him, bidding Violet use her influence to persuade him to come to the gathering.  “Persuade him to desert his work to come and hear some fiddlers!” said Miss Effingham.  “Indeed I shall not, aunt.  Who can tell but what the colonies might suffer from it through centuries, and that such a lapse of duty might drive a province or two into the arms of our mortal enemies?”

“Herr Moll is coming,” said Lady Baldock, “and so is Signor Scrubi, and Pjinskt, who, they say, is the greatest man living on the flageolet.  Have you ever heard Pjinskt, Mr. Finn?” Phineas never had heard Pjinskt.  “And as for Herr Moll, there is nothing equal to him, this year, at least.”  Lady Baldock had taken up music this season, but all her enthusiasm was unable to shake the conscientious zeal of the young Under-Secretary of State.  At such a gathering he would have been unable to say a word in private to Violet Effingham.