“And I am sure successfully.”

“Never mind.  I hate to talk about myself.  You and the Duke are fair subjects for conversation; you as the express train, who will probably do your sixty miles an hour in safety, but may possibly go down a bank with a crash.”

“Certainly I may,” said Phineas.

“And the Duke, as the mountain, which is fixed in its stateliness, short of the power of some earthquake, which shall be grander and more terrible than any earthquake yet known.  Here we are at the house again.  I will go in and sit down for a while.”

“If I leave you, Madame Goesler, I will say good-bye till next winter.”

“I shall be in town again before Christmas, you know.  You will come and see me?”

“Of course I will.”

“And then this love trouble of course will be over,—­one way or the other;—­will it not?”

“Ah!—­who can say?”

“Faint heart never won fair lady.  But your heart is never faint.  Farewell.”

Then he left her.  Up to this moment he had not seen Violet, and yet he knew that she was to be there.  She had herself told him that she was to accompany Lady Laura, whom he had already met.  Lady Baldock had not been invited, and had expressed great animosity against the Duke in consequence.  She had gone so far as to say that the Duke was a man at whose house a young lady such as her niece ought not to be seen.  But Violet had laughed at this, and declared her intention of accepting the invitation.  “Go,” she had said; “of course I shall go.  I should have broken my heart if I could not have got there.”  Phineas therefore was sure that she must be in the place.  He had kept his eyes ever on the alert, and yet he had not found her.  And now he must keep his appointment with Lady Laura Kennedy.  So he went down to the path by the river, and there he found her seated close by the water’s edge.  Her cousin Barrington Erle was still with her, but as soon as Phineas joined them, Erle went away.  “I had told him,” said Lady Laura, “that I wished to speak to you, and he stayed with me till you came.  There are worse men than Barrington a great deal.”

“I am sure of that.”

“Are you and he still friends, Mr. Finn?”

“I hope so.  I do not see so much of him as I did when I had less to do.”

“He says that you have got into altogether a different set.”

“I don’t know that.  I have gone as circumstances have directed me, but I have certainly not intended to throw over so old and good a friend as Barrington Erle.”

“Oh,—­he does not blame you.  He tells me that you have found your way among what he calls the working men of the party, and he thinks you will do very well,—­if you can only be patient enough.  We all expected a different line from you, you know,—­more of words and less of deeds, if I may say so;—­more of liberal oratory and less of government action; but I do not doubt that you are right.”