“I am afraid not.”

“Go to Madame Goesler, and ask her.  Hear what she will say.”

“Madame Goesler would laugh at me, no doubt.”

“Psha!  You do not think so.  You know that she would not laugh.  And are you the man to be afraid of a woman’s laughter?  I think not.”

Again he did not answer her at once, and when he did speak the tone of his voice was altered.  “What was it you said of yourself, just now?”

“What did I say of myself?”

“You regretted that you had consented to marry a man,—­whom you did not love.”

“Why should you not love her?  And it is so different with a man!  A woman is wretched if she does not love her husband, but I fancy that a man gets on very well without any such feeling.  She cannot domineer over you.  She cannot expect you to pluck yourself out of your own soil, and begin a new growth altogether in accordance with the laws of her own.  It was that which Mr. Kennedy did.”

“I do not for a moment think that she would take me, if I were to offer myself.”

“Try her,” said Lady Laura energetically.  “Such trials cost you but little;—­we both of us know that!” Still he said nothing of the letter in his pocket.  “It is everything that you should go on now that you have once begun.  I do not believe in you working at the Bar.  You cannot do it.  A man who has commenced life as you have done with the excitement of politics, who has known what it is to take a prominent part in the control of public affairs, cannot give it up and be happy at other work.  Make her your wife, and you may resign or remain in office just as you choose.  Office will be much easier to you than it is now, because it will not be a necessity.  Let me at any rate have the pleasure of thinking that one of us can remain here,—­that we need not both fall together.”

Still he did not tell her of the letter in his pocket.  He felt that she moved him,—­that she made him acknowledge to himself how great would be the pity of such a failure as would be his.  He was quite as much alive as she could be to the fact that work at the Bar, either in London or in Dublin, would have no charms for him now.  The prospect of such a life was very dreary to him.  Even with the comfort of Mary’s love such a life would be very dreary to him.  And then he knew,—­he thought that he knew,—­that were he to offer himself to Madame Goesler he would not in truth be rejected.  She had told him that if poverty was a trouble to him he need be no longer poor.  Of course he had understood this.  Her money was at his service if he should choose to stoop and pick it up.  And it was not only money that such a marriage would give him.  He had acknowledged to himself more than once that Madame Goesler was very lovely, that she was clever, attractive in every way, and as far as he could see, blessed with a sweet temper.  She had a position, too, in the world that would help him rather than mar him.  What might he not do with an independent seat in the House of Commons, and as joint owner of the little house in Park Lane?  Of all careers which the world could offer to a man the pleasantest would then be within his reach.  “You appear to me as a tempter,” he said at last to Lady Laura.