“I never knew a Mentor,” said Phineas, “so apt as you are to fill his Telemachus with pride.”

“It is because I do not think your fault lies that way.  If it did, or if I thought so, my Telemachus, you may be sure that I should resign my position as Mentor.  Here are Mr. Kennedy and Lady Glencora and Mrs. Gresham on the steps.”  Then they went up through the Ionic columns on to the broad stone terrace before the door, and there they found a crowd of men and women.  For the legislators and statesmen had written their letters, and the ladies had taken their necessary rest.

Phineas, as he was dressing, considered deeply all that Lady Laura had said to him,—­not so much with reference to the advice which she had given him, though that also was of importance, as to the fact that it had been given by her.  She had first called herself his Mentor; but he had accepted the name and had addressed her as her Telemachus.  And yet he believed himself to be older than she,—­if, indeed, there was any difference in their ages.  And was it possible that a female Mentor should love her Telemachus,—­should love him as Phineas desired to be loved by Lady Laura?  He would not say that it was impossible.  Perhaps there had been mistakes between them;—­a mistake in his manner of addressing her, and another in hers of addressing him.  Perhaps the old bachelor of forty-three was not thinking of a wife.  Had this old bachelor of forty-three been really in love with Lady Laura, would he have allowed her to walk home alone with Phineas, leaving her with some flimsy pretext of having to look at his sheep?  Phineas resolved that he must at any rate play out his game,—­whether he were to lose it or to win it; and in playing it he must, if possible, drop something of that Mentor and Telemachus style of conversation.  As to the advice given him of herding with Greshams and Pallisers, instead of with Ratlers and Fitzgibbons,—­he must use that as circumstances might direct.  To him, himself, as he thought of it all, it was sufficiently astonishing that even the Ratlers and Fitzgibbons should admit him among them as one of themselves.  “When I think of my father and of the old house at Killaloe, and remember that hitherto I have done nothing myself, I cannot understand how it is that I should be at Loughlinter.”  There was only one way of understanding it.  If Lady Laura really loved him, the riddle might be read.

The rooms at Loughlinter were splendid, much larger and very much more richly furnished than those at Saulsby.  But there was a certain stiffness in the movement of things, and perhaps in the manner of some of those present, which was not felt at Saulsby.  Phineas at once missed the grace and prettiness and cheery audacity of Violet Effingham, and felt at the same time that Violet Effingham would be out of her element at Loughlinter.  At Loughlinter they were met for business.  It was at least a semi-political, or perhaps rather a semi-official gathering, and he