Phineas Finn’s first session of Parliament was over,—­his first session with all its adventures.  When he got back to Mrs. Bunce’s house,—­for Mrs. Bunce received him for a night in spite of her husband’s advice to the contrary,—­I am afraid he almost felt that Mrs. Bunce and her rooms were beneath him.  Of course he was very unhappy,—­as wretched as a man can be; there were moments in which he thought that it would hardly become him to live unless he could do something to prevent the marriage of Lady Laura and Mr. Kennedy.  But, nevertheless, he had his consolations.  These were reflections which had in them much of melancholy satisfaction.  He had not been despised by the woman to whom he had told his love.  She had not shown him that she thought him to be unworthy of her.  She had not regarded his love as an offence.  Indeed, she had almost told him that prudence alone had forbidden her to return his passion.  And he had kissed her, and had afterwards parted from her as a dear friend.  I do not know why there should have been a flavour of exquisite joy in the midst of his agony as he thought of this;—­but it was so.  He would never kiss her again.  All future delights of that kind would belong to Mr. Kennedy, and he had no real idea of interfering with that gentleman in the fruition of his privileges.  But still there was the kiss,—­an eternal fact.  And then, in all respects except that of his love, his visit to Loughlinter had been pre-eminently successful.  Mr. Monk had become his friend, and had encouraged him to speak during the next session,—­setting before him various models, and prescribing for him a course of reading.  Lord Brentford had become intimate with him.  He was on pleasant terms with Mr. Palliser and Mr. Gresham.  And as for Mr. Kennedy,—­he and Mr. Kennedy were almost bosom friends.  It seemed to him that he had quite surpassed the Ratlers, Fitzgibbons, and Bonteens in that politico-social success which goes so far towards downright political success, and which in itself is so pleasant.  He had surpassed these men in spite of their offices and their acquired positions, and could not but think that even Mr. Low, if he knew it all, would confess that he had been right.

As to his bosom friendship with Mr. Kennedy, that of course troubled him.  Ought he not to be driving a poniard into Mr. Kennedy’s heart?  The conventions of life forbade that; and therefore the bosom friendship was to be excused.  If not an enemy to the death, then there could be no reason why he should not be a bosom friend.

He went over to Ireland, staying but one night with Mrs. Bunce, and came down upon them at Killaloe like a god out of the heavens.  Even his father was well-nigh overwhelmed by admiration, and his mother and sisters thought themselves only fit to minister to his pleasures.  He had learned, if he had learned nothing else, to look as though he were master of the circumstances around him, and was entirely free from internal embarrassment.  When his father spoke