Part 110 (1/2)

”But you are so clever,” said Violet. ”Of course it will come quickly.”

”I do not mean to be impatient about it, nor yet unhappy,” said Phineas. ”Only hunting won't be much in my line.”

”And will you leave London altogether?” Violet asked.

”Altogether. I shall stick to one club,--Brooks's; but I shall take my name off all the others.”

”What a deuce of a nuisance!” said Lord Chiltern.

”I have no doubt you will be very happy,” said Violet; ”and you'll be a Lord Chancellor in no time. But you won't go quite yet.”

”Next Sunday.”

”You will return. You must be here for our wedding;--indeed you must.

I will not be married unless you do.”

Even this, however, was impossible. He must go on Sunday, and must return no more. Then he made his little farewell speech, which he could not deliver without some awkward stuttering. He would think of her on the day of her marriage, and pray that she might be happy. And he would send her a little trifle before he went, which he hoped she would wear in remembrance of their old friends.h.i.+p.

”She shall wear it, whatever it is, or I'll know the reason why,”

said Chiltern.

”Hold your tongue, you rough bear!” said Violet. ”Of course I'll wear it. And of course I'll think of the giver. I shall have many presents, but few that I will think of so much.” Then Phineas left the room, with his throat so full that he could not speak another word.

”He is still broken-hearted about you,” said the favoured lover as soon as his rival had left the room.

”It is not that,” said Violet. ”He is broken-hearted about everything. The whole world is vanis.h.i.+ng away from him. I wish he could have made up his mind to marry that German woman with all the money.” It must be understood, however, that Phineas had never spoken a word to any one as to the offer which the German woman had made to him.

It was on the morning of the Sunday on which he was to leave London that he saw Lady Laura. He had asked that it might be so, in order that he might then have nothing more upon his mind. He found her quite alone, and he could see by her eyes that she had been weeping.

As he looked at her, remembering that it was not yet six years since he had first been allowed to enter that room, he could not but perceive how very much she was altered in appearance. Then she had been three-and-twenty, and had not looked to be a day older. Now she might have been taken to be nearly forty, so much had her troubles preyed upon her spirit, and eaten into the vitality of her youth. ”So you have come to say good-bye,” she said, smiling as she rose to meet him.

”Yes, Lady Laura;--to say good-bye. Not for ever, I hope, but probably for long.”

”No, not for ever. At any rate, we will not think so.” Then she paused; but he was silent, sitting with his hat dangling in his two hands, and his eyes fixed upon the floor. ”Do you know, Mr. Finn,”

she continued, ”that sometimes I am very angry with myself about you.”

”Then it must be because you have been too kind to me.”

”It is because I fear that I have done much to injure you. From the first day that I knew you,--do you remember, when we were talking here, in this very room, about the beginning of the Reform Bill;--from that day I wished that you should come among us and be one of us.”

”I have been with you, to my infinite satisfaction,--while it lasted.”

”But it has not lasted, and now I fear that it has done you harm.”

”Who can say whether it has been for good or evil? But of this I am sure you will be certain,--that I am very grateful to you for all the goodness you have shown me.” Then again he was silent.

She did not know what it was that she wanted, but she did desire some expression from his lips that should be warmer than an expression of grat.i.tude. An expression of love,--of existing love,--she would have felt to be an insult, and would have treated it as such. Indeed, she knew that from him no such insult could come. But she was in that morbid, melancholy state of mind which requires the excitement of more than ordinary sympathy, even though that sympathy be all painful; and I think that she would have been pleased had he referred to the pa.s.sion for herself which he had once expressed. If he would have spoken of his love, and of her mistake, and have made some half-suggestion as to what might have been their lives had things gone differently,--though she would have rebuked him even for that,--still it would have comforted her. But at this moment, though he remembered much that had pa.s.sed between them, he was not even thinking of the Braes of Linter. All that had taken place four years ago;--and there had been so many other things since which had moved him even more than that! ”You have heard what I have arranged for myself?” she said at last.

”Your father has told me that you are going to Dresden.”