Lord Chiltern when he came up to London was still in bandages, though, as the surgeon said, his bones seemed to have been made to be broken and set again; and his bandages of course were a sufficient excuse for his visiting the house neither of his father nor his brother-in-law. But Lady Laura went to him frequently, and thus became acquainted with our hero’s home and with Mrs. Bunce. And there were messages taken from Violet to the man in bandages, some of which lost nothing in the carrying. Once Lady Laura tried to make Violet think that it would be right, or rather not wrong, that they two should go together to Lord Chiltern’s rooms.
“And would you have me tell my aunt, or would you have me not tell her?” Violet asked.
“I would have you do just as you pleased,” Lady Laura answered.
“So I shall,” Violet replied, “but I will do nothing that I should be ashamed to tell anyone. Your brother professes to be in love with me.”
“He is in love with you,” said Lady Laura. “Even you do not pretend to doubt his faith.”
“Very well. In those circumstances a girl should not go to a man’s rooms unless she means to consider herself as engaged to him, even with his sister;—not though he had broken every bone in his skin. I know what I may do, Laura, and I know what I mayn’t; and I won’t be led either by you or by my aunt.”
“May I give him your love?”
“No;—because you’ll give it in a wrong spirit. He knows well enough that I wish him well;—but you may tell him that from me, if you please. He has from me all those wishes which one friend owes to another.”
But there were other messages sent from Violet through Phineas Finn which she worded with more show of affection—perhaps as much for the discomfort of Phineas as for the consolation of Lord Chiltern. “Tell him to take care of himself,” said Violet, “and bid him not to have any more of those wild brutes that are not fit for any Christian to ride. Tell him that I say so. It’s a great thing to be brave; but what’s the use of being foolhardy?”
The session was to be closed at the end of June, to the great dismay of London tradesmen and of young ladies who had not been entirely successful in the early season. But before the old Parliament was closed, and the writs for the new election were despatched, there occurred an incident which was of very much importance to Phineas Finn. Near the end of June, when the remaining days of the session were numbered by three or four, he had been dining at Lord Brentford’s house in Portman Square in company with Mr. Kennedy. But Lady Laura had not been there. At this time he saw Lord Brentford not unfrequently, and there was always a word said about Lord Chiltern. The father would ask how the son occupied himself, and Phineas would hope—though hitherto he had hoped in vain—that he would induce the Earl to come and see Lord Chiltern. Lord Brentford could never be brought to that; but it was sufficiently evident that he would have done so, had he not been afraid to descend so far from the altitude of his paternal wrath. On this evening, at about eleven, Mr. Kennedy and Phineas left the house together, and walked from the Square through Orchard Street into Oxford Street. Here their ways parted, but Phineas crossed the road with Mr. Kennedy, as he was making some reply to a second invitation to Loughlinter. Phineas, considering what had been said before on the subject, thought that the invitation came late, and that it was not warmly worded. He had, therefore, declined it, and was in the act of declining it, when he crossed the road with Mr. Kennedy. In walking down Orchard Street from the Square he had seen two men standing in the shadow a few yards up a mews or small alley that was there, but had thought nothing of them. It was just that period of the year when there is hardly any of the darkness of night; but at this moment there were symptoms of coming rain, and heavy drops
