“And what will you all do?” asked Lady Laura.
“We must go to the country, I suppose,” said the Earl.
“What’s the use? You can’t have a more liberal House than you have now,” said Lady Laura.
“We may have one less liberal—or rather less radical—with fewer men to support Mr. Turnbull. I do not see what else we can do. They say that there are no less than twenty-seven men on our side of the House who will either vote with Turnbull against us, or will decline to vote at all.”
“Every one of them ought to lose his seat,” said Lady Laura.
“But what can we do? How is the Queen’s Government to be carried on?” We all know the sad earnestness which impressed itself on the Earl’s brow as he asked these momentous questions. “I don’t suppose that Mr. Turnbull can form a Ministry.”
“With Mr. Daubeny as whipper-in, perhaps he might,” said Lady Laura.
“And will Mr. Finn lose his seat?” asked Violet Effingham. “Most probably,” said the Earl. “He only got it by an accident.”
“You must find him a seat somewhere in England,” said Violet.
“That might be difficult,” said the Earl, who then left the room.
The two women remained together for some quarter of an hour before they spoke again. Then Lady Laura said something about her brother. “If there be a dissolution, I hope Oswald will stand for Loughton.” Loughton was a borough close to Saulsby, in which, as regarded its political interests, Lord Brentford was supposed to have considerable influence. To this Violet said nothing. “It is quite time,” continued Lady Laura, “that old Mr. Standish should give way. He has had the seat for twenty-five years, and has never done anything, and he seldom goes to the House now.”
“He is not your uncle, is he?”
“No; he is papa’s cousin; but he is ever so much older than papa;—nearly eighty, I believe.”
“Would not that be just the place for Mr. Finn?” said Violet.
Then Lady Laura became very serious. “Oswald would of course have a better right to it than anybody else.”
“But would Lord Chiltern go into Parliament? I have heard him declare that he would not.”
“If we could get papa to ask him, I think he would change his mind,” said Lady Laura.
There was again silence for a few moments, after which Violet returned to the original subject of their conversation. “It would be a thousand pities that Mr. Finn should be turned out into the cold. Don’t you think so?”
“I, for one, should be very sorry.”
“So should I—and the more so from what Lord Brentford says about his not speaking well last night. I don’t think that it is very much of an accomplishment for a gentleman to speak well. Mr. Turnbull, I suppose, speaks well; and they say that that horrid man, Mr. Bonteen, can talk by the hour together. I don’t think that it shows a man to be clever at all. But I believe Mr. Finn would do it, if he set his mind to it, and I shall think it a great shame if they turn him out.”
“It would depend very much, I suppose, on Lord Tulla.”
“I don’t know anything about Lord Tulla,” said Violet; “but I’m quite sure that he might have Loughton, if we manage it properly. Of course Lord Chiltern should have it if he wants it, but I don’t think he will stand in Mr. Finn’s way.”
“I’m afraid it’s out of the question,” said Lady Laura, gravely. “Papa thinks so much about the borough.” The reader will remember that both Lord Brentford and his daughter were thorough reformers! The use of a little borough of his own, however, is a convenience to a great peer.
“Those difficult things have always to be talked of for a long while, and then they become easy,” said Violet. “I believe if you were to propose to Mr. Kennedy to give all his property to the Church Missionaries and emigrate to New Zealand, he’d begin to consider it seriously after a time.”
“I shall not try, at any rate.”
“Because you don’t want to go to New Zealand;—but you might try about Loughton for poor Mr. Finn.”
“Violet,” said Lady Laura, after a moment’s pause;—and she spoke sharply; “Violet, I believe you are in love with Mr. Finn.”
“That’s just like you, Laura.”
“I never made such an accusation against you before, or against anybody else that I can remember. But I do begin to believe that you are in love with Mr. Finn.”
“Why shouldn’t I be in love with him, if I like?”
“I say nothing about that;—only he has not got a penny.”
“But I have, my dear.”
“And I doubt whether you have any reason for supposing that he is in love with you.”
“That would be my affair, my dear.”
“Then you are in love with him?”
“That is my affair also.”
Lady Laura shrugged her shoulders. “Of course it is; and if you tell me to hold my tongue, of course I will do so. If you ask me whether I think it a good match, of course I must say I do not.”
“I don’t tell you to hold your tongue, and I don’t ask you what you think about the match. You are quite welcome to talk as much about me as you please;—but as to Mr. Phineas Finn, you have no business to think anything.”
“I shouldn’t talk to anybody but yourself.”
“I am growing to be quite indifferent as to what people say. Lady Baldock asked me the other day whether I was going to throw myself away on Mr. Laurence Fitzgibbon.”
“No!”
“Indeed she did.”
“And what did you answer?”
“I told her that it was not quite settled; but that as I had only spoken to him once during the last two years, and then for not more than half a minute, and as I wasn’t sure whether I knew him by sight, and as I had reason to suppose he didn’t know my name, there might, perhaps, be a delay of a week or two before
