allow anything and everything to interfere with you. Anybody's
affairs seem more to you than your own."

Victor shook his head.

"That isn't the reason," he said. "I wish it were, or anything half so
good. No; the truth is that I get ashamed of the cursed work of trying
to interest people in my affairs who don't want to take any interest in
them. I am a restless sort of person and must be doing something, and my
own business is now in that awful stage when there is nothing practical
or active to be done with it. I find it easier to get up an appearance
of prodigious activity about some other person's affairs. And then, Miss
Grey, I don't mind confessing that I am rather sensitive and
morbid--egotistic, I suppose--and if any one looks coldly on me when I
endeavor to interest him in my own affairs, I take it to heart more than
if it were the business of somebody else I had in hand."

"But you talked at one time of appealing to the public. Why don't you do
that?"

"Get people to bring my case on in the House of Commons?"

"Yes; why not?"

"It looks like being patronized and protected and made a client of."

"Well, why don't you try and get the chance of doing it yourself?"

He smiled.

"I still do hold to that idea--or that dream. I should like it very much
if one only had a chance. But no chance seems to turn up; and one loses
heart sometimes."

"Oh, no," Minola said earnestly, "don't do that."

"Don't do what?"

He had hardly been thinking of his own words, and he seemed a little
surprised at the earnestness of her tone.

"Don't lose heart. Don't give way. Don't fall into the track of the
commonplace, and become like every one else. Keep to your purpose, Mr.
Heron, and don't be beaten out of it."

"No; I haven't the least idea of that, I can assure you. Quite the
contrary. But it is so hard to get a chance, or to do anything all at
once. Everything moves so slowly in England. But I have a plan--we are
doing something."

"I am very glad. You seem to me to be doing nothing for yourself."

"Do I? I can assure you I am much less Quixotic than you imagine. Now, I
am so glad to hear that you still like the Parliamentary scheme, because
that is the idea that I have particularly at heart; and if the idea
comes to anything, there are some reasons why you should take a special
interest in it."

"Are there really? May I be told what they are?"

"Well, the whole thing is only in prospect and uncertainty just y