he lead?"

"I suppose he couldn't become a Master of Hounds?"

"That is ill-natured, Mr. Finn."

"I did not mean it so. I did not indeed. You must know that I did
not."

"Of course Oswald had nothing to do, and, of course, there was a time
when I wished that he should take to Parliament. No one knew all that
better than you did. But he was very different from Mr. Maule."

"Very different, indeed."

"Oswald is a man full of energy, and with no touch of that
affectation which you described. As it is, he does work hard. No
man works harder. The learned people say that you should produce
something, and I don't suppose that he produces much. But somebody
must keep hounds, and nobody could do it better than he does."

"You don't think that I mean to blame him?"

"I hope not."

"Are he and his father on good terms now?"

"Oh, yes. His father wishes him to go to Saulsby, but he won't do
that. He hates Saulsby."

Saulsby was the country seat of the Earl of Brentford, the name of
the property which must some day belong to this Lord Chiltern, and
Phineas, as he heard this, remembered former days in which he had
ridden about Saulsby Woods, and had thought them to be anything but
hateful. "Is Saulsby shut up?" he asked.

"Altogether, and so is the house in Portman Square. There never was
anything more sad or desolate. You would find him altered, Mr. Finn.
He is quite an old man now. He was here in the spring, for a week or
two;--in England, that is; but he stayed at an hotel in London. He
and Laura live at Dresden now, and a very sad time they must have."

"Does she write?"

"Yes; and keeps up all her interest about politics. I have already
told her that you are to stand for Tankerville. No one,--no other
human being in the world will be so interested for you as she is.
If any friend ever felt an interest almost selfish for a friend's
welfare, she will feel such an interest for you. If you were to
succeed it would give her a hope in life." Phineas sat silent,
drinking in the words that were said to him. Though they were true,
or at least meant to be true, they were full of flattery. Why should
this woman of whom they were speaking love him so dearly? She was
nothing to him. She was highly born, greatly gifted, wealthy, and a
married woman, whose character, as he well knew, was beyond the taint
of suspicion, though she had been driven by the hard sullenness of
her husband to refuse to live under his roof. Phineas