hink he is buckram. It is not very easy for
a man in his position to live so as to please all people. He has to
maintain the prestige of the highest aristocracy in Europe."

"Look at his nephew, who will be the next Duke, and who works as hard
as any man in the country. Will he not maintain it better? What good
did the present man ever do?"

"You believe only in motion, Mr. Finn;--and not at all in quiescence.
An express train at full speed is grander to you than a mountain with
heaps of snow. I own that to me there is something glorious in the
dignity of a man too high to do anything,--if only he knows how to
carry that dignity with a proper grace. I think that there should be
breasts made to carry stars."

"Stars which they have never earned," said Phineas.

"Ah;--well; we will not fight about it. Go and earn your star, and I
will say that it becomes you better than any glitter on the coat of
the Duke of Omnium." This she said with an earnestness which he could
not pretend not to notice or not to understand. "I too may be able to
see that the express train is really greater than the mountain."

"Though, for your own life, you would prefer to sit and gaze upon the
snowy peaks?"

"No;--that is not so. For myself, I would prefer to be of use
somewhere,--to some one, if it were possible. I strive sometimes."

"And I am sure successfully."

"Never mind. I hate to talk about myself. You and the Duke are
fair subjects for conversation; you as the express train, who will
probably do your sixty miles an hour in safety, but may possibly go
down a bank with a crash."

"Certainly I may," said Phineas.

"And the Duke, as the mountain, which is fixed in its stateliness,
short of the power of some earthquake, which shall be grander and
more terrible than any earthquake yet known. Here we are at the house
again. I will go in and sit down for a while."

"If I leave you, Madame Goesler, I will say good-bye till next
winter."

"I shall be in town again before Christmas, you know. You will come
and see me?"

"Of course I will."

"And then this love trouble of course will be over,--one way or the
other;--will it not?"

"Ah!--who can say?"

"Faint heart never won fair lady. But your heart is never faint.
Farewell."

Then he left her. Up to this moment he had not seen Violet, and yet
he knew that she was to be there. She had herself told him that she
was to accompany Lady Laura, whom he had already met. Lady Baldock