Mr. Monk were at Bath it would not probably make much
difference. When he tendered his letter of resignation, Lord Cantrip
begged him to withdraw it for a day or two. He would, he said, speak
to Mr. Gresham. The debate on the second reading of Mr. Monk's bill
would not take place till that day week, and the resignation would
be in time if it was tendered before Phineas either spoke or voted
against the Government. So Phineas went back to his room, and
endeavoured to make himself useful in some work appertaining to his
favourite Colonies.

That conversation had taken place on a Friday, and on the
following Sunday, early in the day, he left his rooms after a late
breakfast,--a prolonged breakfast, during which he had been studying
tenant-right statistics, preparing his own speech, and endeavouring
to look forward into the future which that speech was to do so much
to influence,--and turned his face towards Park Lane. There had been
a certain understanding between him and Madame Goesler that he was
to call in Park Lane on this Sunday morning, and then declare to her
what was his final resolve as to the office which he held. "It is
simply to bid her adieu," he said to himself, "for I shall hardly
see her again." And yet, as he took off his morning easy coat, and
dressed himself for the streets, and stood for a moment before his
looking-glass, and saw that his gloves were fresh and that his boots
were properly polished, I think there was a care about his person
which he would have hardly taken had he been quite assured that he
simply intended to say good-bye to the lady whom he was about to
visit. But if there were any such conscious feeling, he administered
to himself an antidote before he left the house. On returning to the
sitting-room he went to a little desk from which he took out the
letter from Mary which the reader has seen, and carefully perused
every word of it. "She is the best of them all," he said to himself,
as he refolded the letter and put it back into his desk. I am not
sure that it is well that a man should have any large number from
whom to select a best; as, in such circumstances, he is so very apt
to change his judgment from hour to hour. The qualities which are the
most attractive before dinner sometimes become the least so in the
evening.

The morning was warm, and he took a cab. It would not do that he
should speak even his last farewell to such a one as Madame Goesler
with all the heat and dust of