the expediency of
Violet becoming his wife. Indeed his entrance had interrupted the
conversation before it was over. "I am so glad to see you, Miss
Effingham," he said. "I came in thinking that I might find you."

"Here I am, as large as life," she said, getting up from her
corner on the sofa and giving him her hand. "Laura and I have been
discussing the affairs of the nation for the last two days, and have
nearly brought our discussion to an end." She could not help looking,
first at his eye and then at his hand, not as wanting evidence to
the truth of the statement which his sister had made, but because
the idea of a drunkard's eye and a drunkard's hand had been brought
before her mind. Lord Chiltern's hand was like the hand of any other
man, but there was something in his eye that almost frightened her.
It looked as though he would not hesitate to wring his wife's neck
round, if ever he should be brought to threaten to do so. And then
his eye, like the rest of him, was red. No;--she did not think that
she could ever bring herself to marry him. Why take a venture that
was double-dangerous, when there were so many ventures open to her,
apparently with very little of danger attached to them? "If it should
ever be said that I loved him, I would do it all the same," she said
to herself.

"If I did not come and see you here, I suppose that I should never
see you," said he, seating himself. "I do not often go to parties,
and when I do you are not likely to be there."

"We might make our little arrangements for meeting," said she,
laughing. "My aunt, Lady Baldock, is going to have an evening next
week."

"The servants would be ordered to put me out of the house."

"Oh no. You can tell her that I invited you."

"I don't think that Oswald and Lady Baldock are great friends," said
Lady Laura.

"Or he might come and take you and me to the Zoo on Sunday. That's
the proper sort of thing for a brother and a friend to do."

"I hate that place in the Regent's Park," said Lord Chiltern.

"When were you there last?" demanded Miss Effingham.

"When I came home once from Eton. But I won't go again till I can
come home from Eton again." Then he altered his tone as he continued
to speak. "People would look at me as if I were the wildest beast in
the whole collection."

"Then," said Violet, "if you won't go to Lady Baldock's or to the
Zoo, we must confine ourselves to Laura's drawing-room;--unless,
indeed, you like to take m