On
the Sunday, Phineas determined that he would see Lady Laura. She
professed to be always at home on Sunday, and from three to four in
the afternoon her drawing-room would probably be half full of people.
There would, at any rate, be comers and goers, who would prevent
anything like real conversation between himself and her. But for a
few minutes before that he might probably find her alone, and he was
most anxious to see whether her reception of him, as a member of
Parliament, would be in any degree warmer than that of his other
friends. Hitherto he had found no such warmth since he came to
London, excepting that which had glowed in the bosom of Mrs. Bunce.
Lady Laura Standish was the daughter of the Earl of Brentford, and
was the only remaining lady of the Earl's family. The Countess had
been long dead; and Lady Emily, the younger daughter, who had been
the great beauty of her day, was now the wife of a Russian nobleman
whom she had persisted in preferring to any of her English suitors,
and lived at St. Petersburg. There was an aunt, old Lady Laura, who
came up to town about the middle of May; but she was always in the
country except for some six weeks in the season. There was a certain
Lord Chiltern, the Earl's son and heir, who did indeed live at the
family town house in Portman Square; but Lord Chiltern was a man of
whom Lady Laura's set did not often speak, and Phineas, frequently
as he had been at the house, had never seen Lord Chiltern there.
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