I suppose
Barrington Erle made up the story. Are you going out of town next
week, Mr. Finn?" The week next to this was Easter-week. "I heard you
were going into Northamptonshire."
"From Lady Laura?"
"Yes;--from Lady Laura."
"I intend to spend three days with Lord Chiltern at Willingford. It
is an old promise. I am going to ride his horses,--that is, if I am
able to ride them."
"Take care what you are about, Mr. Finn;--they say his horses are so
dangerous!"
"I'm rather good at falling, I flatter myself."
"I know that Lord Chiltern rides anything he can sit, so long as it
is some animal that nobody else will ride. It was always so with him.
He is so odd; is he not?"
Phineas knew, of course, that Lord Chiltern had more than once asked
Violet Effingham to be his wife,--and he believed that she, from her
intimacy with Lady Laura, must know that he knew it. He had also
heard Lady Laura express a very strong wish that, in spite of these
refusals, Violet might even yet become her brother's wife. And
Phineas also knew that Violet Effingham was becoming, in his own
estimation, the most charming woman of his acquaintance. How was he
to talk to her about Lord Chiltern?
"He is odd," said Phineas; "but he is an excellent fellow,--whom his
father altogether misunderstands.
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