It had become necessary, and you are too much of a
man to care much for any truth being told. He was terribly
angry both with me and with you; but the fact is, he is so
blindly unreasonable that one cannot regard his anger. I
endeavoured to tell the story truly, and, so told, it
certainly should not have injured you in his estimation.
But it did. Very sorry, old fellow, and I hope you'll get
over it. It is a good deal more important to me than to
you.
Yours,
C.
There was not a word about Violet. But then it was hardly to be
expected that there should be words about Violet. It was not likely
that a man should write to his rival of his own failure. But yet
there was a flavour of Violet in the letter which would not have been
there, so Phineas thought, if the writer had been despondent. The
pleasant little meeting on the sands had been convened altogether in
respect of Violet. And the telling of the story to the Earl must have
arisen from discussions about Violet. Lord Chiltern must have told
his father that Phineas was his rival. Could the rejected suitor have
written on such a subject in such a strain to such a correspondent
if he had believed his own rejection to be certain? But then
Lord Chiltern was not like anybody else in the world, and it was
impossible to judge of him by one's experience of the motives of
others.
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