His Irish life, he would tell himself, was a
thing quite apart and separate from his life in England. He said not
a word about Mary Flood Jones to any of those with whom he lived
in London. Why should he, feeling as he did that it would so soon
be necessary that he should disappear from among them? About Miss
Effingham he had said much to Madame Goesler. She had asked him
whether he had abandoned all hope. "That affair, then, is over?" she
had said.
"Yes;--it is all over now."
"And she will marry the red-headed, violent lord?"
"Heaven knows. I think she will. But she is exactly the girl to
remain unmarried if she takes it into her head that the man she likes
is in any way unfitted for her."
"Does she love this lord?"
"Oh yes;--there is no doubt of that." And Phineas, as he made this
acknowledgment, seemed to do so without much inward agony of soul.
When he had been last in London he could not speak of Violet and Lord
Chiltern together without showing that his misery was almost too much
for him.
At this time he received some counsel from two friends. One was
Laurence Fitzgibbon, and the other was Barrington Erle. Laurence had
always been true to him after a fashion, and had never resented his
intrusion at the Colonial Office.
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