When he had first been returned for Loughshane he had
assured his friends that his duty as a member of the House of Commons
would not be a bar to his practice in the Courts. He had now been
five years a member, and had never once made an attempt at doing any
part of a barrister's work. He had gone altogether into a different
line of life, and had been most successful;--so successful that men
told him, and women more frequently than men, that his career had
been a miracle of success. But there had been, as he had well known
from the first, this drawback in the new profession which he had
chosen, that nothing in it could be permanent. They who succeed in
it, may probably succeed again; but then the success is intermittent,
and there may be years of hard work in opposition, to which,
unfortunately, no pay is assigned. It is almost imperative, as he now
found, that they who devote themselves to such a profession should
be men of fortune. When he had commenced his work,--at the period of
his first return for Loughshane,--he had had no thought of mending
his deficiency in this respect by a rich marriage. Nor had it ever
occurred to him that he would seek a marriage for that purpose. Such
an idea would have been thoroughly distasteful to him. There had been
no stain of premeditated mercenary arrangement upon him at any time.
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