from her hands, and he felt a keen desire for some increase to those
ties of friendship which bound them together. No;--he was not in love
with Lady Laura Standish. He had not the remotest idea of asking her
to be his wife. So he told himself, both before he went over for his
election, and after his return. When he had found himself in a corner
with poor little Mary Flood Jones, he had kissed her as a matter of
course; but he did not think that he could, in any circumstances, be
tempted to kiss Lady Laura. He supposed that he was in love with his
darling little Mary,--after a fashion. Of course, it could never come
to anything, because of the circumstances of his life, which were
so imperious to him. He was not in love with Lady Laura, and yet he
hoped that his intimacy with her might come to much. He had more than
once asked himself how he would feel when somebody else came to be
really in love with Lady Laura,--for she was by no means a woman to
lack lovers,--when some one else should be in love with her, and be
received by her as a lover; but this question he had never been able
to answer. There were many questions about himself which he usually
answered by telling himself that it was his fate to walk over
volcanoes. "Of course, I shall be blown into atoms some fine day," he
would say; "but after all, that is better than being slowly boiled
down into pulp."

The House had met on a Friday, again on the Saturday morning, and
the debate on the Address had been adjourned till the Monday. 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