refusal. You can have nothing to do before you are wanted
at Tankerville.

I was so sorry to hear of your great loss. I hardly know
whether to mention it or to be silent in writing. If you
were here of course I should speak of her. And I would
rather renew your grief for a time than allow you to think
that I am indifferent. Pray come to us.

Yours ever most sincerely,

VIOLET CHILTERN.

Harrington Hall, Wednesday.


Phineas Finn at once made up his mind that he would go to Harrington
Hall. There was the prospect in this of an immediate return to some
of the most charming pleasures of the old life, which was very
grateful to him. It pleased him much that he should have been so
thought of by this lady,--that she should have sought him out
at once, at the moment of his reappearance. That she would have
remembered him, he was quite sure, and that her husband, Lord
Chiltern, should remember him also, was beyond a doubt. There had
been passages in their joint lives which people cannot forget. But
it might so well have been the case that they should not have cared
to renew their acquaintance with him. As it was, they must have
made close inquiry, and had sought him at the first day of his
reappearance. The letter had reached him through the hands of
Barrington Erle, who was a cousin of Lord Chiltern, and was at once