“Is that a compliment to us Britons?”
“No, certainly not. If a man is a servant,
he should be clever enough to be a good one.”
Phineas had now given the order for the carriage,
and, having returned, was standing with Madame Max
Goesler in the cloak-room. “After all,
we are surely the most awkward people in the world,”
she said. “You know Lord Fawn, who was talking
to Miss Effingham just now. You should have heard
him trying to pay me a compliment before dinner.
It was like a donkey walking a minuet, and yet they
say he is a clever man and can make speeches.”
Could it be possible that Madame Max Goesler’s
ears were so sharp that she had heard the things which
Lord Fawn had said of her?
“He is a well-informed man,” said Phineas.
“For a lord, you mean,” said Madame Max
Goesler. “But he is an oaf, is he not?
And yet they say he is to marry that girl.”
“I do not think he will,” said Phineas,
stoutly.
“I hope not, with all my heart; and I hope that
somebody else may,—unless somebody else
should change his mind. Thank you; I am so much
obliged to you. Mind you come and call on me,—193,
Park Lane. I dare say you know the little cottage.”
Then he put Madame Max Goesler into her carriage,
and walked away to his club.
Lady Baldock Does Not Send a Card to Phineas Finn
Lady Baldock’s house in Berkeley Square was
very stately,—a large house with five front
windows in a row, and a big door, and a huge square
hall, and a fat porter in a round-topped chair;—but
it was dingy and dull, and could not have been painted
for the last ten years, or furnished for the last
twenty. Nevertheless, Lady Baldock had “evenings,”
and people went to them,—though not such
a crowd of people as would go to the evenings of Lady
Glencora. Now Mr. Phineas Finn had not been asked
to the evenings of Lady Baldock for the present season,
and the reason was after this wise.
“Yes, Mr. Finn,” Lady Baldock had said
to her daughter, who, early in the spring, was preparing
the cards. “You may send one to Mr. Finn,
certainly.”
“I don’t know that he is very nice,”
said Augusta Boreham, whose eyes at Saulsby had been
sharper perhaps than her mother’s, and who had
her suspicions.
But Lady Baldock did not like interference from her
daughter. “Mr. Finn, certainly,”
she continued. “They tell me that he is
a very rising young man, and he sits for Lord Brentford’s
borough. Of course he is a Radical, but we cannot
help that. All the rising young men are Radicals
now. I thought him very civil at Saulsby.”
“But, mamma—”
“Well!”
“Don’t you think that he is a little free
with Violet?”
“What on earth do you mean, Augusta?”
“Have you not fancied that he is—fond
of her?”
“Good gracious, no!”
“I think he is. And I have sometimes fancied
that she is fond of him, too.”
