“I would certainly go, if I were you.”

“I doubt it very much, if all the circumstances were the same.  Let him tell me what he wants.”

“Of course I cannot ask him, Chiltern.”

“I know what he wants very well.  Laura has been interfering and doing no good.  You know Violet Effingham?”

“Yes; I know her,” said Phineas, much surprised.

“They want her to marry me.”

“And you do not wish to marry her?”

“I did not say that.  But do you think that such a girl as Miss Effingham would marry such a man as I am?  She would be much more likely to take you.  By George, she would!  Do you know that she has three thousand a year of her own?”

“I know that she has money.”

“That’s about the tune of it.  I would take her without a shilling to-morrow, if she would have me,—­because I like her.  She is the only girl I ever did like.  But what is the use of my liking her?  They have painted me so black among them, especially my father, that no decent girl would think of marrying me.”

“Your father can’t be angry with you if you do your best to comply with his wishes.”

“I don’t care a straw whether he be angry or not.  He allows me eight hundred a year, and he knows that if he stopped it I should go to the Jews the next day.  I could not help myself.  He can’t leave an acre away from me, and yet he won’t join me in raising money for the sake of paying Laura her fortune.”

“Lady Laura can hardly want money now.”

“That detestable prig whom she has chosen to marry, and whom I hate with all my heart, is richer than ever Croesus was; but nevertheless Laura ought to have her own money.  She shall have it some day.”

“I would see Lord Brentford, if I were you.”

“I will think about it.  Now tell me about coming down to Willingford.  Laura says you will come some day in March.  I can mount you for a couple of days and should be delighted to have you.  My horses all pull like the mischief, and rush like devils, and want a deal of riding; but an Irishman likes that.”

“I do not dislike it particularly.”

“I like it.  I prefer to have something to do on horseback.  When a man tells me that a horse is an armchair, I always tell him to put the brute into his bedroom.  Mind you come.  The house I stay at is called the Willingford Bull, and it’s just four miles from Peterborough.”  Phineas swore that he would go down and ride the pulling horses, and then took his leave, earnestly advising Lord Chiltern, as he went, to keep the appointment proposed by his father.

When the morning came, at half-past eleven, the son, who had been standing for half an hour with his back to the fire in the large gloomy dining-room, suddenly rang the bell.  “Tell the Earl,” he said to the servant, “that I am here and will go to him if he wishes it.”  The servant came back, and said that the Earl was waiting.  Then Lord Chiltern strode after the man into his father’s room.