The first person who spoke to Phineas at Lady Baldock’s was Miss Fitzgibbon, Laurence’s sister.  Aspasia Fitzgibbon was a warm woman as regarded money, and as she was moreover a most discreet spinster, she was made welcome by Lady Baldock, in spite of the well-known iniquities of her male relatives.  “Mr. Finn,” said she, “how d’ye do?  I want to say a word to ye.  Just come here into the corner.”  Phineas, not knowing how to escape, did retreat into the corner with Miss Fitzgibbon.  “Tell me now, Mr. Finn;—­have ye been lending money to Laurence?”

“No; I have lent him no money,” said Phineas, much astonished by the question.

“Don’t.  That’s my advice to ye.  Don’t.  On any other matter Laurence is the best creature in the world,—­but he’s bad to lend money to.  You ain’t in any hobble with him, then?”

“Well;—­nothing to speak of.  What makes you ask?”

“Then you are in a hobble?  Dear, dear!  I never saw such a man as Laurence;—­never.  Good-bye.  I wouldn’t do it again, if I were you;—­that’s all.”  Then Miss Fitzgibbon came out of the corner and made her way down-stairs.

Phineas immediately afterwards came across Miss Effingham.  “I did not know,” said she, “that you and the divine Aspasia were such close allies.”

“We are the dearest friends in the world, but she has taken my breath away now.”

“May a body be told how she has done that?” Violet asked.

“Well, no; I’m afraid not, even though the body be Miss Effingham.  It was a profound secret;—­really a secret concerning a third person, and she began about it just as though she were speaking about the weather!”

“How charming!  I do so like her.  You haven’t heard, have you, that Mr. Ratler proposed to her the other day?”

“No!”

“But he did;—­at least, so she tells everybody.  She said she’d take him if he would promise to get her brother’s salary doubled.”

“Did she tell you?”

“No; not me.  And of course I don’t believe a word of it.  I suppose Barrington Erle made up the story.  Are you going out of town next week, Mr. Finn?” The week next to this was Easter-week.  “I heard you were going into Northamptonshire.”

“From Lady Laura?”

“Yes;—­from Lady Laura.”

“I intend to spend three days with Lord Chiltern at Willingford.  It is an old promise.  I am going to ride his horses,—­that is, if I am able to ride them.”

“Take care what you are about, Mr. Finn;—­they say his horses are so dangerous!”

“I’m rather good at falling, I flatter myself.”

“I know that Lord Chiltern rides anything he can sit, so long as it is some animal that nobody else will ride.  It was always so with him.  He is so odd; is he not?”

Phineas knew, of course, that Lord Chiltern had more than once asked Violet Effingham to be his wife,—­and he believed that she, from her intimacy with Lady Laura, must know that he knew it.  He had also heard Lady Laura express a very strong wish that, in spite of these refusals, Violet might even yet become her brother’s wife.  And Phineas also knew that Violet Effingham was becoming, in his own estimation, the most charming woman of his acquaintance.  How was he to talk to her about Lord Chiltern?