“I do so wish I knew him,” said Madame Max Goesler.  “I am fond of madmen, and men who haven’t shillings, and who are a little wild, Could you not bring him here, Mr. Finn?”

Phineas did not know what to say, or how to open his mouth without showing his deep concern.  “I shall be happy to ask him if you wish it,” he replied, as though the question had been put to him in earnest; “but I do not see so much of Lord Chiltern as I used to do.”

“You do not believe that Violet Effingham will accept him?” asked Mrs. Bonteen.

He paused a moment before he spoke, and then made his answer in a deep solemn voice,—­with a seriousness which he was unable to repress.  “She has accepted him,” he said.

“Do you mean that you know it?” said Madame Goesler.

“Yes;—­I mean that I know it.”

Had anybody told him beforehand that he would openly make this declaration at Madame Goesler’s table, he would have said that of all things it was the most impossible.  He would have declared that nothing would have induced him to speak of Violet Effingham in his existing frame of mind, and that he would have had his tongue cut out before he spoke of her as the promised bride of his rival.  And now he had declared the whole truth of his own wretchedness and discomfiture.  He was well aware that all of them there knew why he had fought the duel at Blankenberg;—­all, that is, except perhaps Lord Fawn.  And he felt as he made the statement as to Lord Chiltern that he blushed up to his forehead, and that his voice was strange, and that he was telling the tale of his own disgrace.  But when the direct question had been asked him he had been unable to refrain from answering it directly.  He had thought of turning it off with some jest or affectation of drollery, but had failed.  At the moment he had been unable not to speak the truth.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” said Lord Fawn,—­who also forgot himself.

“I do believe it, if Mr. Finn says so,” said Mrs. Bonteen, who rather liked the confusion she had caused.

“But who could have told you, Finn?” asked Mr. Bonteen.

“His sister, Lady Laura, told me so,” said Phineas.

“Then it must be true,” said Madame Goesler.

“It is quite impossible,” said Lord Fawn.  “I think I may say that I know that it is impossible.  If it were so, it would be a most shameful arrangement.  Every shilling she has in the world would be swallowed up.”  Now, Lord Fawn in making his proposals had been magnanimous in his offers as to settlements and pecuniary provisions generally.