number of real barristers finds its way into the House.  Mr. Low had been angry with Phineas because he, being a barrister, had climbed into it after another fashion, having taken up politics, not in the proper way as an assistance to his great profession, but as a profession in itself.  Mr. Low had been quite sure that his pupil had been wrong in this, and that the error would at last show itself, to his pupil’s cost.  And Mrs. Low had been more sure than Mr. Low, having not unnaturally been jealous that a young whipper-snapper of a pupil,—­as she had once called Phineas,—­should become a Parliament man before her husband, who had worked his way up gallantly, in the usual course.  She would not give way a jot even now,—­not even when she heard that Phineas was going to marry this and that heiress.  For at this period of his life such rumours were afloat about him, originating probably in his hopes as to Violet Effingham and his intimacy with Madame Goesler.  “Oh, heiresses!” said Mrs. Low.  “I don’t believe in heiresses’ money till I see it.  Three or four hundred a year is a great fortune for a woman, but it don’t go far in keeping a house in London.  And when a woman has got a little money she generally knows how to spend it.  He has begun at the wrong end, and they who do that never get themselves right at the last.”

At this time Phineas had become somewhat of a fine gentleman, which made Mrs. Low the more angry with him.  He showed himself willing enough to go to Mrs. Low’s house, but when there he seemed to her to give himself airs.  I think that she was unjust to him, and that it was natural that he should not bear himself beneath her remarks exactly as he had done when he was nobody.  He had certainly been very successful.  He was always listened to in the House, and rarely spoke except on subjects which belonged to him, or had been allotted to him as part of his business.  He lived quite at his ease with people of the highest rank,—­and those of his own mode of life who disliked him did so simply because they regarded with envy his too rapid rise.  He rode upon a pretty horse in the park, and was careful in his dress, and had about him an air of comfortable wealth which Mrs. Low thought he had not earned.  When her husband told her of his sufficient salary, she would shake her head and express her opinion that a good time was coming.  By which she perhaps meant to imply a belief that a time was coming in which her husband would have a salary much better than that now enjoyed by Phineas, and much more likely to be permanent.  The Radicals were not to have office for ever, and when they were gone, what then?  “I don’t suppose he saves a shilling,” said Mrs. Low.  “How can he, keeping a horse in the park, and hunting down in the country, and living with lords?  I shouldn’t wonder if he isn’t found to be over head and ears in debt when things come to be looked into.”  Mrs. Low was fond of an assured prosperity, of money in the funds, and was proud to think that her husband