“Of course.  But it seems to me that he failed to comprehend the only way in which a great party can act together, if it is to do any service in this country.  Don’t for a moment think that I am blaming him or you.”

“I am nobody in this matter,” said Phineas.

“I can assure you, Mr. Finn, that we have not regarded you in that light, and I hope that the time may come when we may be sitting together again on the same bench.”

Neither on the Treasury bench nor on any other in that House was he to sit again after this fashion!  That was the trouble which was crushing his spirit at this moment, and not the loss of his office!  He knew that he could not venture to think of remaining in London as a member of Parliament with no other income than that which his father could allow him, even if he could again secure a seat in Parliament.  When he had first been returned for Loughshane he had assured his friends that his duty as a member of the House of Commons would not be a bar to his practice in the Courts.  He had now been five years a member, and had never once made an attempt at doing any part of a barrister’s work.  He had gone altogether into a different line of life, and had been most successful;—­so successful that men told him, and women more frequently than men, that his career had been a miracle of success.  But there had been, as he had well known from the first, this drawback in the new profession which he had chosen, that nothing in it could be permanent.  They who succeed in it, may probably succeed again; but then the success is intermittent, and there may be years of hard work in opposition, to which, unfortunately, no pay is assigned.  It is almost imperative, as he now found, that they who devote themselves to such a profession should be men of fortune.  When he had commenced his work,—­at the period of his first return for Loughshane,—­he had had no thought of mending his deficiency in this respect by a rich marriage.  Nor had it ever occurred to him that he would seek a marriage for that purpose.  Such an idea would have been thoroughly distasteful to him.  There had been no stain of premeditated mercenary arrangement upon him at any time.  But circumstances had so fallen out with him, that as he won his spurs in Parliament, as he became known, and was placed first in one office and then in another, prospects of love and money together were opened to him, and he ventured on, leaving Mr. Low and the law behind him,—­because these prospects were so alluring.  Then had come Mr. Monk and Mary Flood Jones,—­and everything around him had collapsed.