"Try her," said Lady Laura energetically. "Such trials cost you but little;—we both of us know that!" Still he said nothing of the letter in his pocket. "It is everything that you should go on now that you have once begun. I do not believe in you working at the Bar. You cannot do it. A man who has commenced life as you have done with the excitement of politics, who has known what it is to take a prominent part in the control of public affairs, cannot give it up and be happy at other work. Make her your wife, and you may resign or remain in office just as you choose. Office will be much easier to you than it is now, because it will not be a necessity. Let me at any rate have the pleasure of thinking that one of us can remain here,—that we need not both fall together."
Still he did not tell her of the letter in his pocket. He felt that she moved him,—that she made him acknowledge to himself how great would be the pity of such a failure as would be his. He was quite as much alive as she could be to the fact that work at the Bar, either in London or in Dublin, would have no charms for him now. The prospect of such a life was very dreary to him. Even with the comfort of Mary's love such a life would be very dreary to him. And then he knew,—he thought that he knew,—that were he to offer himself to Madame Goesler he would not in truth be rejected. She had told him that if poverty was a trouble to him he need be no longer poor. Of course he had understood this. Her money was at his service if he should choose to stoop and pick it up. And it was not only money that such a marriage would give him. He had acknowledged to himself more than once that Madame Goesler was very lovely, that she was clever, attractive in every way, and as far as he could see, blessed with a sweet temper. She had a position, too, in the world that would help him rather than mar him. What might he not do with an independent seat in the House of Commons, and as joint owner of the little house in Park Lane? Of all careers which the world could offer to a man the pleasantest would then be within his reach. "You appear to me as a tempter," he said at last to Lady Laura.
"It is unkind of you to say that, and ungrateful. I would do anything on earth in my power to help you."
"Nevertheless you are a tempter."
"I know how it ought to have been," she said, in a low voice. "I know very well how it ought to have been. I should have kept myself free till that time when we met on the braes of Loughlinter, and then all would have been well with us."
"I do not know how that might have been," said Phineas, hoarsely.
"You do not know! But I know. Of course you have stabbed me with a thousand daggers when you have told me from time to time of your love for Violet. You have been very cruel,—needlessly cruel. Men are so cruel! But for all that I have known that I could have kept you,—had it not been too late when you spoke to me. Will you not own as much as that?"
"Of course you would have been everything to me. I should never have thought of Violet then."
"That is the only kind word you have said to me from that day to this. I try to comfort myself in thinking that it would have been so. But all that is past and gone, and done. I have had my romance and you have had yours. As you are a man, it is natural that you should have been disturbed by a double image;—it is not so with me."
"And yet you can advise me to offer marriage to a woman,—a woman whom I am to seek merely because she is rich?"