"Of course. Lady Laura has gone down to Scotland;—has she not;—and all alone?"
"She is alone now, I believe."
"How dreadful! I do not know any one that I pity so much as I do her. I was in the house with her some time, and she gave me the idea of being the most unhappy woman I had ever met with. Don't you think that she is very unhappy?"
"She has had very much to make her so," said Phineas. "She was obliged to leave her husband because of the gloom of his insanity;—and now she is a widow."
"I don't suppose she ever really—cared for him; did she?" The question was no sooner asked than the poor girl remembered the whole story which she had heard some time back,—the rumour of the husband's jealousy and of the wife's love, and she became as red as fire, and unable to help herself. She could think of no word to say, and confessed her confusion by her sudden silence.
Phineas saw it all, and did his best for her. "I am sure she cared for him," he said, "though I do not think it was a well-assorted marriage. They had different ideas about religion, I fancy. So you saw the hunting in the Brake country to the end? How is our old friend, Mr. Spooner?"
"Don't talk of him, Mr. Finn."
"I rather like Mr. Spooner;—and as for hunting the country, I don't think Chiltern could get on without him. What a capital fellow your cousin the Duke is."
"I hardly know him."
"He is such a gentleman;—and, at the same time, the most abstract and the most concrete man that I know."