Other ladies besides Madame
Goesler were anxious to have the story from the very lips of the
hero, and in this way Phineas Finn became a conspicuous man. But
Fame begets envy, and there were some who said that the member for
Tankerville had injured his prospects with his party. It may be very
well to give a dinner to a man who has caused the wife of a late
Cabinet Minister to quarrel with her husband; but it can hardly be
expected that he should be placed in office by the head of the party
to which that late Cabinet Minister belonged. "I never saw such a
fellow as you are," said Barrington Erle to him. "You are always
getting into a mess."
"Nobody ought to know better than you how false all these calumnies
are." This he said because Erle and Lady Laura were cousins.
"Of course they are calumnies; but you had heard them before, and
what made you go poking your head into the lion's mouth?"
Mr. Bonteen was very much harder upon him than was Barrington Erle.
"I never liked him from the first, and always knew he would not run
straight.
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