When he returned to eat a mutton chop at Great Marlborough
Street at three o'clock he was painfully conscious that all his
morning had been wasted. He had allowed his mind to run revel,
instead of tying it down to the formation of sentences and
construction of arguments.
He entered the House with the Speaker at four o'clock, and took his
seat without uttering a word to any man. He seemed to be more than
ever disjoined from his party. Hitherto, since he had been seated
by the Judge's order, the former companions of his Parliamentary
life,--the old men whom he had used to know,--had to a certain degree
admitted him among them. Many of them sat on the front Opposition
bench, whereas he, as a matter of course, had seated himself behind.
But he had very frequently found himself next to some man who had
held office and was living in the hope of holding it again, and had
felt himself to be in some sort recognised as an aspirant. Now it
seemed to him that it was otherwise. He did not doubt but that
Bonteen had shown the correspondence to his friends, and that the
Ratlers and Erles had conceded that he, Phineas, was put out of
court by it.
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