"
"Well?"
"If you were to lose it all, would you not be unhappy? It has been
my ambition to live here in London as one of a special set which
dominates all other sets in our English world. To do so a man
should have means of his own. I have none; and yet I have tried
it,--thinking that I could earn my bread at it as men do at other
professions. I acknowledge that I should not have thought so. No man
should attempt what I have attempted without means, at any rate to
live on if he fail; but I am not the less unhappy because I have been
silly."
"What will you do?"
"Ah,--what? Another friend asked me that the other day, and I told
her that I should vanish."
"Who was that friend?"
"Lady Laura."
"She is in London again now?"
"Yes; she and her father are in Portman Square."
"She has been an injurious friend to you."
"No, by heaven," exclaimed Phineas. "But for her I should never have
been here at all, never have had a seat in Parliament, never have
been in office, never have known you."
"And might have been the better without any of these things.
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