He would refuse Mr. Gresham's
offer,--not because he hoped that he might live in idleness on the
wealth of the woman he loved,--but because the chicaneries and
intrigues of office had become distasteful to him. "I don't know
which are the falser," he said to himself, "the mock courtesies or
the mock indignations of statesmen."
He found the Earl's carriage waiting for him at the station, and
thought of many former days, as he was carried through the little
town for which he had sat in Parliament, up to the house which he
had once visited in the hope of wooing Violet Effingham. The women
whom he had loved had all, at any rate, become his friends, and his
thorough friendships were almost all with women. He and Lord Chiltern
regarded each other with warm affection; but there was hardly ground
for real sympathy between them. It was the same with Mr. Low and
Barrington Erle. Were he to die there would be no gap in their
lives;--were they to die there would be none in his. But with Violet
Effingham,--as he still loved to call her to himself,--he thought it
would be different.
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