Had this old bachelor of forty-three been really in love with Lady Laura, would he have allowed her to walk home alone with Phineas, leaving her with some flimsy pretext of having to look at his sheep?
Phineas resolved that he must at any rate play out his game,--whether he were to lose it or to win it; and in playing it he must, if possible, drop something of that Mentor and Telemachus style of conversation.

As to the advice given him of herding with Greshams and Pallisers, instead of with Ratlers and Fitzgibbons,--he must use that as circumstances might direct.

To him, himself, as he thought of it all, it was sufficiently astonishing that even the Ratlers and Fitzgibbons should admit him among them as one of themselves.

"When I think of my father and of the old house at Killaloe, and remember that hitherto I have done nothing myself, I cannot understand how it is that I should be at Loughlinter." There was only one way of understanding it.

If Lady Laura really loved him, the riddle might be read.
The rooms at Loughlinter were splendid, much larger and very much more richly furnished than those at Saulsby.