Of course, it could never come to anything, because of the circumstances of his life, which were so imperious to him.

He was not in love with Lady Laura, and yet he hoped that his intimacy with her might come to much.

He had more than once asked himself how he would feel when somebody else came to be really in love with Lady Laura,--for she was by no means a woman to lack lovers,--when some one else should be in love with her, and be received by her as a lover; but this question he had never been able to answer.

There were many questions about himself which he usually answered by telling himself that it was his fate to walk over volcanoes.

"Of course, I shall be blown into atoms some fine day," he would say; "but after all, that is better than being slowly boiled down into pulp." The House had met on a Friday, again on the Saturday morning, and the debate on the Address had been adjourned till the Monday.