On the Sunday, Phineas determined that he would see Lady Laura.

She professed to be always at home on Sunday, and from three to four in the afternoon her drawing-room would probably be half full of people.
There would, at any rate, be comers and goers, who would prevent anything like real conversation between himself and her.

But for a few minutes before that he might probably find her alone, and he was most anxious to see whether her reception of him, as a member of Parliament, would be in any degree warmer than that of his other friends.

Hitherto he had found no such warmth since he came to London, excepting that which had glowed in the bosom of Mrs.Bunce.
Lady Laura Standish was the daughter of the Earl of Brentford, and was the only remaining lady of the Earl's family.

The Countess had been long dead; and Lady Emily, the younger daughter, who had been the great beauty of her day, was now the wife of a Russian nobleman whom she had persisted in preferring to any of her English suitors, and lived at St.Petersburg.There was an aunt, old Lady Laura, who came up to town about the middle of May; but she was always in the country except for some six weeks in the season.