According to Mr.Low's teaching, a single year passed amidst the miasma of the House of Commons would be altogether fatal to any chance of professional success.

And Mr.
Low had at any rate succeeded in making Phineas believe that he was right in this lesson.

There was his profession, as to which Mr.
Low assured him that success was within his reach; and there was Parliament on the other side, as to which he knew that the chances were all against him, in spite of his advantage of a seat.

That he could not combine the two, beginning with Parliament, he did believe.
Which should it be?
That was the question which he tried to decide as he walked home from Bedford Square to Great Marlborough Street.
He could not answer the question satisfactorily, and went to bed an unhappy man.
He must at any rate go to Lord Brentford's dinner on Wednesday, and, to enable him to join in the conversation there, must attend the debates on Monday and Tuesday.

The reader may perhaps be best made to understand how terrible was our hero's state of doubt by being told that for awhile he thought of absenting himself from these debates, as being likely to weaken his purpose of withdrawing altogether from the House.