Phineas did not throw himself into the river from the Duke’s garden; and was ready, in spite of Violet Effingham, to start for Ireland with Mr Monk¹ at the end of the first week in August. The close of that season in London certainly was not a happy period of his life. Violet had spoken to him after such a fashion that he could not bring himself not to believe her. She had given him no hint whether it was likely or unlikely that she and Lord Chiltern would be reconciled; but she had convinced him that he could not be allowed to take Lord Chiltern’s place. “A woman cannot transfer her heart,” she had said. Phineas was well aware that many women do transfer their hearts; but he had gone to this woman too soon after the wrench³ which her love had received; he had been too sudden with his proposal for a transfer; and the punishment for such ill judgment⁴ must be that success would now be impossible to him. And yet how could he have waited, feeling that Miss Effingham, if she were at all like other girls whom he had known, might have promised herself to some other lover before she would return within his reach in the succeeding spring? But she was not like some other girls. Ah — he knew that now, and repented⁵ him of his haste.

But he was ready for Mr Monk on the 7th of August, and they started together. Something less than twenty hours took them from London to Killaloe, and during four or five of those twenty hours Mr Monk was unfitted for any conversation by the uncomfortable feelings incidental to the passage from Holyhead to Kingstown. Nevertheless, there was a great deal of conversation between them during the journey. Mr Monk had almost made up his mind to leave the Cabinet. “It is sad to me to have to confess it,” he said, “but the truth is that my old rival, Turnbull, is right. A man who begins his political life as I began mine, is not the man of whom a Minister should be formed. I am inclined to think that Ministers of Government require almost as much education in their trade as shoemakers or tallow-chandlers. I doubt whether you can make a good public servant of a man simply because he has got the ear of the House of Commons.”

“Then you mean to say,” said Phineas, that we are altogether wrong from beginning to end, in our way of arranging these things?”

“I do not say that at all. Look at the men who have been leading statesmen since our present mode of government was formed — from the days in which it was forming itself, say from Walpole down, and you will find that all who have been of real use had early training as public servants.”

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