Lady Laura Kennedy had been allowed to take no active part in the manifestations² of friendship which at this time were made on behalf of Phineas Finn. She had, indeed, gone to him in his prison, and made daily efforts to administer to his comfort; but she could not go up into the Court and speak for him. And now this other woman, whom she hated, would have the glory of his deliverance! She already began to see a fate before her, which would make even her past misery³ as nothing to that which was to come. She was a widow — not yet two months a widow; and though she did not and could not mourn the death of a husband as do other widows, though she could not sorrow in her heart for a man whom she had never loved, and from whom she had been separated during half her married life — yet the fact of her widowhood and the circumstances of her weeds were heavy on her. That she loved this man, Phineas Finn, with a passionate⁴ devotion of which the other woman could know nothing she was quite sure. Love him! Had she not been true to him and to his interests from the very first day in which he had come among them in London, with almost more than a woman’s truth? She knew and recalled to her memory over and over again her own one great sin — the fault of her life. When she was, as regarded her own means, a poor woman, she had refused to be this poor man’s wife, and had given her hand to a rich suitor. But she had done this with a conviction that she could so best serve the interests of the man in regard to whom she had promised herself that her feeling should henceforth be one of simple and purest friendship. She had made a great effort to carry out that intention, but the effort had been futile⁶. She had striven to do her duty to a husband whom she disliked — but even in that she had failed. At one time she had been persistent⁷ in her intercourse⁸ with Phineas Finn, and at another had resolved that she would not see him. She had been madly angry with him when he came to her with the story of his love for another woman, and had madly shown her anger; but yet she had striven to get for him the wife he wanted, though in doing so she would have abandoned one of the dearest purposes of her life. She had moved heaven and earth for him — her heaven and earth — when there was danger that he would lose his seat in Parliament. She had encountered the

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