‘There was of course no reason against it—Phil might please himself—he was, by now, old enough to choose his own path in life—but, if he might suggest it, a Parliamentary career offered greater scope for his peculiar talents. Nothing would be easier. A few years hence . . . time passed quickly—there was much to see and learn meantime . . . there was the world to see, not to speak of the men in it. . . . Should they go the Grand Tour of Europe together? . . . No?—ah, well, there was time enough for that . . . He preferred London? Well, there was of course no society like London, and the proper study of mankind (“clever mankind, Phil, my son”) was certainly man—learn men and manners. He did not wish to go into society? Ah, well, he might stay at home and do some reading—no time was lost in reading—he had worked too hard at Oxford and deserved a rest this winter,’ etc. etc. Phil listened to it all and smiled and took his own way; he knew perfectly well what his father’s thoughts were. At first, after his parting with Carrie, Phil was inclined to be rather sulky and moody, but when he returned to town with his father, and after he began to attend church with so much regularity, he came to a more Christian frame of mind, and exhibited indeed such a markedly better temper that his father smiled to himself and said all was going well. Phil now showed no disinclination for society, and indeed entered upon its pleasures with peculiar zest. He even plunged deep into a flirtation—a hopeful sign—with a certain Lady Hester Ware, a pretty, witty young Irishwoman, without a penny to her fortune. Meadowes was delighted; he would have welcomed a daughter of the beggar Lazarus as Phil’s chosen bride at that moment. With commendable caution he paid not the slightest attention to the affair; for he knew the contradictious human spirit, and Phil flirted on. But at last, when the matter seemed quite an established fact, he expressed to Phil his great admiration for Lady Hester. ‘There’s a clever woman!’ he exclaimed in conclusion. But his breath was taken away by Phil’s response— ‘Clever? yes, deucedly clever. I hate clever women, and if you like ’em, sir, you’re the first man that ever did!’ ‘’Pon my soul!’ exclaimed Meadowes, with a long whistle of astonishment; then he added severely, ‘If you do not like Lady Hester, Phil, you do very wrong to trifle with her affections, as you have been doing this many a day.’ ‘’Tis, as you say, sir, an unpardonable sin to play a woman false—may Heaven forbid I should fall into it!’ said Phil in pious tones, and Meadowes, as he met the boy’s bright eyes, turned uneasily away. Richard Meadowes had, you see, not added this cynical axiom to his collection:—that most men, when desperate about one woman, will plunge into a flirtation with another: so he was at a loss to account for Phil’s conduct, if it was not actuated by admiration.