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 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THB 
 
 University of California. 
 Class ^ 5 5- 
 
 
 
 
 I 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
LORD KILGOBBIN 
 
 BY 
 
 CHAELES LEYEE. 
 
 WITH ILLUSTRATIONS BY E. J. WHEELER. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 1906. 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 By Little, Brown, and Company. 
 
 ®[ntberstts ^«ss: 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 
 

 TO 
 
 THE MEMORY OF ONE 
 
 WHOSE COMPANIONSHIP MADE THE HAPPINESS OF A LONG LIFE, 
 
 AND WHOSE LOSS HAS LEFT ME HELPLESS, 
 
 1 IBztiimtz ftis TOork, 
 
 WBITTEN IN BREAKING HEALTH AND BROKEN SPIRITS. 
 
 THE TASK, THAT ONCE WAS MY JOY AND MY PRIDE, I HAVE LIVED TO FIND 
 
 ASSOCIATED WITH MY SORROW : 
 
 IT IS NOT, THEN, WITHOUT A CAUSE I SAY, 
 
 I HOPE THIS EFFORT MAY BE MY LAST. 
 
 CHARLES LEVER. 
 Trieste, January 20, 1872. 
 
 193066 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Chaptee ¥^Q1i 
 
 I. KiLGOBBiN Castle 1 
 
 II. The Prince Kostalergi 10 
 
 III. " The Chums " 21 
 
 IV. At "Trinity" 30 
 
 V. Home Life at the Castle ....... 40 
 
 VI. The "Blue Goat" 49 
 
 VII. The Cousins 59 
 
 VIII. Showing how Friends may differ .... 65 
 
 IX. A Drive through a Bog 70 
 
 X. The Search for Arms ' . . 78 
 
 XI. What the Papers said of it 92 
 
 XII. The Journey to the Country 99 
 
 XIII. A Sick-Room 105 
 
 XIV. At Dinner 113 
 
 XV. In the Garden at Dusk 123 
 
 XVI. The Two " Kearneys " 130 
 
 XVII. Dick's Revery 138 
 
 XVIII. Mathew Kearney's " Study " 145 
 
 XIX. An Unwelcome Visit 151 
 
 XX. A Domestic Discussion. • 156 
 
 XXI. A Small Dinner-Party 161 
 
 XXII. A Confidential Talk 1"1 
 
 XXTII. A Haphazard Viceroy 181 
 
Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 Chaptee Paob 
 
 XXIV. Two Friends at Breakfast 186 
 
 XXV. Atlee's Embarrassments 194 
 
 XXVI. Dick Kearney's Chambers 199 
 
 XXVII. A Crafty Counsellor 209 
 
 XXVIII. *' On the Leads " 214 
 
 XXIX. On a Visit at Kilgobbin 219 
 
 XXX. The Moate Station 227 
 
 XXXI. How THE " Goats " revolted ..... 232 
 
 XXXII. An Unlooked-for Pleasure 239 
 
 XXXIII. Plmnuddm Castle, North Wales . . . 246 
 
 XXXIV. At Tea-Time 252 
 
 XXXV, A Drive at Sunrise 257 
 
 XXXVI. The Excursion 266 
 
 XXXVII. The Return 281 
 
 XXXVIII. '^O'Shea's Barn" 285 
 
 XXXIX. An Early Gallop 294 
 
 XL. Old Memories 300 
 
 XLI. Two Familiar Epistles 305 
 
 XL II. An Evening in the Drawing-Hoom . . . 310 
 
 XLIII. Some Night-Thoughts 318 
 
 XLIV. The Head Constable 326 
 
 XLV. Some Irishries 331 
 
 XL VI. Sage Advice 336 
 
 XLVII. Reproof 340 
 
 XLVIII. How Men in Office make Love .... 347 
 
 XLIX. A Cup of Tea 356 
 
 L. Cross Purposes 362 
 
 LI. Awakenings 369 
 
 LII. "A Chance Agreement" 376 
 
 LTII. " A Scrape " 384 
 
 LIV. " How IT BEFELL " 390 
 
 LV. Two J. P.'s 398 
 
 LVI. Before the Door 404 
 
CONTENTS. ix 
 
 Chapter ' Page 
 
 LVII. A Doctor 410 
 
 LVIII. In Turkey 415 
 
 LIX. A Letter-Bag 422 
 
 LX. "A Defeat" 431 
 
 LXI. A " Change of Front " 438 
 
 LXII. With a Pasha 442 
 
 LXIII. Atlee on his Travels 44G 
 
 LXIV. Greek meets Greek . 453 
 
 LXV. "In Town" 464 
 
 LXVI. Atlee's Message 471 
 
 LXVII. Walpole Alone ..." 477 
 
 LXVIII. Thoughts on Marriage 482 
 
 LXIX. At Kilgobbin Castle 487 
 
 LXX. Atlee's Return 492 
 
 LXXI. The Drive 503 
 
 LXXII. The Saunter in Town . 509 
 
 LXXIII. A Darkened Room 512 
 
 LXXIV. An Angry Colloquy 517 
 
 LXXV. Mathew Kearney's Reflections .... 521 
 
 LXXVI. Very Confidential Conversation I . . 528 
 
 LXXVII. Two Young Ladies on Matrimony . . . 534 
 
 LXXVIII. A Miserable Morning 542 
 
 LXXIX. Pleasant Congratulations 552 
 
 LXXX. A New Arrival 562 
 
 LXXXI. An Unlooked-for Correspondent . . . 570 
 
 LXXXIL The Breakfast-Room 576 
 
 LXXXIII. The Garden by Moonlight 582 
 
 LXXXIV. Next Morning 596 
 
 LXXXV. The End 602 
 
LLUSTRATIONS, 
 
 Charles Lever Frontispiece 
 
 He leaned his Head down and rested it on her 
 
 Shoulder 90 
 
 A Small Dinner Party 164 
 
 She held out her Hand ; he bent over and kissed 
 
 it rapturously 280 
 
 Peter Gill stood before him 396 
 
LORD KILGOBBIN, 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 
 
 Some one has said that almost all that Ireland possesses of 
 picturesque beauty is to be found on, or in the immediate 
 neighborhood of, the seaboard ; and if we except some brief 
 patches of river scenery on the " Nore " and the " Black- 
 water," and a part of Lough Erne, the assertion is not 
 devoid of truth. The dreary expanse called the Bog of 
 Allen, which occupies a high table-land in the centre of the 
 island, stretches away for miles flat, sad-colored, and mono- 
 tonous, fissured in every direction by channels of dark- 
 tinted water, in which the very fish take the same sad color. 
 This tract is almost without trace of habitation, save where, 
 at distant intervals, utter destitution has raised a mud- 
 hovel undistinguishable from the hillocks of turf around it. 
 
 Fringing this broad waste, little patches of cultivation are 
 to be seen : small potato-gardens, as they are called, or a 
 few roods of oats, green even in the late autumn; but, 
 strangely enough, with nothing to show where the humble 
 tiller of the soil was living, nor, often, any visible road to 
 these isolated spots of culture. Gradually, however, — but 
 very gradually, — the prospect brightens. Fields with en- 
 closures, and a cabin or two, are to be met with ; a solitary 
 tree, generally an ash, will be seen ; some rude instrument 
 of husbandry, or an ass-cart, will show that we are emerging 
 from the region of complete destitution and approaching a 
 land of at least struggling civilization. At last, and by a 
 transition that is not always easy to mark, the scene glides 
 
 1 
 
2 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 into those rich pasture-lands and well-tilled farms that form 
 the wealth of the Midland Counties. Gentlemen's seats 
 and waving plantations succeed, and we are in a country of 
 comfort and abundance. 
 
 On this border-land between fertility and destitution, and 
 on a tract which had probably once been part of the Bog 
 itself, there stood — there stands still — a short, square 
 tower, battlemented at top, and surmounted with a pointed 
 roof, which seems to grow out of a cluster of farm-build- 
 ings, so surrounded is its base by roofs of thatch and slates. 
 Incongruous, vulgar, and ugly in every way, the old keep 
 appears to look down on them — time-worn and battered as 
 it is — as might a reduced gentleman regard the unworthy 
 associates with which an altered fortune had linked him. 
 This is all that remains of Kilgobbin Castle. 
 
 In the guide-books we read that it was once a place of 
 strength and importance, and that Hugh de Lacy — the same 
 bold knight " who had won all Ireland for the English from 
 the Shannon to the sea " — had taken this castle from a 
 native chieftain called Neal O'Caharney, whose family he 
 had slain, all save one ; and then it adds : "Sir Hugh came 
 one day, with three Englishmen, that he might show them 
 the castle, when there came to him a youth of the men of 
 Meath — a certain Gilla Naher O'Mahey, foster-brother of 
 O'Caharney himself — with his battle-axe concealed beneath 
 his cloak, and while De Lacy was reading the petition he 
 gave him, he dealt him such a blow that his head flew off 
 many yards away, both head and body being afterwards 
 buried in the ditch of the castle." 
 
 The annals of Kilronan further relate that the O'Caharneys 
 became adherents of the English — dropping their Irish 
 designation, and calling themselves Kearney; and in this 
 way were restored to a part of the lands and the Castle of 
 Kilgobbin — "by favor of which act of grace," says the 
 Chronicle, " they were bound to raise a becoming monument 
 over the brave knight Hugh de Lacy whom their kinsman 
 had so treacherously slain ; but they did no more of this than 
 one large stone of granite, and no inscription thereon : thus 
 showing that at all times, and with all men, the O'Caharneys 
 were false knaves and untrue to their word." 
 
KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 3 
 
 In later times, again, the Kearneys returned to the old 
 faith of their fathers and followed the fortunes of King 
 James; one of them, Michael O'Kearney, having acted as 
 aide-de-camp at the " Boyne," and conducted the King to 
 Kilgobbin, where he passed the night after the defeat, and, U//\>y< 
 as the traditio'n'"fecords, held a court the next morning, at i 'j f * 
 which he thanked the owner of the castle for his hospitality, p~- '^ 
 and created him on the spot a viscount by the style and title ry|ftv>{ 
 of Lord Kilgobbin. U . \ L 
 
 It is needless to say that the newly created noble saw . ^ . 
 
 good reason to keep his elevation to himself. They were /Vj^MyvA, 
 somewhat critical times just then for the adherents of the ^ 
 
 lost cause, and the followers of King William were keen at 
 scenting out any disloyalty that might be turned to good 
 account by a confiscation. The Kearneys, however, were 
 prudent. They entertained a Dutch officer. Van Straaten, 
 on King William's staff, and gave such valuable information 
 besides as to the condition of the country that no suspicions 
 of disloyalty attached to them. 
 
 To these succeeded more peaceful times, during which the 
 Kearneys were more engaged in endeavoring to reconstruct 
 the fallen condition of their fortunes than in political in- 
 trigue. Indeed a very small portion of the original estate 
 now remained to them, and of what once had produced 
 above four thousand a j^ear, there was left a property 
 barely worth eight_hundred. 
 
 The present owner, with whose fortunes we are more im- 
 mediately concerned, was a widower. Mathew Kearney's 
 family consisted of a son and a daughter ; the former about 
 two-and-twenty, the latter four years younger, though to all 
 appearance there did not seem a year between them. 
 
 Mathew Kearney himself was a man of about fifty-four or 
 fifty-six ; hale, handsome, and powerful ; his snow-white 
 hair and bright complexion, with his full gray eyes and reg- 
 ular teeth, giving him an air of genial cordiality at first 
 sight which was fully confirmed by further acquaintance. 
 So long as the world went well with him, Mathew seemed to 
 enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an 
 easy jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could op- 
 pose to fortune. A long minority had provided him with a 
 
4 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 considerable sum on his coming of age, but he spent it freely, 
 and when it was exhausted continued to live on at the same 
 rate as before, till at last, as creditors grew pressing, and 
 mortgages threatened foreclosure, he saw himself reduced to 
 something less than one fifth of his former outlay; and 
 though he seemed to address himself to the task with a bold 
 spirit and a resolute mind, the old habits were too deeply 
 rooted to be eradicated, and the pleasant companionship of 
 his equals, his life at the club in Dublin, his joyous convivi- 
 ality, no longer possible, he suffered himself to descend to 
 an inferior rank, and sought his associates amongst humbler 
 men, whose flattering reception of him soon reconciled him 
 to his fallen condition. His companions were now the small 
 farmers of the neighborhood and the shopkeepers in the ad- 
 joining town of Moate, to whose habits and modes of 
 thought and expression he gradually conformed, till it be- 
 came positively irksome to himself to keep the company of 
 Vy^ • his equals. Whether, however, it was that age had breached 
 
 ^^ ^^ the stronghold of his good spirits, or that conscience rebuked 
 r^*^ him for having derogated from his station, certain it is that 
 
 ^^ all his buoyancy failed him when away from society, and 
 that in the quietness of his home he was depressed and dis- 
 pirited to a degree ; and to that genial temper, which once 
 he could count on against every reverse that befell him, 
 there now succeeded an irritable, peevish spirit, that led 
 him to attribute every annoyance he met with to some fault 
 or shortcoming of others. 
 
 By his neighbors in the town and by his tenantry he was 
 always addressed as "My Lord," and treated with all the 
 deference that pertained to such difference of station. By 
 the gentry, however, when at rare occasions he met them, 
 he was known as Mr. Kearney ; and in the village post- 
 office the letters with the name Mathew Kearney, Esq., were 
 perpetual reminders of what rank was accorded him by that 
 wider section of the world that lived beyond the shadow of 
 Kilgobbin Castle. 
 
 Perhaps the impossible task of serving two masters is 
 never more palpably displayed than when the attempt 
 attaches to a divided identity, — when a man tries to be 
 himself in two distinct parts in life, without the slightest 
 
KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 5 
 
 misgiving of hypocrisy while doing so. Mathew Kearney 
 not only did not assume any pretension to nobility amongst 
 his equals, but he would have felt that any reference to his 
 title from one of them would have been an impertinence, 
 and an impertinence to be resented ; while, at the same 
 time, had a shopkeeper of Moate, or one of the tenants, 
 addressed him as other than " My Lord" he would not have 
 deigned him a notice. 
 
 Strangely enough, this divided allegiance did not merely 
 prevail with the outer world, it actually penetrated within 
 his walls. By his son, Richard Kearney, he was always 
 called "My Lord;" while Kate as persistently addressed 
 and spoke of him as Papa. Nor was this difference without 
 signification as to their separate natures and tempers. 
 
 Had Mathew Kearney contrived to divide the two parts of 
 his nature, and bequeathed all his pride, his vanity, and his 
 pretensions to his son, while he gave his light-heartedness, 
 his buoyancy, and kindliness to his daughter, the partition 
 could not have been more perfect. Richard Kearney was rj^ 
 full of an insolent pride of birth. Contrasting the position ( 
 of his father with that held by his grandfather, he resented^ 
 the downfall as the act of a dominant faction, eager to out- — ^ ^^ 
 rage the old race and the old religion of Ireland. Kate took 
 a very different view of their condition. She clung, indeed, 
 to the notion of their good blood ; but as a thing that might 
 assuage many of the pangs of adverse fortune, not increasej 
 nor embitter them; and, "if we are ever to emerge,"! 
 thought she, " from this poor state, we shall meet our class; 
 without any of the shame of a mushroom origin. It will be 
 a restoration, and not a new elevation." She was a fine,! 
 handsome, fearless girl, whom many said ought to have 
 been a boy ; but this was rather intended as a covert slight 
 on the narrower nature and peevish temperament of her 
 brother, — another way, indeed, of saying that they should 
 have exchanged conditions, 
 
 The listless indolence of her father's life, and the almost 
 complete absence from home of her brother, who was pursu- 
 ing his studies at the Dublin University, had given over toj 
 her charge not only the household, but no small share of the! 
 management of the estate, — all, in fact, that an old land 
 
6 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 steward, a certain Peter Gill, would permit her to exercise ; 
 for Peter was a very absolute and despotic Grand Vizier, and 
 if it had not been that he could neither read nor write, it 
 would have been utterly impossible to have wrested from 
 him a particle of power over the property. This happy 
 defect in his education — happy so far as Kate's rule was 
 concerned — gave her the one claim she could prefer to 
 any superiority over him, and his obstinacy could never be 
 effectually overcome, except by confronting him with a 
 written document or a column of figures. Before these, 
 indeed, he would stand crestfallen and abashed. Some 
 strange terror seemed to possess him as to the peril of 
 opposing himself to such inscrutable testimony, — a fear, 
 be it said, he never felt in contesting an oral witness. 
 
 Peter had one resource, however, and I am not sure that 
 a similar stronghold has not secured the power of greater 
 men and in higher functions, Peter's sway was of so varied 
 and complicated a kind ; the duties he discharged were so 
 various, manifold, and conflicting; the measures he took 
 with the people, whose destinies were committed to him, 
 were, so thoroughly devised, by reference to the peculiar 
 condition of each man, what he could do or bear or 
 submit to, and not by any sense of justice, — that a sort 
 of government grew up over the property full of hitches, 
 contingencies, and compensations, and of which none but 
 he who had invented the machinery could possibly pretend 
 to the direction. The estate being, to use his own words, 
 
 so like the old coach-harness, so full of knots, splices, and 
 entanglements, there was not another man in Ireland could 
 make it work ; and if another were to try it, it would all 
 come to pieces in his hands." 
 
 ->- Kate was shrewd enough to see this ; and in the same way 
 that she ha^ admirinoly watche'cl Peter as he knotted a trace 
 here and supplemented a strap there, strengthening a weak 
 point, and providing for casualties even the least likely, she 
 saw him dealing with the tenantry on the property ; and in 
 the same spirit that he made allowance for sickness here and 
 misfortune there, he would be as prompt to screw up a lagging 
 tenant to the last penny, and secure the landlord in the share 
 of any season of prosperity. 
 
^ ijUXj KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 7 
 
 Had the Government Commissioner, sent to report on the 
 state of land tenure in Ireland, confined himself to a Visit to 
 the estate of Lord Kilgobbm, — for so we like to call him, — 
 it is just possible that the Cabinet would have found the task 
 of legislation even more difficult than they have already 
 admitted it to be. 
 
 First of all, not a tenant on the estate had any certain 
 knowledge of how much land he held. There had been no 
 survey of the property for years. '' It will be made up to 
 you," was Gill's phrase about everything. "What matters 
 if you have an acre more or an acre less ? " Neither had 
 any one a lease, or, indeed, a writing of any kind. Gill 
 settled that on the 25th March and 25th September a cer- 
 tain sum was to be forthcoming, and that was all. When 
 the Lord wanted them they were always to give him a 
 hand, which often meant with their carts and horses, es- 
 pecially in harvest time. Not that they were a hard- 
 worked or hard-working population : they took life very 
 easy, seeing that by no possible exertion could they mate- 
 rially better themselves ; and even when they hunted a 
 neighbor's cow out of their wheat, they would execute the 
 eviction with a lazy indolence and sluggishness that took 
 away from the act all semblance of ungenerousness. 
 
 They were very poor, their hovels were wretched, their 
 clothes ragged, and their food scanty; but, with all that, 
 they were not discontented, and very far from unhappy. 
 There was no prosperity at hand to contrast with their 
 poverty. The world was, on the whole, pretty much as 
 they always remembered it. They would have liked to be 
 " better off" if they knew how, but they did not know if 
 there was a " better off," — much less how to come at it; 
 and if there were, Peter Gill certainly did not tell them 
 of it. 
 
 If a stray visitor to fair or market brought back the news 
 that there was an agitation abroad for a new settlement of 
 the land, that popular orators were proclaiming the poor 
 man's rights, and denouncing the cruelties of the landlord, 
 if they heard that men were talking of repealing the laws 
 which secured property to the owner and only admitted him 
 to a sort of partnership with the tiller of the soil, old Gill 
 
8 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 speedily assured them that these were changes only to be 
 adopted in Ulster, where the tenants were rack-rented and 
 treated like slaves. "Which of you here," would he say, 
 "can come forward and say he was ever evicted? " Now, 
 as the term was one of which none had the very vaguest con- 
 ception, — it might, for aught they knew, have been an 
 operation in surgery, — the appeal was an overwhelming 
 success. " Sorra doubt of it, but ould Peter's right, and 
 there 's worse places to live in, and worse landlords to live 
 under, than the Lord." Not but it taxed Gill's skill and 
 cleverness to maintain this quarantine against the outer 
 world; and he often felt like Prince Metternich in a like 
 strait, — that it would only be a question of time, and in 
 the long run the newspaper fellows must win. 
 
 From what has been said, therefore, it may be imagined 
 that Kilgobbin was not a model estate, nor Peter Gill 
 exactly the sort of witness from which a select committee 
 would have extracted any valuable suggestions for the con- 
 struction of a land code. 
 
 Anything short of Kate Kearney's fine temper and genial 
 disposition would have broken down by daily dealing with 
 this cross-grained, wrong-headed, and obstinate old fellow, 
 whose ideas of management all centred in craft and sub- 
 tlety, — outwitting this man, forestalling that, — doing every- 
 thing by halves, so that no boon came unassociated with 
 some contingency or other by which he secured to himself 
 unlimited power and uncontrolled tyranny. 
 
 As Gill was in perfect possession of her father's confi- 
 dence, to oppose him in anything was a task of no mean 
 difficulty ; and the mere thought that the old fellow should 
 feel offended and throw up his charge — a threat he had 
 more than once half hinted — was a terror Kilgobbin could 
 not have faced. Nor was this her only care. There was 
 Dick continually dunning her for remittances, and impor- 
 1 tuning her for means to supply his extravagances. "I 
 suspected how it would be," wrote he once, "with a lady 
 paymaster. And when my father told me I was to look to 
 you for my allowance, I accepted the information as a heavy 
 percentage taken off my beggarly income. What could 
 you — what could any young girl — know of the require- 
 
KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 9 
 
 ments of a man going out into the best society of a capital? 
 To derive any benefit from associating with these people I 
 must at least seem to live like them. I am received as the 
 son of a man of condition and property, and you want to 
 bound my habits by those of my chum, Joe Atlee, whose 
 father is starving somewhere on the pay of a Presbyterian 
 minister. Even Joe himself laughs at the notion of gaug- 
 ing my expenses by his. 
 
 '^ If this is to go on — I mean if you intend to persist 
 in this plan — be frank enough to say so at once, and I 
 will either take pupils, or seek a clerkship, or go off to 
 Australia; and 1 care precious little which of the three. 
 
 "I know what a proud thing it is for whoever manages 
 the revenue to come forward and show a surplus. Chan- 
 cellors of the Exchequer make great reputations in that 
 fashion ; but there are certain economies that lie close to 
 revolutions ; now don't risk this, nor don't be above tak- 
 ing a hint from one some years older than you, though he 
 neither rules his father's house nor metes out his pocket- 
 money." 
 
 Such, and such like, were the epistles she received from 
 time to time, and though frequency blunted something of 
 their sting, and their injustice gave her a support against 
 their sarcasm, she read and thought over them in a spirit 
 of bitter mortification. Of course she showed none of these 
 letters to her father. He indeed only asked if Dick were 
 well, or if he were soon going up for that scholarship or 
 fellowship, — he did not know which, nor was he to blame, 
 — ' ' which, after all, it was hard on a Kearney to stoop to 
 accept, only that times were changed with us ! and we 
 were n't what we used to be," — a reflection so overwhelm- 
 ing that he generally felt unable to dwell on it. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI. 
 
 Mathew Kearney had once a sister whom he dearly loved, 
 and whose sad fate lay very heavily on his hearty for he 
 was not without self-accusings on the score of it. Matilda 
 Kearney had been a belle of the Irish court and a toast 
 at the club when Mathew was a young fellow in town; 
 and he had been very proud of her beauty, and tasted a 
 full share of those attentions which often fall to the lot of 
 brothers of handsome girls. 
 
 Then Matty was an heiress, that is, she had twelve 
 thousand pounds in her own right ; and Ireland was not such 
 a California as to make a very pretty girl with twelve 
 thousand pounds an ever^^-day chance. She had numerous 
 ofifers of marriage, and with the usual luck in such cases, 
 there were commonplace unattractive men with good means, 
 and there were clever and agreeable fellows without a six- 
 pence, all alike ineligible. Matty had that infusion of roi 
 mance in her nature that few, if any, Irish girls are free 
 from, and which made her desire that the man of her choice 
 should be something out of the common. She would have 
 liked a soldier who had won distinction in the field. The 
 idea of military fame was very dear to her Irish heart, and 
 she fancied with what pride she would hang upon the arm 
 of one whose gay trappings and gold embroidery emblem- 
 atized the career he followed. If not a soldier, she would 
 have liked a great orator, some leader in debate that men 
 would rush down to hear, and whose glowing words would 
 be gathered up and repeated as though inspirations : after 
 that a poet, and perhaps — not a painter — a sculptor, she 
 thought, might do. 
 
 With such aspirations as these, it is not surprising that 
 she rejected the offers of those comfortable fellows in Meath, 
 
THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI. 11 
 
 or Louth, whose military glories were militia drills, and 
 whose eloquence was confined to the bench of magistrates. 
 
 At three-and-twenty she was in the full blaze of her 
 beauty ; at three-and-thirty she was still unmarried ; her 
 looks on the wane, but her romance stronger than ever, 
 not untinged perhaps with a little bitterness towards that 
 sex which had not afforded one man of merit enough to woo 
 and win her. Partly out of pique with a land so barren of 
 all that could minister to imagination, partly in anger with 
 her brother who had been urging her to a match she disliked, 
 she went abroad to travel, wandered about for a year or 
 two, and at last found herself one winter at Naples. 
 
 There was at that time, as secretary to the Greek legation, 
 a young fellow whom repute called the handsomest man in 
 Europe ; he was a certain Spiridion Kostalergi, whose title 
 was Prince of Delos, though whether there was such a 
 principality, or that he was its representative, society was 
 not fully agreed upon. At all events, Miss Kearney met 
 him at a court ball, when he wore his national costume, 
 looking, it must be owned, so splendidly handsome that all 
 thought of his princely rank was forgotten in presence of a 
 face and figure that recalled the highest triumphs of ancient 
 art. It was Antinous come to life in an embroidered cap 
 and a gold i^vbrked jacket, and it was Antinous with a voice 
 like Mario, and who waltzed to perfection. This splendid 
 creatn:re7 a modern Alcibiades in gifts of mind and graces, 
 soon heard, amongst his other triumphs, how a rich and 
 handsome Irish girl had fallen in love with him at first sight. 
 He had himself been struck by her good looks and her 
 stylish air, and learning that there could be no doubt about 
 her fortune, he lost no time in making his advances. Before 
 the end of the first week of their acquaintance he proposed. 
 She referred him to her brother before she could consent ; 
 and though, when Kostalergi inquired amongst her English 
 friends, none had ever heard of a Lord Kilgobbin, the fact 
 of his being Irish explained their ignorance, not to say that 
 Kearney's reply, being a positive refusal of consent, so fully 
 satisfied the Greek that it was "a good thing," he pressed 
 his suit with a most passionate ardor: threatened to kill 
 himself if she persisted in rejecting him, and so worked 
 
12 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 upon her heart by his devotion, or on her pride by the 
 thought of his position, that she yielded, and within three 
 weeks from the day they first met, she became the Princess 
 of Delos. 
 
 When a Greek, holding any public employ, marries money, 
 his Government is usually prudent enough to promote him. 
 It is a recognition of the merit that others have discovered, 
 and a wise administration marches with the inventions of 
 the age it lives in. Kostalergi's chief was consequently 
 recalled, suffered to fall back upon his previous obscurity, — 
 he had been a commission-agent for a house in the Greek 
 trade, — and the Prince of Delos gazetted as Minister Pleni- 
 potentiary of Greece, with the first class of St. Salvador, 
 in recognition of his services to the state; no one being 
 indiscreet enough to add that the aforesaid services were 
 comprised in marrying an Irishwoman with a dowry of — to 
 quote the '^ Athenian Hemera " — " three hundred and fifty 
 thousand drachmas." 
 
 For a while — it was a very brief while — the romantic 
 mind of the Irish girl was raised to a sort of transport of 
 enjoyment. Here was everything — more than everything 
 — her most glowing imagination had ever conceived. Love, 
 ambition, station, all gratified, though to be sure, she had 
 quarrelled with her brother, who had returned her last 
 letters unopened. Mathew, she thought, was too good- 
 hearted to bear a long grudge ; he would see her happiness, 
 he would hear what a devoted and good husband her dear 
 Spiridion had proved himself, and he would forgive her at 
 last. 
 
 Though, as was well known, the Greek Envoy received 
 but a very moderate salary from his Government, and even 
 that not paid with a strict punctuality, the legation was 
 maintained with a splendor that rivalled, if not surpassed, 
 those of France, England, or Russia. The Prince of Delos 
 led the fashion in equipage, as did the Princess in toilette ; 
 their dinners, their balls, their fetes, attracted the curiosity 
 of even the highest to witness them ; and to such a degree 
 of notoriety had the Greek hospitality attained, that Naples 
 at last admitted that without the Palazzo Kostalergi there 
 would be nothing to attract strangers to the capital. 
 
THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI. 13 
 
 Play, so invariably excluded from the habits of an 
 embassy, was carried on at this legation to such an excess 
 that the clubs were completely deserted, and all the young 
 men of gambling tastes flocked here each night, sure to find 
 lansquenet or faro, and for stakes which no public table 
 could possibly supply. It was not alone that this life of a 
 gambler estranged Kostalergi from his wife, but that the 
 scandal of his infidelities had reached her also, just at the 
 time when some vague glimmering suspicions of his utter 
 worthlessness were breaking on her mind. The birth of a 
 little girl did not seem in the slightest degree to renew the 
 ties between them ; on the contrary, the embarrassment of a 
 baby and the cost it must entail were the only considerations 
 he would entertain, and it was a constant question of his — 
 uttered, too, with a tone of sarcasm that cut her to the heart : 
 ' ' Would not her brother — the Lord Irlandais — like to 
 have that baby? Would she not write and ask him? " Un- 
 pleasant stories had long been rife about the play at the 
 Greek legation, when a young Russian secretary, of high 
 family and influence, lost an immense sum under circum- 
 stances which determined him to refuse payment. Kosta- 
 lergi, who had been the chief winner, refused everything like 
 inquiry or examination ; in fact, he made investigation im- 
 possible, for the cards, which the Russian had declared to be 
 marked, the Greek gathered up slowly from the table and 
 threw into the fire, pressing his foot upon them in the flames, 
 and then calmly returning to where the other stood, he struck 
 him across the face with his open hand, saying, as he did it : 
 "Here is another debt to repudiate, and before the same 
 witnesses also ! " 
 
 The outrage did not admit of delay. The arrangements 
 were made in an instant, and within half an hour — merely 
 time enough to send for a surgeon — they met at the end of 
 the garden of the legation. The Russian fired first, and, 
 though a consummate pistol-shot, agitation at the insult so 
 unnerved him that he missed ; his ball cut the knot of Kos- 
 talergl's cravat. The Greek took a calm and deliberate aim, 
 and sent his bullet through the other's forehead. He fell 
 without a word, stone dead. 
 
 Though the duel had been a fair one, and the proces verbal 
 
14 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 drawn up and agreed on both sides showed that all had been 
 done loyally, the friends of the young Russian had influence 
 to make the Greek Government not only recall the Envoy, 
 but abolish the mission itself. 
 
 For some years the Kostalergis lived in retirement at 
 Palermo, not knowing nor known to any one. Their means 
 were now so reduced that they had barely sufficient for daily 
 life, and though the Greek Prince — as he was called — 
 constantly appeared on the public promenade well dressed, 
 and in all the pride of his handsome figure, it was currently 
 said that his wife was literally dying of want. 
 
 It was only after long and agonizing suffering that she 
 ventured to write to her brother, and appeal to him for 
 advice and assistance. But at last she did so, and a corre- 
 spondence grew up which, in a measure, restored the affection 
 between them. When Kostalergi discovered the source from 
 which his wretched wife now drew her consolation and her 
 courage, he forbade her to write more, and himself addressed 
 a letter to Kearney so insulting and offensive — charging 
 him even with causing the discord of his home, and showing 
 the letter to his wife before sending it s— that the poor 
 woman, long failing in health and broken-down, sank soon 
 after, and died so destitute that the very funeral was paid 
 for by a subscription amongst her countrymen. Kostalergi 
 had left her some days before her death, carrying the girl 
 along with him, nor was his whereabouts learned for a con- 
 siderable time. 
 
 - When next he emerged into the world it was at Rome, 
 where he gave lessons in music and modern languages, in 
 many of which he was a proficient. His splendid appear- 
 ance, his captivating address, his thorough familiarity with 
 the modes of society, gave him the entree to many houses 
 where his talents amply requited the hospitality he received. 
 He possessed, amongst his other gifts, an immense amount 
 of plausibility, and people found it, besides, very difficult to 
 believe ill of that well-bred, somewhat retiring man, who, 
 in circumstances of the very narrowest fortunes, not only 
 looked and dressed like a gentleman, but actually brought 
 up a daughter with a degree of care and an amount of regard 
 to her education that made him appear a model parent. 
 
THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI. 15 
 
 Nina Kostalergi was then about seventeen, though she 
 looked at least three years older. She was a tall, slight, 
 pale girl, with perfectly regular features, — so classic in the 
 mould, and so devoid of any expression, that she recalled the 
 face one sees on a cameo. Her hair was of wondrous beauty, 
 — that rich, gold color which has reflets through it, as the 
 light falls full or faint, and of an abundance that taxed her 
 ingenuity to dress it. They gave her the sobriquet of the j 
 Titian Girl at Rome whenever she appeared abroad. ■ 
 
 In the only letter Kearney had received from his brother- 
 in-law after his sister's death was an insolent demand for a 
 sum of money which he alleged that Kearney was unjustly 
 withholding, and which he now threatened to enforce by 
 law. "I am well aware," wrote he, "what measure of 
 honor or honesty I am to expect from a man whose very 
 name and designation are a deceit. But probably prudence 
 will suggest how much better it would be on this occasion to 
 simulate rectitude than risk the shame of an open exposure." 
 
 To this gross insult Kearney never deigned any reply; 
 and now more than two years passed without any tidings of 
 his disreputable relation, when there came one morning a 
 letter with the Roman post-mark, and addressed, " X Mon- 
 sieur le Vicomte de Kilgobbin, a son Chateau de Kilgobbin, 
 en Irlande." To the honor of the officials in the Irish J / 
 post-office, it was forwarded to Kilgobbin with the words, 
 " Try Mathew Kearney, Esq.," in the corner. 
 
 A glance at the writing showed it was not in Kostalergi's 
 hand, and, after a moment or two of hesitation, Kearney 
 opened it. He turned at once for the writer's name, and 
 read the words, "Nina Kostalergi," — his sister's child! 
 " Poor Matty," was all he could say for some minutes. He 
 remembered the letter in which she told him of her little 
 girl's birth, and implored his forgiveness for herself and his 
 love for her baby. " I want both, my dear brother," wrote 
 she; "for though the bonds we make for ourselves by our 
 passions — " And the rest of the sentence was erased — 
 she evidently thinking she had delineated all that could give 
 a clew to a despondent reflection. 
 
 The present letter was written in English, but in that 
 quaint, peculiar hand Italians often write in. It begun by 
 
 ^^ 
 
16 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 asking forgiveness for daring to write to him, and recalling 
 the details of the relationship between them, as though he 
 could not have remembered it. "I am, then, in my right," 
 wrote she, " when I address you as my dear, dear uncle, of 
 whom I have heard so much, and whose name was in my 
 prayers ere I knew why I knelt to pray." 
 
 Then followed a piteous appeal, — it was actually a cry for 
 protection. Her father, she said, had determined to devote 
 her to the stage, and already had taken steps to sell her — 
 she said she used the word advisedly — for so many years to 
 the impresario of the Fenice at Venice, her voice and musical 
 I skill being such as to give hope of her becoming a prima 
 donna. She had, she said, frequently sung at private parties 
 at Rome, but only knew within the last few days that she 
 had been, not a guest, but a paid performer. Overwhelmed 
 with the shame and indignity of this false position, she 
 implored her mother's brother to compassionate her. " If I 
 could not become a governess, I could be your servant, 
 dearest uncle," she wrote. " I only ask a roof to shelter 
 me, and a refuge. May I go to you? I would beg my way 
 on foot if I only knew that at the last your heart and your 
 door would be open to me, and as I fell at your feet, knew 
 that I was saved." 
 
 Until a few days ago, she said, she had by her some little 
 trinkets her mother had left her, and on which she counted 
 as a means of escape ; but her father had discovered them, 
 and taken them from her. 
 
 " If you answer this — and oh ! let me not doubt you will — write 
 to me to the care of the Signori Cayani and Battistella, bankers, 
 Rome. Do not delay, but remember that I am friendless, and but 
 for this chance hopeless. 
 
 "Your niece, Nina Kostalergi." 
 
 While Kearney gave this letter to his daughter to read, he 
 ■walked up and down the room with his head bent and his 
 j hands deep in his pockets. 
 
 " I think I know the answer you'll send to this, papa," 
 said the girl, looking up at him with a glow of pride and 
 affection in her face. " I do not need that you should 
 say it." 
 
THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI. 17 
 
 *'It will take fifty — no, not fifty, but five-and-thirty 
 pounds to bring her over here, and how is she to come all 
 alone ? " 
 
 Kate made no reply ; she knew the danger sometimes of 
 interrupting his own solution of a diflSculty. 
 
 ''She's a big girl, I suppose, by this, — fourteen or 
 fifteen?" 
 
 "Over nineteen, papa." 
 
 "So she is, I was forgetting. That scoundrel, her 
 father, might come after her ; he 'd have the right if he 
 wished to enforce it, and what a scandal he'd bring upon 
 us all ! " 
 
 ' ' But would he care to do it ? Is he not more likely to be 
 glad to be disembarrassed of her charge ? " 
 
 " Not if he was going to sell her, — not if he could convert 
 her into money." 
 
 " He has never been in England; he may not know how 
 far the law would give him any power over her." 
 
 "Don't trust that, Kate; a blackguard always can find 
 out how much is in his favor everywhere. If he doesn't 
 know it now, he'd know it the day after he landed." He 
 paused an instant, and then said: "There will be the devil 
 to pay with old Peter Gill, for he '11 want all the cash I can 
 scrape together for Loughrea fair. He counts on having 
 eighty sheep down there at the long crofts, and a cow or 
 two besides. That 's money's worth, girl ! " 
 
 Another silence followed, after which he said, " And I 
 think worse of the Greek scoundrel than all the cost." 
 
 " Somehow, I have no fear that he 'II come here." 
 
 " You '11 have to talk over Peter, Kitty," — he always said 
 Kitty when he meant to coax her. " He '11 mind you, and at 
 all events you don't care about his grumbling. Tell him it's 
 a sudden call on me for railroad shares, or " — and here he 
 winked knowingly — ' ' say, it 's going to Rome the money 
 is, and for the Pope ! " 
 
 "That's an excellent thought, papa," said she, laughing; 
 "I'll certainly tell him the money is going to Rome, and 
 you '11 write soon, — you see with what anxiety she expects 
 your answer." 
 
 "I'll write to-night when the house is quiet, and there's 
 
 2 
 
18 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 DO racket nor disturbance about me." Now, though Kearney 
 said this with a perfect conviction of its truth and reason- 
 ableness, it would have been very difficult for any one to say 
 in what that racket he spoke of consisted, or wherein the 
 quietude of even midnight was greater than that which pre- 
 vailed there at noonday. Never, perhaps, were lives more 
 completely still or monotonous than theirs. People who 
 derive no interests from the outer world, who know nothing 
 of what goes on in life, gradually subside into a condition in 
 which reflection takes the place of conversation, and lose all 
 zest and all necessity for that small talk which serves, like 
 the changes of a game, to while away time, and by the aid 
 of which, if we do no more, we often delude the cares and 
 worries of existence. 
 
 A kind good-morning when they met, and a few words 
 during the day, — some mention of this or that event of 
 the farm or the laborers, and rare enough too, — some 
 little incident that happened amongst the tenants, made 
 all the materials of their intercouse, and filled up lives 
 which either would very freely have owned were far from 
 unhappy. 
 
 Dick, indeed, when he came home and was weather-bound 
 for a day, did lament his sad destiny, and mutter half intelli- 
 gible nonsense of what he would not rather do than descend 
 to such a melancholy existence ; but in all his complainings 
 he never made Kate discontented with her lot, or desire any- 
 thing beyond it. 
 
 " It 's all very well," he would say, "till you know some- 
 thing better." 
 
 ''But I want no better!" 
 
 "Do you mean you'd like to go through life in this 
 fashion? " 
 
 " I can't pretend to say what I may feel as I grow older ; 
 but if I could be sure to be as I am now, I could ask nothing 
 better." 
 
 " I must say, it 's a very inglorious life ! " said he, with a 
 sneer. 
 
 "So it is, but how many, may I ask, are there who 
 lead glorious lives? Is there any glory in dining out, in 
 dancing, visiting, and picnicking ? Where is the great glory 
 
THE PRINCE KOSTALERGI. 19 
 
 of the billiard-table or the croquet-lawn? No, no, my 
 dear Dick, the only glory that falls to the share of such 
 humble folks as we are, is to have something to do, and 
 to do it." 
 
 Such were the sort of passages which would now and then 
 occur between them, — little contests, be it said, in which she 
 usually came off the conqueror. 
 
 If she were to have a wish gratified, it would have been af 
 few more books, — something besides those odd volumes of j 
 Scott's novels, ''Zeluco" by Dr. Moore, and "Florence 
 M'Carthy," which comprised her whole library, an3 which she 
 read over and over unceasingly. She was now in her usual 
 place, — a deep window-seat — intently occupied with Amy 
 Robsart's sorrows, when her father came to read what he had 
 written in answer to Nina. If it was very brief it was very 
 affectionate. It told her in a few words that she had no need 
 to recall the ties of their relationship ; that his heart never 
 ceased to remind him of them ; that his home was a very dull 
 one, but that her cousin Kate would try and make it a happy 
 one to her ; entreated her to confer with the banker, to whom 
 he remitted forty pounds, in what way she could make the 
 journey, since he was too broken in health himself to go and 
 fetch her. "It is a bold- step I am counselling you, to 
 take. It is no light thing to quit a father's home, and I 
 have my misgivings how far I am a wise advisfer in recom- 
 mending it. There is, however, a present peril, and I* must 
 try, if I can, to save you from it. Perhaps, in my old-world 
 notions, I attach to the thought of the stage ideas that you 
 would only smile at ; but none of our race, so far as I know, 
 fell to that condition, — nor must you while 1 have a roof 
 to shelter you. 
 
 ''If you would write and say about what time I might 
 expect you, I will try to meet you on your landing in Eng- 
 land at Dover. 
 
 "Kate sends you her warmest love, and longs to see 
 you." 
 
 This was the whole of it. But a brief line to the 
 bankers said that any expense they judged needful to her 
 safe convoy across Europe would be gratefully repaid by 
 him. 
 
20 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Is it all right, dear? Have I forgotten anything?" 
 asked he, as Kate read it over. 
 
 **It's everything, papa, — everything. And I do long to 
 see her." 
 
 *'I hope she's like Matty; if she's only like her poor 
 mother, it will make my heart young again to look at her." 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 *'the chums.'* 
 
 In that old square of Trinity College, Dublin, one side of 
 which fronts the Park, and in chambers on the ground floor, 
 an oak door bore the names of "Kearney and Atlee." 
 
 Kearney was the son of Lord Kilgobbin ; Atlee, his chum, 
 the son of a Presbyterian minister in the North of Ireland, 
 had been four years in the university, but was still in his 
 freshman period, not from any deficiency of scholarlike 
 ability to push on, but that, as the poet of the "Seasons'* 
 lay in bed, because he "had no motive for rising," Joe Atlee 
 felt that there need be no urgency about taking a degree 
 which, when he had got, he should be sorely puzzled to know 
 what to do with. He was a clever, ready-witted, but capri- 
 cious fellow, fond of pleasure, and self-indulgent to a degree 
 that ill suited his very smallest of fortunes ; for his father 
 was a poor man, with a large family, and had already embar- 
 rassed himself heavily by the cost of sending his eldest son 
 to the university. Joe's changes of purpose — for he had 
 in succession abandoned law for medicine, medicine for 
 theology, and theology for civil engineering, and, finally, 
 gave them all up — had so outraged his father that he de- 
 clared he would not continue any allowance to him beyond 
 the present year; to which Joe replied by the same post, 
 sending back the twenty pounds enclosed him, and saying: 
 "The only amendment I would make to your motion is — as 
 to the date — let it begin from to-day. I suppose I shall 
 have to swim without corks some time. I may as well try 
 now as later on." 
 
 The first experience of his "swimming without corks " was 
 to lie in bed two days and smoke; the next was to rise at 
 daybreak and set out on a long walk into the country, from 
 
-^ 
 
 ih 
 
 22 LORD KILGOBBIK 
 
 which he returned late at night, wearied and exhausted, 
 having eaten but once during the day. 
 
 Kearney, dressed for an evening party, resplendent with 
 
 jewelry, essenced and curled, was about to issue forth, when 
 
 L ^^4 Atlee, dusty and way-worn, entered and threw himself into 
 
 r X ^ chair. 
 
 fsx "What lark have you been on, Master Joe?" he said. 
 
 *'I have not seen you for three days, if not four! " 
 
 "No; I 've begun to train," said he, gravely. "I want to 
 see how long a fellow could hold on to life on three pipes 
 of Cavendish per diem. I take it that the absorbents won't 
 (il^ be more cruel than a man's creditors, and will not issue a 
 distraint where there are no assets, so that probably by the 
 time I shall have brought myself down to, let us say, seven 
 
 r^ stone weight, I shall have reached the goal." 
 V^jiA'-^'T^his speech he delivered slowly and* calmly, as though 
 C^ A enunciating a very grave proposition. 
 
 y^ "What new nonsense is this? Don't you think health 
 
 worth something? " 
 ^ ' "Next to life, unquestionably; but one condition of 
 health is to be alive, and I don't see how to manage that. 
 Look here, Dick, I have just had a quarrel with my father; 
 he is an excellent man and an impressive preacher, but he 
 fails in the imaginative qualities. Nature has been a nig- 
 gard to him in inventiveness. He is the minister of a little 
 parish called Aghadoe, in the North, where they give him 
 two hundred and ten pounds per annum. There are eight 
 in family, and he actually does not see his way to allow me 
 one hundred and fifty out of it. That 's the way they neg- 
 lect arithmetic in our modern schools ! " 
 
 " Has he reduced your allowance? " 
 
 "He has done more; he has extinguished it." 
 
 "Have you provoked him to this? " 
 
 "I have provoked him to it." 
 
 "But is it not possible to accommodate matters? It 
 should not be very difficult, surely, to show him that once 
 you are launched in life — " 
 
 "And when will that be, Dick? " broke in the other. "I 
 have been on the stocks these four years, and that launch- 
 ing process you talk of looks just as remote as ever. No, 
 
"THE CHUMS." 23 
 
 no ; let us be fair : he has all the right on his side ; all the 
 wrong is on mine. Indeed, so far as conscience goes, I have 
 always felt it so; but one's conscience, like one's boots, gets 
 so pliant from wear, that it ceases to give pain. Still, on 
 my honor, I never hip-hurraed to a toast that I did not feel 
 there goes broken boots to one of the boys, or, worse again, 
 the cost of a cotton dress for one of the sisters. Whenever 
 I took a sherry-cobbler I thought of suicide after it. Self- 
 indulgence and self-reproach got linked in my nature so 
 inseparably it was hopeless to summon one without the 
 other ; till at last I grew to believe it was very heroic in me 
 to deny myself nothing, seeing how sorry I should be for it 
 afterwards. But come, old fellow, don't lose your evening; 
 we '11 have time enough to talk over these things. Where 
 are you going ? " 
 
 "To the Clancys'." 
 
 "To be sure; what a fellow I am to forget it was Letty's 
 birthday, and I was to have brought her a bouquet! Dick, 
 be a good fellow and tell her some lie or other, — that I 
 was sick in bed, or away to see an aunt or a grandmother, 
 and that I had a splendid bouquet for her, but would n't let 
 it reach her through other hands than my own; but to- 
 morrow — to-morrow she shall have it." 
 
 "You know well enough you don't mean anything of the 
 sort." 
 
 " On my honor, I '11 keep my promise. I 've an old silver 
 watch yonder; I think it knows the way to the pawn-office 
 by itself. There, now be off, for if I begin to think of all 
 the fun you 're going to, I shall just dress and join you." 
 
 "No, I'd not do that," said Dick, gravely; "nor shall I 
 stay long myself. Don't go to bed, Joe, till I come back. 
 Good-bye." 
 
 "Say all good and sweet things to Letty for me. Tell 
 her — " Kearney did not wait for his message, but hurried 
 down the steps and drove off. 
 
 Joe sat down at the fire, filled his pipe, looked steadily at 
 it, and then laid it on' the mantelpiece. "No, no. Master 
 Joe. You must be thrifty now. You have smoked twice 
 since — I can afford to say — since dinner-time, for you 
 haven't dined. It is strange, now that the sense of hunger 
 
24 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 has passed off, what a sense of excitement I feel. Two 
 hours back I could have been a cannibal. I believe I could 
 have eaten the vice-provost, — though I should have liked 
 him strongly devilled; and now I feel stimulated. Hence 
 it is, perhaps, that so little wine is enough to affect the 
 heads of starving people, — almost maddening them. Per- 
 haps Dick suspected something of this, for he did not care 
 that I should go along with him. Who knows but he may 
 have thought the sight of a supper might have overcome 
 me? If he knew but all! I 'm much more disposed to make 
 love to Letty Clancy than to go in for galantine and cham- 
 pagne. By the way, I wonder if the physiologists are aware 
 of that? It is, perhaps, what constitutes the ethereal condi- 
 tion of love. I '11 write an essay on that, or, better still, 
 I '11 write a review of an imaginary French essay. French- 
 •men are permitted to say so much more than we are, and 
 I '11 be rebukeful on the score of his excesses. The bitter 
 way in which a Frenchman always visits his various inca- 
 pacities — whether it be to know something, or to do some- 
 thing, or to be something — on the species he belongs to; 
 the way in which he suggests that, had he been consulted on 
 the matter, humanity had been a much more perfect organi- 
 zation, and able to sustain a great deal more of wickedness 
 without disturbance, is great fun. I '11 certainly invent a 
 Frenchman, and make him an author, and then demolish him. 
 What if I make him die of hunger, having tasted nothing for 
 eight days but the proof-sheets of his great work, — the work 
 I am then reviewing ? For four days — but stay ; — if I 
 starve him to death, I cannot tear his work to pieces. No ; 
 he shall be alive, living in splendor and honor, a frequenter 
 of the Tuileries, a favored guest at Compiegne." 
 
 Without perceiving it, he had now taken his pipe, lighted 
 it, and was smoking away. "By the way, how those 
 same Imperialists have played the game ! — the two or three 
 middle-aged men that Kingl-ake says, ' Put their heads 
 together to plan for a livelihood ; ' I wish they had taken 
 me into the partnership. It 's the 'sort of thing I 'd have 
 liked well; ay, and I could have done it, too! I wonder,'* 
 said he, aloud, — "I wonder if I were an emperor should I 
 marry Letty Clancy? I suspect not. Letty would have 
 
"THE CHUMS." 25 
 
 been flippant as an empress, and her cousins would have 
 made atrocious princes of the Imperial family; though, for 
 the matter of . that — Hullo ! Here have I been smoking 
 without knowing it! Can any one tell us whether the sins 
 we do inadvertently count as sins, or do we square them off 
 by our inadvertent good actions? I trust I shall not be 
 called on to catalogue mine. There, my courage is out! " 
 As he said this he emptied the ashes of his pipe, and gazed 
 sorrowfully at the empty bowl. 
 
 "Now, if I were the son of some good house, with a high- 
 sounding name and well-to-do relations, I 'd soon bring them 
 to terms if they dared to cast me off. I 'd turn milk or 
 muffin man, and serve the street they lived in. I 'd sweep 
 the crossing in front of their windows, or I 'd commit a 
 small theft, and call on my high connections for a character; 
 but being who and what I am, I might do any or all of 
 these, and shock nobody. 
 
 "Next, to take stock of my effects. Let me see what my 
 assets will bring when reduced to cash; for this time it 
 shall be a sale." And he turned to a table where paper 
 and pens were lying, and proceeded to write. "Personal, 
 sworn under, let us say, ten thousand pounds. Literature 
 first. To divers worn copies of Virgil, Tacitus, Juvenal, 
 and Ovid, Caesar's Commentaries, and Catullus; to ditto 
 ditto of Homer, Lucian, Aristophanes, Balzac, Anacreon, 
 Bacon's Essays, and Moore's Melodies; to Dwight's 
 Theology, uncut copy; Heine's Poems, very much thumbed; 
 Saint Simon, very ragged; two volumes of Les Causes 
 Celebres, Tone's Memoirs, and Beranger's Songs; to 
 Cuvier's Comparative Anatomy, Schroeder on Shakspeare, 
 Newman's Apology, Archbold's Criminal Law and Songs 
 of the Nation; to Colenso, East's Cases for the Crown, 
 Carte's Ormonde, and Pickwick. But why go on? Let us 
 call it the small but well-selected library of a distressed 
 gentleman, whose cultivated mind is reflected in the marginal 
 notes with which these volumes abound. Will any gentle- 
 man say, ' £10 for the lot'? Why, the very criticisms are 
 worth — I mean to a man of literary tastes — five times the 
 amount. No offer at £10? Who is it that says 'five'? 
 I trust my ears have deceived me. You repeat the insult- 
 
26 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ing proposal? Well, sir, on your own head be it! Mr. 
 Atlee's library — or the Atlee collection is better — was 
 yesterday disposed of to a well-known collector of rare 
 books, and, if we are rightly informed, for a mere fraction 
 of its value. Never mind, sir, I bear you no ill-will! I 
 was irritable, and to show you my honest animus in the 
 matter, I beg to present you, in addition with this, a hand- 
 somely bound and gilt copy of a sermon by the Reverend 
 Isaac Atlee, on the opening of the new meeting-house in 
 Coleraine, — a discourse that cost my father some sleepless 
 nights, though 1 have heard the effect on the congregation 
 was dissimilar. 
 
 "The pictures are few. Cardinal Cullen, I believe, is 
 Kearney's; at all events, he is the worse for being made a 
 target for pistol-firing, and the archiepiscopal nose has 
 been sorely damaged. Two views of Killarney in the 
 weather of the period, — that means July, and raining in 
 torrents," and consequently the scene, for aught discover- 
 able, might be the Gaboon. Portrait of Joe Atlee, setatis 
 four years, with a villanous squint, and something that 
 looks like a plug in the left jaw. A Skye terrier, painted, 
 it is supposed, by himself; not to recite unframed prints 
 of various celebrities of the ballet, in accustomed attitudes, 
 with the Reverend Paul Bloxham blessing some children — 
 though from the gesture and the expression of the juveniles 
 it might seem cuffing them — on the inauguration of the 
 Sunday-school at Kilmurry Macmacmahon. 
 
 " Lot three, interesting to anatomical lecturers and others, 
 especially those engaged in palaeontology. The articulated 
 skeleton of an Irish giant, representing a man who must 
 have stood in his no-stockings eight feet four inches. 
 This, I may add, will be warranted as authentic, in so far 
 that I made him myself out of at least eighteen or twenty 
 big specimens, with a few slight ' divergencies ' I may call 
 them, such as putting in eight more dorsal vertebrae than 
 the regulation, and that the right femur is two inches longer 
 than the left. The inferior maxillary, too, was stolen from 
 a ' Pithacus Satyrus ' in the Cork Museum by an old friend, 
 since transported for Fenianism. These blemishes apart, 
 he is an admirable giant, and fully as ornamental and 
 useful as the species generally. 
 
" THE CHUMS." 27 
 
 *'As to my wardrobe, it is less costly than curious; an 
 alpaca paletot of a neutral tint, which I have much affected 
 of late, having indisposed me to other wear. For dinner 
 and evening duty I usually wear Kearney's, though too 
 tight across the chest, and short in the sleeves. These, 
 with a silver watch which no pawnbroker — and I have tried 
 eight — will ever advance more on than seven-and-six. I 
 once got the figure up to nine shillings by supplementing 
 an umbrella, which was Dick's, and which still remains 
 ' unclaimed and unredeemed. ' 
 
 "Two o'clock, by all that is supperless! evidently Kear- 
 ney is enjoying himself. Ah, youth, youth! I wish I could 
 remember some of the spiteful things that are said of you, 
 — not but on the whole, I take it, you have the right end of 
 the stick. Is it possible there is nothing to eat in this in- 
 hospitable mansion?" He arose and opened a sort of cup- 
 board in the wall, scrutinizing it closely with the candle. 
 *' ' Give me but the superfluities of life,' says Gavarni, 
 ' and I '11 not trouble you for its necessaries.' What would 
 he say, however, to a fellow famishing with hunger in pres- 
 ence of nothing but pickled mushrooms and Worcester 
 sauce! Oh, here is a crust! 'Bread is the staff of life.' 
 On my oath, I believe so; for this eats devilish like a 
 walking-stick. 
 
 "Hullo! back already? " cried he, as Kearney flung wide 
 the door and entered. "I suppose you hurried away back 
 to join me at supper." 
 
 "Thanks; but I have supped already, and at a more 
 tempting banquet than this I see before you." 
 
 "Was it pleasant? was it jolly? Were the girls looking 
 lovely? Was the champagne-cup well iced? Was every- 
 body charming? Tell me all about it. Let me have 
 second-hand pleasure, since I can't afford the new article." 
 
 "It was pretty much like every other small ball here, 
 where the garrison get all the prettiest girls for partners, 
 and take the mammas down to supper after." 
 
 "Cunning dogs, who secure flirtation above stairs and 
 food below! And what is stirring in the world? What are 
 the gayeties in prospect? Are any of my old flames about 
 to get married? " 
 
28 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I did n't know you had any." 
 
 "Have I not! I believe half the parish of St. Peter's 
 might proceed against me for breach of promise ; and if the 
 law allowed me as many wives as Brigham Young, I 'd be 
 still disappointing a large and interesting section of society 
 in the suburbs." 
 
 "They have made a seizure on the office of the 'Pike,' 
 carried off the press and the whole issue, and are in eager 
 pursuit after Madden, the editor." 
 
 "What for? What is it all about? " 
 
 "A new ballad he has published; but which, for the 
 matter of that, they were singing at every corner as I 
 came along." 
 
 "Was it good? Did you buy a copy? " 
 
 "Buy a copy? I should think not." 
 
 "Couldn't your patriotism stand the test of a penny?" 
 
 " It might if I wanted the production, which I certainly 
 did not; besides, there is a run upon this, and they were 
 selling it at sixpence." 
 
 "Hurrah! There's hope for Ireland after all! Shall I 
 sing it for you, old fellow? Not that you deserve it. Eng- 
 lish corruption has damped the little Irish ardor that old 
 rebellion once kindled in your heart; and if you could get 
 rid of your brogue, you 're ready to be loyal. You shall 
 hear it, however, all the same." And taking up a very 
 damaged-looking guitar, he struck a few bold chords, and 
 began : — 
 
 Is there anything more we can fight or can hate for ■? 
 
 The " drop " and the famine have made our ranks thin. 
 In the name of endurance, then, what do we wait for ? 
 
 Will nobody give us the word to begin ? 
 
 Some brothers have left us in sadness and sorrow, 
 In despair of the cause they had sworn to win ; 
 
 They owned they were sick of that cry of " to-morrow ; " 
 Not a man would believe that we meant to begin. 
 
 We 've been ready for months — is there one can deny it ? 
 
 Is there any one here thinks rebellion a sin "? 
 We counted the cost — and we did not decry it, 
 
 And we asked for no more than the word to begin. 
 
"THE CHUMS." 29 
 
 At Vinegar Hill, when our fathers were fighters, 
 With numbers against them, they cared not a pin; 
 
 They needed no orders from newspaper writers, 
 To tell them the day it was time to begin. 
 
 To sit down here in sadness and silence to bear it, 
 
 Is harder to face than the battle's loud din ; 
 'T is the shame that will kill me — I vow it, I swear it ! 
 
 Now or never 's the time, if we mean to begin. 
 
 There was a wild rapture in the way he struck the last 
 chords, that, if it did not evince ecstasy, seemed to coun- 
 terfeit enthusiasm. 
 
 "Very poor doggerel, with all your bravura," said Kear- 
 ney, sneeringly. 
 
 "What would you have? I only got three-and-six 
 for it." 
 
 "You! Is that thing yours?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; that thing is mine. And the Castle people 
 think somewhat more gravely about it than you do." 
 
 "At which you are pleased, doubtless?" 
 
 " Not pleased, but proud. Master Dick, let me tell you. 
 It's a very stimulating reflection to the man who dines on 
 an onion, that he can spoil the digestion of another fellow 
 who has been eating turtle." 
 
 " But you may have to go to prison for this." 
 
 "Not if you don't peach on me, for you are the only 
 one who knows the authorship. You see, Dick, these things 
 are done cautiously. They are dropped into a letter-box 
 with an initial letter, and a clerk hands the payment to 
 some of those itinerant hags that sing the melody, and who 
 can be trusted with the secret as implicitly as the briber 
 at a borough election." 
 
 " I wish you had a better livelihood, Joe." 
 
 ' ' So do I, or that my present one paid better. The 
 fact is, Dick, patriotism never was worth much as a career | 
 till one got to the top of the profession. But if you mean 
 to sleep at all, old fellow, ' it 's time to begin ; ' " and he 
 chanted out the last words in a clear and ringing tone, as 
 he banged the door behind him. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 AT '' TRINITY." 
 
 It was while the two young men were seated at breakfast 
 that the post arrived, bringing a number of country news- 
 papers, for which, in one shape or other, Joe Atlee wrote 
 something. Indeed, he was an "own correspondent," dat- 
 ing from London, or Paris, or occasionally from Rome, 
 with an easy freshness, and a local color that vouched for 
 authenticity. These journals were of a very political tint, 
 from emerald green to the deepest orange ; and, indeed, be- 
 tween two of them — the " Tipperary Pike" and the " Boyne 
 Water," hailing from Carrickfergus — there was a contro- 
 versy of such violence and intemperance of language, that 
 it was a curiosity to see the two papers on the same table ; 
 the fact being capable of explanation, that they were both 
 written by Joe Atlee, — a secret, however, that he had not 
 confided even to his friend Kearney. 
 
 "Will that fellow that signs himself Terry O'Toole in 
 the ' Pike ' stand this ? " cried Kearney, reading aloud from 
 the "Boyne Water": — 
 
 " ' We know the man who corresponds with you under the signa- 
 ture of Terry O'Toole, and it is but one of the ahases under which 
 he has lived since he came out of the Richmond Bridewell, filcher, 
 forger, and false witness. There is yet one thing he has never 
 tried, which is to behave with a little courage. If he should, how- 
 ever, be able to persuade himself, by the aid of his accustomed 
 stimulants, to accept the responsibility of what he has written, we 
 bind ourselves to pay his expenses to any part of France or Belgium, 
 where he will meet us, and we shall also bind ourselves to give him 
 what his life little entitles him to, a Christian burial afterwards. 
 
 *"No Surrender.'" 
 
AT "TRINITY." 31 
 
 *Iam just reading the answer," said Joe. "It is very 
 brief ; here it is : — 
 
 " * If " No Surrender " — who has been a newsvender in your 
 estabUshment since you yourself rose from that employ to the 
 editor's chair — will call at this office any morning after distributing 
 his eight copies of your daily issue, we promise to give him such a 
 kicking as he has never experienced during his literary career. 
 
 " ' Terry O'Toole.' " 
 
 " And these are the amenities of journalism," cried 
 Kearney. * 
 
 " For the matter of that, you might exclaim at the quack 
 doctor of a fair, and ask, Is this the dignity of medicine?" 
 said Joe. "There's a head and a tail to every walk in 
 life : even the law has a Chief Justice at one end and a 
 Jack Ketch at the other." 
 
 " Well, I sincerely wish that those blackguards would 
 first kick and then shoot each other." 
 
 "They'll do nothing of the kind! It's just as likely 
 that they wrote the whole correspondence at the same 
 table and with the same jug of punch between them." 
 
 " If so, I don't envy you your career or your comrades." 
 
 " It 's a lottery with big prizes in the wheel all the same ! 
 I could tell you the names of great swells. Master Dick, 
 who have made very proud places for themselves in Eng- 
 land by what you call ' journalism.' In France it is the 
 one road to eminence. Cannot you imagine, besides, what 
 capital fun it is to be able to talk to scores of people 
 you were never introduced to? to tell them an infinity of 
 things on public matters, or now and then about them- 
 selves ; and in so many moods as you have tempers, to 
 warn them, scold, compassionate, correct, console, or abuse 
 them? to tell them not to be over-confident or bumptious 
 or purse-proud — " 
 
 "And who are you, may I ask, who presume to do all 
 this?" 
 
 "That's as it may be. "We are occasionally Guizot, 
 Thiers, Prevost-Paradol, Lytton, Disraeli, or Joe Atlee." 
 
 "Modest, at all events." 
 
 " And why not say what I feel, — not what I have done, 
 
32 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 but what is in me to do ? Can't you understand this : it 
 would never occur to me that I could vault over a five-bar 
 gate if I had been born a cripple? but the conscious posses- 
 sion of a little pliant muscularity might well tempt me to 
 try it." 
 
 '* And get a cropper for your pains." 
 
 "Be -it so. Better the cropper than pass one's life look- 
 ing over the top rail and envying the fellow that had cleared 
 it ; but what 's this ? here 's a letter here ; it got in amongst 
 the newspapers. I say, Dick, do you stand this sort of 
 thing?" said he, as he read the address. 
 
 " Stand what sort of thing? " asked the other, half angrily. 
 
 "Why, to be addressed in this fashion? The Honorable 
 Richard Kearney, Trinity College, Dublin." 
 
 "It is from my sister," said Kearney, as he took the 
 letter impatiently from his hand ; " and I can only tell you, 
 if she had addressed me otherwise, I 'd not have opened her 
 letter." 
 
 "But come now, old fellow, don't lose temper about it. 
 You have a right to this designation, or you have not — " 
 
 "I'll spare all your eloquence by simply saying that I do 
 not look on you as a Committee of Privilege, and I 'm not 
 going to plead before you. Besides," added he, " it 's only 
 a few minutes ago you asked me to credit you for something 
 you have not shown yourself to be, but that you intended 
 and felt that the world should see you were one of these 
 days." 
 
 " So, then, you really mean to bring your claim before 
 the Lords?" 
 
 Kearney, if he heard, did not heed this question, but went 
 on to read his letter. " Here's a surprise ! " cried he. "I 
 was telling you, the other day, about a certain cousin of 
 mine we were expecting from Italy." 
 
 " The daughter of that swindler, the mock prince?" 
 
 "The man's character I'll not stand up for, but his rank 
 and title are alike indisputable," said Kearney, haughtily. 
 
 " With all my heart. We have soared into a high atmos- 
 phere all this day, and I hope my respiration will get used 
 to it in time. Read away ! " 
 
 It was not till after a considerable interval that Kearney 
 
AT "TRINITY." 33 
 
 had recovered composure enough to read, and when he did 
 so it was with a brow furrowed with irritation : — 
 
 " KiLGOBBIN. 
 
 " My dear Dick, — We had just sat down to tea last night, and 
 papa was fidgeting about the length of time his letter to Italy had 
 remained unacknowledged, when a sharp ring at the house-door 
 startled us. We had been hearing a good deal of searches for arms 
 lately in the neighborhood, and we looked very blankly at each other 
 for a moment. We neither of us said so, but I feel sure our thoughts 
 were on the same track, and that we believed Captain Rock, or 
 the head centre, or whatever be his latest title, had honored us 
 with a call. Old Mathew seemed of the same mind too, for he 
 appeared at the door with that venerable blunderbuss we have so 
 often played with, and which, if it had any evil thoughts in its 
 head, I must have been tried for a murder years ago, for I know it 
 was loaded since I was a child, but that the lock has for the same 
 space of time not been on speaking terms with the barrel. While, 
 then, thus confirmed in our suspicions of mischief by Mat's warlike 
 aspect, we both rose from the table, the door opened, and a youno- 
 girl rushed in, and fell — actually threw herself into papa's arms. 
 It was Nina herself, who had come all the way from Rome alone, — 
 that is, without any one she knew, and made her way to us here 
 without any other guidance than her own good wits. 
 
 "I cannot tell you how delighted we are with her. She is the 
 loveliest girl I ever saw, so gentle, so nicely mannered, so soft-voiced, ; 
 and so winning — I feel myself like a peasant beside her. The| 
 least thing she says — her laugh, her slightest gesture, the way she 
 moves about the room, with a sort of swinging grace, which I thought; 
 affected at first, but now I see is quite natural — is only another of 
 her many fascinations. 
 
 " I fancied for a while that her features were almost too beautifully i 
 regular for expression, and that even when she smiled and showed | 
 her lovely teeth, her eyes got no increase of brightness ; but as I 
 talked more with her, and learned to know her better, I saw that 
 those eyes have meanings of softness and depth in them of wonder- 
 ful power, and, stranger than all, an archness that shows she has I 
 plenty of humor, 
 
 " Her Enghsh is charming, but slightly foreign ; and when she is 
 at a loss for a word, there is just that much of difficulty in finding it 
 which gives a heightened expression to her beautifully calm face, 
 and makes it lovely. You may see how she has fascinated me, for I 
 could go on raving about her for hours. 
 
 " She is very anxious to see you, and asks me over and over again, 
 
 3 
 
34 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Shall you like her ? I was almost candid enough to say ' Too well. * 
 I mean that you could not help falling in love with her, my dear 
 Dick, and she is so much above us in style, in habit, and doubtless 
 in ambition, that such would be only madness. When she saw 
 your photo she smiled, and said, ' Is he not superb ? — I mean 
 proud ? * I owned you were, and then she added, ' I hope he will like 
 me.' I am not perhaps discreet if I tell you she does not like the 
 portrait of your chum, Atlee, She says 'he is very good-looking, 
 very clever, very witty, but is n't he false ? ' and this she says over 
 and over again. I told her I believed not ; that I had never seen 
 him myself, but that I knew that you liked him greatly, and felt to 
 him as a brother. She only shook her head, and said, ' Badate bene 
 a quel che dico. I mean," said she, ' / 'm right, but he 's very nice 
 for all that ! ' If I tell you this, Dick, it is just because I cannot 
 get it out of my head, and I will keep saying over and over to my- 
 self, ' If Joe Atlee be what she suspects, why does she call him 
 .very nice for all that?' I said you intended to ask him down here 
 next vacation, and she gave the drollest little laugh in the world, — 
 and does she not look lovely when she shows those small pearly 
 teeth ? Heaven help you, poor Dick, when you see her ! but, if I 
 were you, I should leave Master Joe behind me, for she smiles as 
 she looks at his likeness in a way that would certainly make me 
 jealous, if I were only Joe's friend, and not himself 
 
 " We sat up in Nina's room till nigh morning, and to-day I have 
 scarcely seen her, for she wants to be let sleep, after that long and 
 tiresome journey, and I take the opportunity to write you this very 
 rambling epistle ; for you may feel sure I shall be less of a correspond- 
 ent now than when I was without companionship, and I counsel you 
 to be very grateful if you hear from me soon again. 
 
 " Papa wants to take Duggan's farm from him, and Lanty Moore's 
 meadows, and throw them into the lawn ; but 1 hope he won't persist 
 in the plan ; not alone because it is a mere extravagance, but that 
 the county is very unsettled just now about land-tenure, and the 
 people are hoping all sorts of things from Parliament, and any 
 interference with them at this time would be ill taken. Father 
 Cody was here yesterday, and told me confidentially to prevent papa, 
 — not so easy a thing as he thinks, particularly if he should come 
 to suspect that any intimidation was intended, — and Miss O'Shea 
 unfortunately said something the other day that papa cannot get out 
 of his head, and keeps on repeating. ' So, then, it 's our turn now,' 
 the fellows say ; ' the landlords have had five hundred years of it ; 
 \t 's time we should come in.' And this he says over and over with 
 a little laugh, and I wish to my heart Miss Betty had kept it to 
 herself. By the way. her nephew is to come on leave, and pass two 
 months with her ; and she says she hopes you will be here at the 
 
AT "TRINITY." 35 
 
 same time, to keep him company ; but I have a notion that another 
 playfellow may prove a dangerous rival to the Hungarian hussar; 
 perhaps, however, you would hand over Joe Atlee to him. 
 
 " Be sure you bring us some new books and some music when 
 you come, or send them, if you don't come soon. I am terrified lest 
 Nina should think the place dreary, and I don't know how she is to 
 live here if she does not take to the vulgar drudgeries that fill my 
 own life. When she abruptly asked me, 'What do you do here?' 
 I was sorely puzzled to know what to answer, and then she added 
 quickly, — ' For my own part, it 's no great matter, for I can always 
 dream I 'm a great dreamer ! ' Is it not lucky for her, Dick ? 
 She'll have ample time for it here. 
 
 " I suppose I never wrote so long a letter as this in my life ; 
 indeed 1 never had a subject that had such a fascination for myself. 
 Do you know, Dick, that though 1 promised to let her sleep on till 
 nigh dinner-time, I find myself every now and then creeping up 
 gently to her door, and only bethink me of my pledge when my 
 hand is on the lock ; and sometimes I even doubt if she is here at all, 
 and I am half crazy at fearing it may be all a dream. 
 
 " One word for yourself, and I have done. Why have you not 
 told us of the examination ? It was to have been on the tenth, and 
 we are now at the eighteenth. Have you got — whatever it was? 
 the prize, or the medal, or — the reward, in short, we were so anx- 
 iously hoping for V It would be such cheery tidings for poor papa, 
 who is very low and depressed of late, and I see him always read- 
 ing with such attention any notice of the College he can find in the 
 newspaper. My dear, dear brother, how you would work hard if you 
 only knew what a prize success in hfe might give you. Little as I 
 have seen of her, I could guess that she will never bestow a thought 
 on an undistinguished man. Come down for one day, and tell me 
 if ever, in all your ambition, you had such a goal before you as 
 this? 
 
 "The hoggets I sent in to Tullamore fair were not sold; but I 
 believe Miss Betty's steward will take them ,* and, if so, 1 will send 
 you ten pounds next week. 1 never knew the market so dull, and 
 the English dealers now are only eager about horses, and I 'm sure 
 I could n't part with any if I had them. With all my love, I am 
 
 " Your ever affectionate sister, 
 
 "Kate Kearney. 
 
 " I have just stepped into Nina's room and stolen the photo I 
 send you. I suppose the dress must have been for some fancy ball ; 
 but she is a hundred million times more beautiful. I don't know if 
 I shall have the courage to confess my theft to her. " 
 
36 LORD KILGOBBIN 
 
 "Is that your sister, Dick?" said Joe Atlee, as young 
 Kearney withdrew the carte from the letter, and placed It 
 face downwards on the breakfast-table. 
 
 *'No,'' replied he, bluntly, and continued to read on; 
 while the other, in the spirit of that freedom that prevailed 
 between them, stretched out his hand and took up the por- 
 trait. 
 
 ''Who is this?" cried he, after some seconds. ''She's 
 an actress. That's something like what the girl wears in 
 ' Don Caesar de Bazan.' To be sure, she is Maritana. She 's 
 stunningly beautiful. Do you mean to tell me, Dick, that 
 there 's a girl like that on your provincial boards ? " 
 
 '' I never said so, any more than I gave you leave to ex- 
 amine the contents of my letters," said the other, haughtily. 
 
 " Egad, I 'd have smashed the seal any day to have caught 
 a glimpse of such a face as that. I '11 wager her eyes are 
 blue-gray. Will you have a bet on it? " 
 
 '' When you have done with your raptures, I '11 thank you 
 to hand the likeness to me." 
 
 " But who is she? what is she? where is she? Is she the 
 Greek?" 
 
 "When a fellow can help himself so coolly to his informa- 
 tion as you do, I scarcely think he deserves much aid from 
 others ; but, I may tell you, she is not Maritana, nor a pro- 
 vincial actress, nor any actress at all, but a young lady of 
 good blood and birth, and my own first cousin." 
 
 "On my oath, it 's the best thing I ever knew of you." 
 
 Kearney laughed out at this moment at something in the 
 letter, and did not hear the other's remark. 
 
 "It seems, Master Joe, that the young lady did not re- 
 ciprocate the rapturous delight you feel, at sight of your 
 picture. My sister says — I '11 read you her very words — 
 ' she does not like the portrait of your friend Atlee ; he may 
 be clever and amusing, she says, but he is undeniably false.' 
 Mind that, — undeniably false." 
 
 "- That's all the fault of the artist. The stupid dog would 
 place me in so strong a light that I kept blinking." 
 
 " No, no. She reads you like a book," said the other. 
 
 " I wish to Heaven she would, if she would hold me like 
 one." 
 
AT "TRINITY." 37 
 
 *' And the nice way she qualifies your cleverness, by call- 
 ing you amusing." 
 
 " She could certainly spare that reproach to her cousin 
 Dick," said he, laughing; "but no more of this sparring. 
 When do you mean to take me down to the country with 
 you? The term will be up on Tuesday." 
 
 " That will demand a little consideration now. In the fall 
 of the year, perhaps. When the sun is less powerful, the 
 light will be more favorable to your features." 
 
 " My poor Dick, I cram you with good advice every day ; 
 but one counsel I never cease repeating, ' Never try, to be 
 witty.' A dull fellow only cuts his finger with a joke; he 
 never catches it by the handle. Hand me over that letter of 
 your sister's ; I like the way she writes. All that about the 
 pigs and the poultry is as good as the ' Farmer's Chronicle.' " 
 
 The other made no other reply than by coolly folding up 
 the letter and placing it in his pocket; and then, after a 
 pause, he said, — 
 
 " I shall tell Miss Kearney the favorable impression her 
 epistolary powers have produced on my very clever and 
 accomplished chum, Mr. Atlee." 
 
 ''Do so; and say, if she'd take me for a correspondent 
 instead of you, she'd be 'exchanging with a difference.' 
 On my oath," said he, seriously, " I believe a most finished 
 education might be effected in letter-writing. I'd engage 
 to take a clever girl through a whole course of Latin and 
 Greek, and a fair share of mathematics and logic, in a series 
 of letters, and her replies would be the fairest test of her 
 acquirement." « 
 
 " Shall I propose this to my sister? " 
 
 "Do so, or to yopr cousin. I suspect Maritana would be 
 an apter pupil." 
 
 "The bell has stopped. We shall be late in the hall," 
 said Kearney, throwing on his gown hurriedly and hastening 
 away; while Atlee, taking some proof-sheets from the 
 chimney-piece, proceeded to correct them, a slight flicker 
 of a smile still lingering over his dark but handsome face. 
 
 Though such little jarring passages as that we have 
 recorded were nothing uncommon between these two young 
 men, they were very good friends on the whole ; the very 
 
38 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 dissimilarity that provoked their squabbles saving them from 
 any more serious rivalry. In reality, no two people could 
 be less alike : Kearney being a slow, plodding, self-satisfied, 
 dull man, of very ordinary faculties ; while the other was an 
 indolent, discursive, sharp-witted fellow, mastering what- 
 ever he addressed himself to with ease, but so enamoured of 
 novelty that he rarely went beyond a smattering of anything. 
 He carried away college honors apparently at will, and 
 might, many thought, have won a fellowship with little 
 effort; but his passion was for change. Whatever bore 
 upon the rogueries of letters, the frauds of literature, had an 
 irresistible charm for him; and he once declared that he 
 would almost rather have been Ireland than Shakspeare ; and 
 then it was his delight to write Greek versions of a poem 
 that might attach the mark of plagiarism to Tennyson, or 
 show, by a Scandinavian lyric, how the laureate had been 
 poaching from the Northmen. Now it was a mock pastoral 
 in most ecclesiastical Latin that set the whole Church in 
 arms ; now a mock despatch of Baron Beust that actually 
 deceived the ''Revue des Deux Mondes" and caused quite 
 a panic at the Tuileries. He had established such relations 
 with foreign journals that he could at any moment command 
 insertion for a paper, — now in the "Memorial Diploma- 
 tique," now in the "Golos " of St. Petersburg, or the " Allge- 
 meine Zeitung ; " while the comment, written also by himself, 
 would appear in the "Kreutz Zeitung" or the "Times;" 
 and the mystification became such that the shrewdest and 
 keenest heads were constantly misled, to which side to 
 incline in a controversy where all the .wires were pulled by 
 one hand. Many a discussion on the authenticity of a 
 document or the veracity of a conversation would take place 
 between the two young men ; Kearney not having the vaguest 
 suspicion that the author of the point in debate was then 
 sitting opposite to him, sometimes seeming to share the very 
 doubts and difficulties that were then puzzling himself. 
 
 While Atlee knew Kearney in every fold and fibre of 
 his nature, Kearney had not the very vaguest conception of 
 him with whom he sat every day at meals, and communed 
 through almost every hour of his life. He treated Joe, 
 indeed, with a sort of proud protection, thinking him a 
 
AT "TRINITY." 39 
 
 sharp, clever, idle fellow, who would never come to any- 
 thing higher than a bookseller's hack or an ''occasional 
 correspondent." He liked his ready speech and his fun, 
 but he would not consent to see in either evidences of any- 
 thing beyond the amusing qualities of a very light intelli- 
 gence. On the whole, he looked down upon him, as very 
 properly the slow and ponderous people in life do look down 
 upon their more volatile brethren, and vote them triflers. 
 Long may it be so! There would be more sunstrokes in 
 the world if it were not that the shadows of dull men 
 made such nice cool places for the others to walk in! 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE. 
 
 The life of that quaint old country house was something 
 very strange and odd to Nina Kostalergi. It was not 
 merely its quiet monotony, its unbroken sameness of topics 
 as of events, and its small economies, always appearing on 
 the surface ; but that a young girl like Kate, full of life and 
 spirits, gay, handsome, and high-hearted, — that she should 
 go her mill-round of these tiresome daily cares, listening to 
 the same complaints, remedying the same evils, meeting the 
 same difficulties, and yet never seem to resent an existence 
 I so ignoble and unworthy ! This was, indeed, scarce 
 credible. 
 
 As for Nina herself, — like one saved from shipwreck, — 
 her first sense of security was full of gratitude. It was only 
 as this wore off that she began to see the desolation of the 
 rock on which she had clambered. Not that her former life 
 had been rose-tinted. It had been of all things the most 
 harassing and wearying, — a life of dreary necesgitude, a 
 perpetual struggle with debt. Except play, her father had 
 scarcely any resource for a livelihood. He affected, indeed, 
 to give lessons in Italian and French to young Englishmen; 
 but he was so fastidious as to the rank and condition of his 
 pupils, so unaccommodating as to his hours, and so unpunc- 
 tual, that it was evident that the whole was a mere pretence 
 of industry, to avoid the reproach of being utterly dependent 
 on the play-table ; besides this, in his capacity as a teacher 
 he obtained access to houses and acceptance with families 
 where he would have found entrance impossible under other 
 circumstances. 
 
 He was polished and good-looking. All his habits bespoke 
 familiarity with society; and he knew to the nicest fraction 
 
HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE. 41 
 
 the amount of intimacy he might venture on with any one. 
 Some did not like him ; the man of a questionable position, 
 the reduced gentleman, has terrible prejudices to combat. 
 He must always be suspected, — Heaven knows of what, 
 but of some covert design against the religion or the 
 pocket, or the influence of those who admit him. Some 
 thought him dangerous because his manners were insinuat- 
 ing, and his address studiously directed to captivate. 
 Others did not fancy his passion for mixing in the world, 
 and frequenting society to which his straitened means 
 appeared to deny him rightful access; but when he had 
 succeeded in introducing his daughter to the world, and 
 people began to say, "See how admirably M. Kostalergij 
 has brought up that girl ! how nicely mannered she is, how \ 
 lady-like, how well bred, what a linguist, what a musician! " 
 a complete revulsion took place in public opinion, and many 
 who had but half trusted, or less than liked him before, 
 became now his stanchest friends and adherents, Nina 
 had been a great success in society, and she reaped the full 
 benefit of it. Sufficiently well born to be admitted, without 
 any special condescension, into good houses, she was in 
 manner and style the equal of any; and though her dress 
 was ever of the cheapest and plainest, her fresh toilette 
 was often commented on with praise by those who did not 
 fully remember what added grace and elegance the wearer 
 had lent it. 
 
 From the wealthy nobles to whom her musical genius had 
 strongly recommended her, numerous and sometimes costly 
 presents were sent in acknowledgment of her charming gifts; 
 and these, as invariably, were converted into money by her 
 father, who, after a while, gave it to be understood that the 
 recompense would be always more welcome in that form. 
 
 Nina, however, for a long time knew nothing of this ; she 
 saw herself sought after and flattered in society, selected 
 for peculiar attention wherever she went, complimented on 
 her acquirements, and made much of to an extent that not 
 unfrequently excited the envy and jealousy of girls much 
 more favorably placed by fortune than herself. If her long 
 mornings and afternoons were passed amidst solitude and 
 poverty, vulgar cares, and harassing importunities, when 
 
42 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 night came she emerged into the blaze of lighted lustres and 
 gilded salons, to move in an atmosphere of splendor 
 and sweet sounds, with all that could captivate the senses 
 and exalt imagination. This twofold life of meanness and 
 magnificence so wrought upon her nature as to develop 
 almost two individualities, — the one hard, stern, realistic, 
 even to grudgingness ; the other gay, buoyant, enthusiastic, 
 and ardent; and they who only saw her of an evening in all 
 the exultation of her flattered beauty, followed about by a 
 train of admiring worshippers, addressed in all that exag- 
 geration of language Italy sanctions, pampered by caresses, 
 and honored by homage on every side, little knew by what 
 dreary torpor of heart and mind that joyous ecstasy they 
 witnessed had been preceded, nor by what a bound her 
 emotions had sprung from the depths of brooding melancholy 
 to this paroxysm of delight; nor could the worn-out and 
 wearied followers of pleasure comprehend the intense enjoy- 
 ment produced by sights and sounds which in their case no 
 fancy idealized, no soaring imagination had lifted to the 
 heaven of bliss. 
 
 Kostalergi seemed for a while to content himself with the 
 secret resources of his daughter's successes; but at length 
 he launched out into heavy play once more, and lost largely. 
 It was in this strait that he bethought him of negotiating 
 with a theatrical manager for Nina's appearance on the 
 stage. These contracts take the precise form of a sale, 
 where the victim, in consideration of being educated and 
 maintained, and paid a certain amount, is bound — legally 
 bound — to devote her services to a master for a given time. 
 The impresario of the Fenice had often heard from travellers 
 of that wonderful mezzo-soprano voice which was captivat- 
 ing all Rome, where the beauty and grace of the singer were 
 extolled not less loudly. The great skill of these astute pro- 
 viders for the world's pleasure is evidenced in nothing more 
 remarkably than the instinctive quickness with which they 
 pounce upon the indications of dramatic genius, and hasten 
 away — half across the globe if need be — to secure it. 
 Signor Lanari was not slow to procure a letter of introduc- 
 tion to Kostalergi, and very soon acquainted him with his 
 object. 
 
HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE. 43 
 
 Under the pretence that he was an old friend and former 
 schoolfellow, Kostalergi asked him. to share their humble 
 dinner, and there, in that meanly furnished room, and with 
 the accompaniment of a wretched and jangling instrument, 
 Nina so astonished and charmed him by her performance, 
 that all the habitual reserve of the cautious bargainer gave 
 way, and he burst out into exclamations of enthusiastic 
 delight, ending with, — "She is mine! she is mine! I tell 
 you, since Persiani, there has been nothing like her! " 
 
 Nothing remained now but to reveal the plan to herself; 
 and though certainly neither the Greek nor his guest were 
 deficient in descriptive power, or failed to paint in glowing 
 colors the gorgeous processions of triumphs that await 
 stage success, she listened with little pleasure to it all. She 
 had already walked the boards of what she thought a higher 
 arena. She had tasted flatteries unalloyed with any sense 
 of decided inferiority; she had moved amongst dukes and 
 duchesses with a recognized station, and received their 
 compliments with ease and dignity. Was all this reality 
 of condition to be exchanged for a mock splendor and a 
 feigned greatness? was she to be subjected to the licensed 
 stare and criticism and coarse comment, it may be, of hun- 
 dreds she never knew, nor would stoop to know? and was 
 the adulation she now lived in to be bartered for the vulgar 
 applause of those who, if dissatisfied, could testify the feel- 
 ing as openly and unsparingly? She said very little of 
 what she felt in her heart; but no sooner alone in her room 
 at night than she wrote that letter to her uncle entreating 
 his protection. 
 
 It had been arranged with Lanari that she should make 
 one appearance at a small provincial theatre so soon as she 
 could master any easy part; and Kostalergi, having some 
 acquaintance with the manager at Orvieto, hastened off 
 there to obtain his permission for her appearance. It was 
 of this brief absence she profited to fly from Rome, the 
 banker conveying her as far as Civita Vecchia, whence she 
 sailed direct for Marseilles. And now we see her, as she 
 found herself in that dreary old mansion, sad, silent, and 
 neglected, wondering whether the past was all a dream, or if 
 the unbroken calm in which she now lived was not a sleep. 
 
44 LORP KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Conceding her perfect liberty to pass her time how she 
 liked, they exacted from her no appearance at meals, nor 
 any conformity with the ways of others, and she never 
 came to breakfast, and only entered the drawing-room a 
 short time before dinner. Kate, who had counted on her 
 companionship and society, and hoped to see her sharing 
 with her the little cares and duties of her life, and taking 
 interest in her pursuits, was sorely grieved at her estrange- 
 ment, but continued to believe it would wear off with time 
 and familiarity with the place. Kearney himself, in secret, 
 resented the freedom with which she disregarded the disci- 
 pline of his house, and grumbled at times over foreign ways 
 and habits that he had no fancy to see under his roof. 
 When she did appear, however, her winning manners, her 
 grace, and a certain half-caressing coquetry she could prac- 
 tise to perfection, so soothed and amused him that he soon 
 forgot any momentary displeasure, and more than once 
 gave up his evening visit to the club at Moate to listen to 
 her as she sang, or hear her sketch off some trait of that 
 Roman society in which British pretension and eccentricity 
 often figured so amusingly. 
 
 Like a faithful son of the Church, too, he never wearied 
 hearing of the Pope and of the Cardinals, of glorious 
 ceremonials of the Church, and festivals observed with all 
 the pomp and state that pealing organs, and incense, and 
 gorgeous dress could confer. The contrast between the 
 Isufferance under which his Church existed at home and the 
 honors and homage rendered to it abroad, were a fruitful 
 stimulant to that disaffection he felt towards England, and 
 would not unfrequently lead him away to long diatribes 
 about penal laws and the many disabilities which had 
 enslaved Ireland, and reduced himself, the descendant of a 
 princely race, to the condition of a ruined gentleman. 
 
 To Kate these complainings were ever distasteful; she 
 had but one philosophy, which was "to bear up well," and 
 when not that, "as well as you could." She saw scores of 
 things around her to be remedied, or, at least, bettered, by 
 a little exertion, and not one which could be helped by a 
 vain regret. For the loss of that old barbaric splendor and 
 profuse luxury which her father mourned over, she had no 
 
HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE. 45 
 
 regrets. She knew that these wasteful and profligate livers 
 had done nothing for the people either in act or in example; 
 that they were a selfish, worthless, self-indulgent race, caring 
 for nothing but their pleasures, and making all their patri-i 
 otism consist in a hate towards England. 
 
 These were not Nina's thoughts. She liked all these 
 stories of a time of power and might, when the Kearneys 
 were great chieftains, and the old castle the scene of 
 revelry and feasting. 
 
 She drew prettily, and it amused her to illustrate the 
 curious tales the old man told her of rays and forays, the 
 wild old life of savage chieftains and the scarce less savage 
 conquerors. On one of these — she called it "The Return 
 of O'Caharney " — she bestowed such labor and studytEat 
 Kef uncie^ would sit for hours watching the work, not know- 
 ing if his heart were more stirred by the claim of his ances- 
 tor's greatness, or by the marvellous skill that realized the 
 whole scene before him. The head of the young chieftain 
 was to be filled in when Dick came home. Meanwhile great 
 persuasions were being used to induce Peter Gill to sit for 
 a kern who had shared the exile of his masters, but had 
 afterwards betrayed them to the English ; and whether Gill 
 had heard some dropping word of the part he was meant to 
 fill, or that his own suspicion had taken alarm from certain 
 directions the young lady gave as to the expression he was 
 to assume, certain is it nothing could induce him to comply, 
 and go down to posterity with the immortality of crime. 
 
 The little long-neglected drawing-room where Nina had 
 set up her easel became now the usual morning lounge of the 
 old man, who loved to sit and watch her as she worked, 
 and, what amused him even more, listen while she talked. 
 It seemed to him like a revival of the past to hear of the 
 world, — that gay world of feasting and enjoyment of which 
 for so many years he had known nothing ; and here he was 
 back in it again, and with grander company and higher 
 names than he ever remembered. " Why was not Kate like 
 her? " would he mutter over and over to himself. Kate was; 
 a good girl, fine-tempered and happy-hearted, but she had 
 no accomplishments, none of those refinements of the other.j 
 If he wanted to present her at " the Castle " one of these 
 
46 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 days, he did not know if she would have tact enough for the 
 ordeal; but Nina! — Nina was sure to make an actual sen- 
 sation, as much by her grace and her style as by her 
 beauty. Kearney never came into the room where she was 
 without being struck by the elegance of her demeanor, the 
 way she would rise to receive him, her step, her carriage, 
 the very disposal of her drapery as she sat; the modulated 
 tone of her voice, and a sort of purring satisfaction as she 
 took his hand and heard his praises of her, spread like a 
 charm over him, so that he never knew how the time slipped 
 by as he sat beside her. 
 
 "Have you ever written to your father since you came 
 here? " asked he one day as they talked together. 
 
 "Yes, sir; and yesterday I got a letter from him. Such 
 a nice letter, sir, — no complainings, no reproaches for my 
 running away; but all sorts of good wishes for my happi- 
 ness. He owns he was sorry to have ever thought of the 
 stage for me; but he says this lawsuit he is engaged in 
 about his grandfather's will may last for years, and that he 
 knew I was so certain of a great success, and that a great 
 success means more than mere money, he fancied that in 
 my triumph he would reap the recompense for his own dis- 
 asters. He is now, however, far happier that I have found 
 a home, — a real home, — and says, ' Tell my Lord I am 
 heartily ashamed of all my rudeness with regard to him, 
 and would willingly make a pilgrimage to the end of Europe 
 to ask his pardon ; ' and say besides that ' when I shall be 
 restored to the fortune and rank of my ancestors, ' — you 
 know," added she, "he is a prince, — ' my first act will be 
 to throw myself at his feet, and beg to be forgiven by 
 him.' " 
 
 "What is the property? is it land?" asked he, with the 
 half-suspectfulness of one not fully assured of what he was 
 listening to. 
 
 "Yes, sir; the estate is in Delos. I have seen the plan 
 of the grounds and gardens of the Palace, which are 
 princely. Here, on this seal," said she, showing the enve- 
 lope of her letter, "you can see the arms; papa never omits 
 to use it, though on his card he is written only ' of the 
 princes,' — a form observed with us." 
 
HOME LIFE AT THE CASTLE. 47 
 
 '' And what chance has he of getting it all back again ? ' 
 
 "That is more than I can tell you; he himself is some- 
 times very confident, and talks as if there could not be a 
 doubt of it." 
 
 ''Used your poor mother to believe it?" asked he, half 
 tremulously. 
 
 ''I can scarcely say, sir; I can barely remember her; but 
 I have heard papa blame her for not interesting her high 
 connections in England in his suit; he often thought that a 
 word to the ambassador at Athens would have almost 
 decided the case." 
 
 "High connections, indeed! " burst he forth. "By my 
 conscience, they 're pretty much out at elbows, like himself; 
 and if we were trying to recover our own right to-morrow, 
 the look-out would be bleak enough ! " 
 
 "Papa is not easily cast down, sir; he has a very san- 
 guine spirit." 
 
 "Maybe you think it's what is wanting in my case, eh, 
 Nina? Say it out, girl; tell me I'd be the better for a 
 little of your father's hopefulness, eh? " 
 
 "You could not change to anything I could like better 
 than what you are," said she, taking his hand and kissing 
 it. 
 
 "Ah, you're a rare one to say coaxing things," said he, 
 looking fondly on her. "I believe you 'd be the best advo- 
 cate for either of us if the courts would let you plead 
 for us." 
 
 "I wish they would, sir," said she, proudly. 
 
 "What is that? " cried he, suddenly; "sure it 's not put- 
 ting myself you are in the picture ! " 
 
 "Of course I am, sir. Was not the O'Caharney your 
 ancestor? Is it likely that an old race had not traits of 
 feature and lineament that ages of descent could, not efface? 
 I 'd swear that strong brow and frank look must be an 
 heirloom." 
 
 "Faith, then, almost the only one!" said he, sighing. 
 "Who 's making that noise out there? " said he, rising and 
 going to the window. "Oh, it's Kate with her dogs. I 
 often tell her she 'd keep a pair of ponies for less than 
 those troublesome brutes cost her." 
 
48 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "They are great company to her, she says, and she lifes 
 so much in the open air." 
 
 "I know she does," said he, dropping his head and 
 sitting like one whose thoughts had taken a brooding, 
 despondent turn. 
 
 "One more sitting I must have, sir, for the hair. You 
 had it beautifully yesterday ; it fell over on one side with a 
 most perfect light on a large lock here. Will you give me 
 half an hour to-morrow, say ? " 
 
 "I can't promise you, my dear. Peter Gill has been 
 urging me to go over to Loughrea for the fair ; and if we go 
 we ought to be there by Saturday, and have a quiet look at 
 the stock before the sales begin." 
 
 "And are you going to be long away? " said she, pout- 
 ingly, as she leaned over the back of his chair, and suffered 
 her curls to fall half across his face. 
 
 , "I '11 be right glad to be back again," said he, pressing 
 her head down till he could kiss her cheek, — "right glad! " 
 
CHAPTER VL 
 
 The '^Blue Goat" in the small town of Moate is scarcely a 
 model hostel. The entrance-hall is too much encumbered 
 by tramps and beggars of various orders and ages, who not 
 only resort there to take their meals and play at cards, but 
 to divide the spoils and settle the accounts of their several 
 *' industries," and occasionally to clear off other scores 
 which demand police interference. On the left is the bar; 
 the right-hand being used as the office of a land-agent, is 
 besieged by crowds of country people, in whom, if language 
 is to be trusted, the grievous wrongs of land-tenure are pain- 
 fully portrayed, — nothing but complaint, dogged determina- 
 tion, and resistance being heard on every side. Behind the 
 bar is a long low-ceilinged apartment, the parlor jpar excel- 
 lence^ only used by distinguished visitors, and reserved on one 
 especial evening of the week for the meeting of the " Goats," 
 as the members of a club call themselves ; the chief, indeed 
 the founder, being our friend Mathew Kearney, whose title 
 of sovereignty was "Buck-Goat," and whose portrait, 
 painted by a native artist and presented by the society, 
 figured over the mantelpiece. The village Vandyke would 
 seem to have invested largely in carmine, and though far 
 from parsimonious of it on the cheeks and the nose of his 
 sitter, he was driven to work off some of his superabundant 
 stock on the cravat, and even the hands, which, though 
 amicably crossed in front of the white-waistcoated stomach, 
 are fearfully suggestive of some recent deed of blood. The 
 pleasant geniality of the countenance is, however, reassuring. 
 Nor — except a decided squint, by which the artist had 
 ambitiously attempted to convey a humoristic drollery to the 
 expression — is there anything sinister in the portrait. 
 
 4 
 
50 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 An inscription on the frame annnounces that this picture 
 of their respected founder was presented, on his fiftieth 
 birthday, "To Mathew Kearney, sixth Viscount Kilgob- 
 bin;" various devices of "caprine" significance, heads, 
 horns, and hoofs, profusely decorating the frame. If the 
 antiquarian should lose himself in researches for the origin 
 of this society, it is as well to admit at once that the land- 
 lord's sign of the "Blue Goat" gave the initiative to the 
 name, and that the worthy associates derived nothing from 
 classical authority, and never assumed to be descendants of 
 fauns or satyrs, but respectable shopkeepers of Moate, and 
 unexceptional judges of "poteen." A large jug of this 
 insinuating liquor figured on the table, and was called 
 "Goat's-milk; " and if these humoristic traits are so care- 
 fully enumerated, it is because they comprised all that was 
 specially droll or quaint in these social gatherings, the 
 members of which were a very commonplace set of men, 
 who discussed their little local topics in very ordinary fash- 
 ion, slightly elevated, perhaps, in self-esteem, by thinking 
 how little the outer world knew of their dulness and 
 dreariness. 
 
 As the meetings were usually determined on by the will of 
 the president, who announced at the hour of separation when 
 they were to reassemble, and as, since his niece's arrival, 
 Kearney had almost totally forgotten his old associates, the 
 club-room ceased to be regarded as the holy of holies, and 
 was occasionally used by the landlord for the reception of 
 such visitors as he deemed worthy of peculiar honor. 
 
 It was on a very wet night of that especially rainy month 
 in the Irish calendar — July — that two travellers sat over a 
 turf-fire in this sacred chamber, various articles of their 
 attire being spread out to dry before the blaze, the owners 
 of which actually steamed with the effects of the heat upon 
 their damp habiliments. Some fishing-tackle and two knap- 
 sacks, which lay in a corner, showed they were pedestrians ; 
 and their looks, voice, and manner proclaimed them still 
 more unmistakably to be gentlemen. 
 
 One was a tall, sunburned, soldier-like man of six or 
 seven and thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of 
 gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with 
 
^HE "BLUE GOAT." 51 
 
 # * OF THE 
 
 ( UNIVERSITY 
 
 strong meij. ^ mere glance at him showed he was a cold, 
 silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves 
 or in any way impulsive ; and it is just possible that a long 
 acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal 
 more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments; and 
 although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honor- 
 able fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly "safe," — a very 
 meaning epithet, — there were no very deep regrets when he 
 "exchanged," nor was there, perhaps, one man who felt he 
 had lost his "pal" by his going. He was now in the 
 Carbineers, and serving as an extra aide-de-camp to the 
 Viceroy. 
 
 Not a little unlike him in most respects was the man 
 who sat opposite him, — a pale, finely featured, almost 
 efifeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark 
 mustache, and a beard en Henri Quatre, to the effect of 
 which a collar cut in Vandyke fashion gave an especial 
 significance. Cecil Walpole was disposed to be pictorial in 
 his get-up, and the purple dye of his knickerbocker stock- 
 ings, the slouching plumage of his Tyrol hat, and the grace- 
 ful hang of his jacket, had excited envy in quarters where 
 envy was fame. He, too, was on the viceregal staff, being 
 private secretary to his relative the Lord Lieutenant, during 
 whose absence in England they had undertaken a ramble to 
 the Westmeath lakes, not very positive whether their object 
 was to angle for trout or to fish for that "knowledge of 
 Ireland " so popularly sought after in our day, and which 
 displays itself so profusely in platform speeches and letters 
 to" the "Times;" Lockwood, not impossibly, would have 
 said it was " to do a bit of walking " he had come. He had 
 gained eight pounds by that indolent Phoenix-Park life he 
 was leading, and he had no fancy to go back to Leicester- 
 shire too heavy for his cattle. He was not — few hunting 
 men are — an ardent fisherman ; and as for the vexed ques- 
 tion of Irish politics, he did not see why he was to trouble 
 his head to unravel the pijzzles that were too much for Mr. 
 Gladstone; not to say, that he felt to meddle with these 
 matters was like interfering with another man's department. 
 "I don't suspect," he would say, "I should fancy John 
 Briofht comins: down to ' stables ' and dictating to me how 
 
52 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 my Irish horses should be shod, or what was the best bit 
 for a 'borer.' " He saw, besides, that the game of politics 
 was a game of compromises. Something was deemed 
 admirable now that had been hitherto almost execrable ; and 
 that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year 
 would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he 
 pronounced the whole thing an "imposition and a humbug.'' 
 "I can understand a right and a wrong as well as any man," 
 he would say, " but I know nothing about things that are 
 neither or both, according to who 's in or who 's out of the 
 Cabinet. Give me the command of twelve thousand men, 
 let me divide them into three flying columns, and if I don't 
 keep Ireland quiet, draft me into a West Indian regiment, 
 that 's all." And as to the idea of issuing special commis- 
 sions, passing new Acts of Parliament, or suspending old 
 ones, to do what he or any other intelligent soldier could do 
 without any knavery or any corruption, "John Bright 
 might tell us," but he could n't. And here it may be well to 
 observe that it was a favorite form of speech with him to 
 refer to this illustrious public man in this familiar manner; 
 but always to show what a condition of muddle and confu- 
 sion must ensue if we followed the counsels that name 
 emblematized; nor did he know a more cutting sarcasm to 
 reply to an adversary than when he had said, " Oh, John 
 Bright would agree with you," or, "I don't think John 
 Bright could go further." 
 
 Of a very different stamp was his companion. He was a 
 young gentleman whom we cannot more easily characterize 
 than by calling him, in the cant of the day, "of the period." 
 He was essentially the most recent product of the age we 
 live in. Manly enough in some things, he was fastidious 
 in others to the very verge of effeminacy ; an aristocrat by 
 birth and by predilection, he made a parade of democratic 
 opinions. He affected a sort of Crichtonism in the variety 
 of his gifts, and as linguist, musician, artist, poet, and 
 philosopher, loved to display the scores of things he might 
 be, instead of that mild, very ordinary young gentleman that 
 he was. He had done a little of almost everything; he had 
 been in the Guards, in diplomacy, in the House for a brief 
 session, had made an African tour, written a pleasant little 
 
THE "BLUE GOAT." 53 
 
 book about the Nile, with the illustrations by his own hand. 
 Still he was greater in promise than performance. There 
 was an opera of his partly finished ; a five-act comedy almost 
 ready for the stage ; a half-executed group, he had lef tr in 
 some studio in Rome, showed what he might have done in 
 sculpture. When his distinguished relative the Marquis of 
 Danesbury recalled him from his post as secretary of lega- 
 tion in Italy, to join him at his Irish seat of government, 
 the phrase in which he invited him to return is not without 
 its significance, and we give it as it occurred in the con- 
 text: ''I have no fancy for the post they have assigned 
 me, nor is it what I had hoped for. They say, however, 
 I shall succeed here. Hous verrons. Meanwhile I remem- 
 ber your often remarking, ' There is a great game to be 
 played in Ireland.' Come over at once, then, and let me 
 have a talk with you over it. I shall manage the question 
 of your leave by making you private secretary for the 
 moment. We shall have many difficulties, but Ireland 
 will be the worst of them. Do not delay, therefore; for 1 
 shall only go over to be sworn in, etc., and return for the 
 third reading of the Church Bill, and I should like to see 
 you in Dublin (and leave you there) when I go." 
 
 Except that they were both members of the household, 
 and English by birth, there was scarcely a tie between these 
 very dissimilar natures ; but somehow the accidents of daily 
 life, stronger than the traits of disposition, threw them into 
 intimacy, and they agreed it would be a good thing " to see 
 something of Ireland ; " and with this wise resolve they had 
 set out on that half-fishing excursion, which, having taken 
 them over the Westmeath lakes, now was directing them to 
 the Shannon, but with an infirmity of purpose to which 
 lack of sport and disastrous weather were contributing 
 powerfully at the moment we have presented them to our 
 reader. 
 
 To employ the phrase which it is possible each might 
 have used, they "liked each other well enough," — that is, 
 each found something in the other he " could get on with ; " 
 but there was no stronger tie of regard or friendship be- 
 tween them, and each thought he perceived some flaw of 
 pretension, or affected wisdom, or selfishness, or vanity in 
 
54 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 the other; and actually believed he amused himself by its 
 display. In natures, tastes, and dispositions they were 
 miles asunder, and disagreement between them would have 
 bee'Q unceasing on every subject, had they not been gentle- 
 men. It was this alone — this gentleman element — made 
 their companionship possible, and, in the long run, not 
 unpleasant. So much more has good breeding to do in the 
 common working of daily life than the more valuable qual- 
 ities of mind and temperament. 
 
 Though much younger than his companion, Walpole took 
 the lead in all the arrangements of the journey, determined 
 where and how long they should halt, and decided on the 
 route next to be taken ; the other showing a real or affected 
 indifference on all these matters, and making of his town- 
 bred apathy a very serviceable quality in the midst of Irish 
 barbarism and desolation. On politics, too, — if that be 
 the name for such light convictions as they entertained, — 
 they differed; the soldier's ideas being formed on what he 
 fancied would be the late Duke of Wellington's opinion, 
 and consisted in what he called "putting down." Walpole 
 was a promising Whig ; that is, one who coquets with Rad- 
 ical notions, but fastidiously avoids contact with the mob; 
 and who, fervently believing that all popular concessions 
 are spurious if not stamped with Whig approval, would like 
 to treat the democratic leaders as forgers and knaves. 
 
 If, then, there was not much of similarity between these 
 two men to attach them to each other, there was what served 
 for a bond of union: they belonged to the same class in life, 
 and used pretty nigh the same forms for their expression of 
 like and dislike ; and as in traffic it contributes wonderfully 
 to the facilities of business to use the same money, so in 
 the common intercourse of life will the habit to estimate 
 things at the same value conduce to very easy relations, 
 and something almost like friendship. 
 
 While they sat over the fire awaiting their supper, each 
 had lighted a cigar, busying himself from time to time in 
 endeavoring to dry some drenched article of dress, or 
 extracting from damp and dripping pockets their several 
 contents. 
 
 "This, then," said the younger man, — "this is the pic- 
 
THE "BLUE GOAT." 55 
 
 turesque Ireland our tourist writers tell us of; and the land 
 where the ' Times ' says the traveller will find more to in- 
 terest him than in the Tyrol or the Oberland." 
 
 ''What about the climate? " said the other, in a deep bass 
 voice. 
 
 "Mild and moist, I believe, are the epithets; that is, it 
 makes you damp and it keeps you so." 
 
 "And the inns? " 
 
 "The inns, it is admitted, might be better; but the trav- 
 eller is admonished against fastidiousness, and told that the 
 prompt spirit of pbligeance, the genial cordiality he will 
 meet with are more than enough to repay him for the want 
 of more polished habits and mere details of comfort and 
 convenience." 
 
 "Rotten humbug! / don't want cordiality from my 
 innkeeper." 
 
 "I should think not! As, for instance, a bit of carpet 
 in this room would be worth more than all the courtesy that 
 showed us in." 
 
 "What was that lake called, — the first place I mean? " 
 asked Lockwood. 
 
 "Lough Brin. I should n't say but with better weather it 
 might be pretty." 
 
 A half grunt of dissent was all the reply, and Walpole 
 went on, — • 
 
 "It 's no use painting a landscape when it is to be 
 smudged all over with Indian ink. There are no tints in 
 mountains swathed in mist, no color in trees swamped with 
 moisture; everything seems so imbued with damp, one 
 fancies it would take two years in the tropics to dry 
 Ireland." 
 
 " I asked that fellow who showed us the way here, why he 
 did n't pitch off those wet rags he wore and walk away in 
 all the dignity of nakedness.'* 
 
 A large dish of rashers and eggs, and a mess of Irish 
 stew, which the landlord now placed on the table, with a 
 foaming jug of malt, seemed to rally them out of their ill- 
 temper; and for some time they talked away in a more 
 cheerful tone. 
 
 "Better than I hoped for," said Walpole. 
 
56 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''Fair!" 
 
 "And that ale, too, — 1 suppose it is called ale, — is very 
 tolerable." 
 
 "It 's downright good. Let us have some more of it." 
 And he shouted, "Master! " at the top of his voice. "More 
 of this," said Lockwood, touching the measure. "Beer or 
 ale; which is it?" 
 
 "Castle Bellingham, sir," replied the landlord; "beats all 
 the Bass and Allsopp that ever was brewed." 
 
 "You think so, eh?" 
 
 "I 'm sure of it, sir. The club that sits here had a debate 
 on it one night, and put it to the vote; and there wasn't 
 one man for the English liquor. My Lord there," said he, 
 pointing to the portrait, "sent an account of it all to 
 Saunders' newspaper." 
 
 While he left the room to fetch the ale, the travellers both 
 fixed their eyes on the picture; and Walpole, rising, read 
 out the inscription, — "Viscount Kilgobbin." 
 
 "There 's no such title," said the other, bluntly. 
 
 "Lord Kilgobbin — Kilgobbin? Where did I heai; that 
 name before?" 
 
 "In a dream, perhaps." 
 
 "No, no. I have heard it, if I could only remember 
 where and how! I say, landlord, where does his Lordship 
 live? " and he pointed to the portrait. 
 
 "Beyond, at the castle, sir. You can see it from the 
 door without when the weather 's fine." 
 
 " That must mean on a very rare occasion ! " said Lock- 
 wood, gravely. 
 
 "No, indeed, sir. It did n't begin to rain on Tuesday 
 last till after three o'clock." 
 
 "Magnificent climate! " exclaimed Walpole, enthusias- 
 tically. 
 
 "It is indeed, sir. Glory be to God! " said the landlord, 
 with an honest gravity that set them both off laughing. 
 
 "How about this club, — does it meet often? " 
 
 "It used, sir, to meet every Thursday evening, and my 
 Lord never missed a night; but quite lately he took it in 
 his head not to come out in the evenings. Some say it was 
 the rheumatism, and more says it 's the unsettled state of 
 the country; though, the Lord be praised for it, there 
 
THE "BLUE GOAT." 57 
 
 was n't a man fired at in the neighborhood since Easter, 
 and he was a peeler." 
 
 " One of the constabulary? " 
 
 "Yes, sir; a dirty, mean chap, that was looking after a 
 poor boy that set fire to Mr. Hagin's ricks, and that was over 
 a year ago." 
 
 "And naturally forgotten by this time?" 
 
 " By coorse it was forgotten. Ould Mat Hagin got a pre- 
 sentment for the damage out of the grand jury, and nobody 
 was the worse for it at all." 
 
 " And so the club is smashed, eh? " 
 
 "As good as smashed, sir; for whenever any of them 
 comes now of an evening, he just goes into the bar and 
 takes his glass there." 
 
 He sighed heavily as he said this, and seemed overcome 
 with sadness. 
 
 "I'm trying to remember why the name is so familiar to 
 me. I know I have heard of Lord Kilgobbin before," said 
 Walpole. 
 
 " May be so," said the landlord, respectfully. " You may 
 have read in books how it was at Kilgobbin Castle, King 
 James came to stop after the Boyne ; that he held a ' coort ' 
 there in the big drawing-room, — they call it the ' throne- 
 room ' ever since, — and slept two nights at the castle 
 afterwards ? " 
 
 " That's something to see, Walpole," said Lockwood. 
 
 " So it is. How is that to be managed, landlord? Does 
 his Lordship permit strangers to visit the castle?" 
 
 " Nothing easier than that, sir," said the host, who gladly 
 embraced a project that should detain his guests at the 
 inn. " My Lord went through the town this morning, on 
 his way to Loughrea fair; but the young ladies is at 
 home ; and you 've only to send over a message, and say 
 you 'd like to see the place, and they '11 be proud to show 
 it to you." 
 
 " Let US send our cards, with a line in pencil," said Wal- 
 pole, in a whisper to his friend. 
 
 " And there are young ladies there? " asked Lockwood. 
 
 "Two born beauties; it's hard to say which is hand- 
 somest," replied the host, overjoyed at the attraction his 
 neighborhood possessed. 
 
58 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " I suppose that will do? " said Walpole, showing what he 
 had written on his card. 
 
 ''Yes, perfectly." 
 
 "Despatch this at once. I mean early to-morrow ; and 
 let your messenger ask if there be an answer. How far is 
 it off?" 
 
 "A little over twelve miles, sir; but I've a mare in the 
 stable will ' rowle ' ye over in an hour and a quarter." 
 
 "All right. We'll settle on everything after breakfast 
 to-morrow." And the landlord withdrew, leaving them once 
 more alone. 
 
 "This means," said Lockwood, drearily, "we shall have 
 to pass a day in this wretched place." 
 
 " It will take a day to dry our wet clothes ; and, all things 
 considered, one might be worse off than here. Besides, I 
 shall want to look over my notes. I have done next to 
 nothing, up to this time, about the Land Question." 
 
 " I thought that the old fellow with the cow, the fellow I 
 gave a cigar to, had made you up in your tenant-right 
 affair," said Lockwood. 
 
 ' ' He gave me a great deal of very valuable information ; 
 he exposed some of the evils of tenancy at will as ably as I 
 ever heard them treated, but he was occasionally hard on 
 the landlord." 
 
 ' ' I suppose one word of truth never came out of his 
 mouth 1 " 
 
 " On the contrary, real knowledge of Ireland is not to be 
 acquired from newspapers ; a man must see Ireland for him- 
 self, — see it," repeated he, with strong emphasis. 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "And then, if he be a capable man, a reflecting man, a 
 man in whom the perceptive power is joined to the social 
 faculty — " 
 
 " Look here, Cecil : one hearer won't make a house : don't 
 try it on speechifying to me. It 's all humbug coming over 
 to look at Ireland. You may pick up a little brogue, but it 's 
 all you '11 pick up for your journey." After this, for him, 
 unusually long speech, he finished his glass, lighted his bed- 
 room candle, and nodding a good-night, strolled away. 
 
 "I'd give a crown to know where I heard of you before ! " 
 said Walpole, as he stared up at the portrait. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE COUSINS. 
 
 *'Only think of it!" cried Kate to her cousin, as she 
 received Walpole's note. ''Can you fancy, Nina, anyone 
 having the curiosity to imagine this old house worth a 
 visit? Here is a polite request from two tourists to be 
 allowed to see the — what is it ? — the interesting interior 
 of Kilgobbin Castle ! " 
 
 "Which I hope and trust you will refuse. The people 
 who are so eager for these things are invariably tiresome 
 old bores, grubbing for antiquities, or intently bent on 
 adding a chapter to their story of travel. You '11 say no, 
 dearest, won't you?" 
 
 " Certainly, if you wish it. I am not acquainted with 
 Captain Lockwood, nor his friend Mr. Cecil Walpole." 
 
 ' ' Did you say Cecil Walpole ? " cried the other, almost 
 snatching the card from her fingers. " Of all the strange 
 chances in life — this is the very strangest ! What could 
 have brought Cecil Walpole here?" 
 
 "You know him then?" 
 
 "I should think I do! What duets have we not sung 
 together? What waltzes have we not had? What rides 
 over the Campagna ? Oh dear ! how I should like to talk 
 over these old times again ! Pray tell him he may come, 
 Kate, or let me do it." 
 
 " And papa away ! " 
 
 "It is the castle, dearest, he wants to see, not papa! 
 You don't know what manner of creature this is! He is 
 one of your refined and supremely cultivated English, — mad 
 about archaeology and mediaeval trumpery. He '11 know 
 all your ancestors intended by every insane piece of archi- 
 tecture, and every puzzling detail of this old house; and 
 
60 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 he '11 light up every corner of it with some gleam of bright 
 tradition." 
 
 " I thought these sort of people were bores, dear? " said 
 Kate, with a sly malice in her look. 
 
 ' ' Of course not. When they are well-bred and well- 
 mannered — " 
 
 ' ' And perhaps well-looking ? " chimed in Kate. 
 
 '* Yes, and so he is, — a little of the petit maitre perhaps. 
 He 's much of that school which fiction-writers describe 
 as having ' finely pencilled eyebrows and chins of almost 
 womanlike roundness ; ' but people in Rome always called 
 him handsome, — that is, if he be my Cecil Walpole." 
 
 '' Well, then, will you tell your Cecil Walpole, in such 
 polite terms as you know how to coin, that there is really 
 nothing of the very slightest pretension to interest in this 
 old place ; that we should be ashamed at having lent our- 
 selves to the delusion that might have led him here ; and 
 lastly, that the owner is from home ? " 
 
 "What! and is this the Irish hospitality I have heard 
 so much of, — the cordial welcome the stranger may reckon 
 on as a certainty, and make all his plans with the full 
 confidence of meeting?" 
 
 "There is such a thing as discretion, also, to be remem- 
 bered, Nina," said Kate, gravely. 
 
 "And then, there's the room where the king slept, and 
 the chair that — no, not Oliver Cromwell, but somebody 
 else sat in at supper, and there 's the great patch painted 
 on the floor where your ancestor knelt to be knighted." 
 
 " He was created a viscount, not a knight! " said Kate, 
 blushing. " And there is a difference, I assure you." 
 
 " So there is, dearest, and even my foreign ignorance 
 should know that much, and you have the parchment that 
 attests it, — a most curious document, that Walpole would 
 be delighted to see. I almost fancy him examining the 
 curious old seal with his microscope, and hear him unfold- 
 ing all sorts of details one never so much as suspected." 
 
 "Papa might not like it," said Kate, bridling up. " Even 
 were he at home, I am far from certain he would receive 
 these gentlemen. It is little more than a year ago there 
 came here a certain book-writing tourist, and presented 
 
THE COUSINS. 61 
 
 himself without introduction. We received him hospitably, 
 and he stayed part of a week here. He was fond of an- 
 tiquarianism, but more eager still about the condition of 
 the people, — what kind of husbandry they practised, what 
 wages they had, and what food. Papa took him over the 
 whole estate, and answered all his questions freely and 
 openly. And this man made a chapter of his book upon 
 us, and headed it ' Rack-renting and riotous living,' distort- 
 ing all he heard and sneering at all he saw." 
 
 "These are gentlemen, dearest Kate," said Nina, hold- 
 ing out the card. " Come now, do tell me that I may say 
 you will be happy to see them?" 
 
 *' If you must have it so — if you really insist — " 
 
 " I do ! I do ! " cried she, half wildly. " I should go dis- 
 tracted if you denied me. Oh, Kate ! I must own it. It 
 will out. I do cling devotedly — terribly to that old life 
 of the past. I am very happy here, and you are all good 
 and kind and loving to me ; but that wayward haphazard 
 existence, with all its trials and miseries, had got little 
 glimpses of such bliss at times that rose to actual ecstasy." 
 
 " I was afraid of this," said Kate, in a low but firm 
 voice. " I thought what a change it would be for you 
 from that life of brightness and festivity to this existence 
 of dull and unbroken dreariness." 
 
 " No, no, no! Don't say that! Do not fancy that I am 
 not happier than I ever was or ever believed I could be. It 
 was the castle-building of that time that I was regretting. 
 I imagined so many things, I invented such situations, such 
 incidents, which, with this sad-colored landscape here and 
 that leaden sky, I have no force to conjure up. It is as 
 though the atmosphere is too weighty for fancy to mount in 
 it. You, my dearest Kate," said she, drawing her arm round 
 her, and pressing her towards her, " do not know these 
 things, nor need ever know them. Your life is assured and 
 safe. You cannot, indeed, be secure from the passing acci- 
 dents of life, but they will meet you in a spirit able to con- 
 front them. As for me, I was always gambling for existence, 
 and gambling without means to pay my losses if Fortune 
 should turn against me. Do you understand me, child?" 
 
 "• Only in part, if even that," said she, slowly. 
 
62 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Let us keep this theme, then, for another time. Now 
 for ces messieurs. I am to invite them ? " 
 
 " If there was time to ask Miss O'Shea to come over — " 
 
 " Do you not fancy, Kate, that in your father's house, 
 surrounded with your father's servants, you are sufficiently 
 the mistress to do without a chaperone? Only preserve 
 that grand austere look you have listened to me with these 
 last ten minutes, and I should like to see the youthful auda- 
 city that could brave it. There, I shall go and write my 
 note. You shall see how discreetly and properly I shall 
 word it." 
 
 Kate walked thoughtfully towards a window and looked 
 out, while Nina skipped gayly down the room, and opened 
 her writing-desk, humming an opera air as she wrote, — 
 
 •'KiLGOBBiN Castle. 
 
 " Dear Mr. Walpole, — I can scarcely tell you the pleasure 
 I feel at the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear 
 Italy, whichever be the most proper to say. My uncle is from home, 
 and will not return till the day after to-morrow at dinner ; but my 
 cousin, Miss Kearney, charges me to say how happy she will be to 
 receive you and your fellow-traveller at luncheon to-morrow. Pray 
 not to trouble yourself with an answer, but believe me very sincerely 
 yours, 
 
 "Nina Kostalergi." 
 
 '' I was right in saying luncheon, Kate, and not dinner, — 
 was I not? It is less formal." 
 
 "I suppose so; that is, if it was right to invite them at 
 all, of which I have very great misgivings." 
 
 "I wonder what brought Cecil Walpole down here?" said 
 Nina, glad to turn the discussion into another channel. 
 " Could he have heard that I was here? Probably not. It 
 was a mere chance, I suppose. Strange things these same 
 chances are, that do so much more in our lives than all our 
 plottings ! " 
 
 "Tell me something of your friend, perhaps I ought to 
 say your admirer, Nina ! " 
 
 " Yes, very much my admirer; not seriously, you know, 
 but in that charming sort of adoration we cultivate abroad, 
 that means anything or nothing. He was not titled, and I 
 
THE COUSINS. 63 
 
 am afraid he was not rich, and this last misfortune used to 
 make his attention to me somewhat painful — to him I mean, 
 not to me ; for, of course, as to anything serious, I looked 
 much higher than a poor Secretary of Legation." 
 
 '' Did you? " asked Kate, with an air of quiet simplicity. 
 
 " I should hope I did," said she, haughtily ; and she threw 
 a glance at herself in a large mirror, and smiled proudly at 
 the bright image that confronted her. '' Yes, darling, say it 
 out," cried she, turning to Kate. " Your eyes have uttered 
 the words already." 
 
 '' What words?" 
 
 '' Something about insufferable vanity and conceit, and 
 I own to both ! Oh, why is it that my high spirits have 
 so run away with me this morning, that I have forgotten 
 all reserve and all shame? But the truth is, I feel half 
 wild with joy, and joy in my nature is another name for 
 recklessness." 
 
 ''I sincerely hope not," said Kate, gra.Ye\j. "At any 
 rate, you give me another reason for wishing to have Miss 
 O'Shea here." 
 
 "I will not have her, — no, not for worlds, Kate, that 
 odious old woman, with her stiff and antiquated propriety. 
 Cecil would quiz her." 
 
 " I am very certain he would not; at least, if he be such 
 a perfect gentleman as you tell me." 
 
 " Ah, but you 'd never know he did it. The fine tact of 
 these consummate men of the world derives a humoristic 
 enjoyment in eccentricity of character, which never shows 
 itself in any outward sign beyond the heightened pleasure 
 they feel in what other folks might call dulness or mere 
 oddity." 
 
 " I would not suffer an old friend to be made the subject 
 of even such latent amusement." 
 
 " Nor her nephew, either, perhaps? " 
 
 " The nephew could take care of himself, Nina ; but I am 
 not aware that he will be called on to do so. He is not in 
 Ireland, I believe." 
 
 *' He was to arrive this week. You told me so." 
 
 "Perhaps he did; I had forgotten it! " and Kate flushed 
 as she spoke, though whether from shame or anger it was 
 
64 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 not easy to say. As though impatient with herself at any 
 display of temper, she added hurriedly : " Was it not a piece 
 of good fortune, Nina? Papa has left us the key of the 
 cellar, — a thing he never did before, and only now because 
 you were here ! " 
 
 " What an honored guest I am ! " said the other, smiling. 
 
 "That you are! I don't believe papa has gone once to 
 the club since you came here." 
 
 "Now, if I were to own that I was vain of this, you'd 
 rebuke me, would not you ? " 
 
 " Our love could scarcely prompt to vanity." 
 
 " How shall I ever learn to be humble enough in a family 
 of such humility?" said Nina, pettishly. Then quickly 
 correcting herself, she said, " I '11 go and despatch my note, 
 and then I '11 come back and ask your pardon for all my 
 wilfulness, and tell you how much I thank you for all your 
 goodness to me." 
 
 And as she spoke she bent down and kissed Kate's hand 
 twice or thrice fervently. 
 
 " Oh, dearest Nina, not this, — not this ! " said Kate, try- 
 ing to clasp her in her arms ; but the other had slipped from 
 her grasp, and was gone. 
 
 "Strange girl," muttered Kate, looking after her. "I 
 wonder shall I ever understand you, or shall we ever under- 
 stand each other?" 
 
CHAFrER VIII. 
 
 SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER. 
 
 The morning broke drearily for our friends, the two pedes- 
 trians, at the " Blue Goat." A day of dull aspect and soft 
 rain in midsummer has the added depression that it seems 
 an anachronism. One is in a measure prepared for being 
 weather-bound in winter. You accept imprisonment as the 
 natural fortune of the season, or you brave the elements 
 prepared to let them do their worst, while, if confined to 
 house, you have that solace of snugness, that comfortable 
 chimney-corner which somehow realizes an immense amount 
 of the joys we concentrate in the word "Home." It is in 
 the want of this rallying-point, this little domestic altar, 
 where all gather together in a common worship, that lies the 
 dreary discomfort of being weather-bound in summer, and 
 when the prison is some small village inn, noisy, disorderly, 
 and dirty, the misery is complete. 
 
 " Grand old pig that! " said Lockwood, as he gazed out 
 upon the filthy yard, where a fat old sow contemplated the 
 weather from the threshold of her dwelling. 
 
 "I wish she'd come out. I want to make a sketch of 
 her," said the other. 
 
 " Even one's tobacco grows too damp to smoke in this 
 blessed climate," said Lockwood, as he pitched his cigar 
 away. ' ' Heigh-ho ! We 're too late for the train to town, 
 I see." 
 
 " You 'd not go back, would you? " 
 
 " I should think I would. That old den in the upper 
 Castle-yard is not very cheery or very nice, but there is a 
 chair to sit on, and a review and a newspaper to read. A 
 tour in a country and with a climate like this is a mistake." 
 
 " I suspect it is," said Walpole, drearily. 
 
 5 
 
66 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " There is nothing to see, no one to talk to, nowhere to 
 Btop at ! " 
 
 ''AH true," muttered the other. "By the way, haven't 
 we some plan or project for to-day, — something about an 
 old castle or an abbey to see?" 
 
 " Yes, and the waiter brought me a letter. I think it was 
 addressed to you, and I left it on my dressing-table. I had 
 forgotten all about it. I'll go and fetch it." 
 
 Short as his absence was, it gave Walpole time enough to 
 recur to his late judgment on his tour, and once more call it 
 a "mistake, a complete mistake." The Ireland of wits, 
 dramatists, and romance-writers was a conventional thing, 
 and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rain-soaked, 
 dreary-looking, depressed reality. "These Irish, they are 
 odd without being droll, just as they are poor without being 
 picturesque; but of all the delusions we nourish about 
 them, there is not one so thoroughly absurd as to call them 
 dangerous." 
 
 He had just arrived at this mature opinion, when his 
 friend re-entered and handed him the note. 
 
 " Here is a piece of luck. Per Bacco ! " cried Walpole, as 
 he ran over the lines. " This beats all I could have hoped 
 for. Listen to this : ' Dear Mr. Walpole, — I cannot tell you 
 the delight I feel in the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a 
 friend from dear Italy, which is it? ' " 
 
 "Who writes this?" 
 
 "A certain Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whom I knew at 
 Rome ; one of the prettiest, cleverest, and nicest girls I ever 
 met in my life." 
 
 " Not the daughter of that precious Count Kostalergi you 
 have told me such stories of? " 
 
 "The same, but most unlike him in every way. She is 
 here, apparently with an uncle, who is now from home, and 
 she and her cousin invite us to luncheon to-day." 
 
 " What a lark ! " said the other, dryly. 
 
 " We '11 go, of course ? " 
 
 " In weather like this? " 
 
 " Why not? Shall we be better off staying here? I now 
 begin to remember how the name of this place was so familiar 
 to me. She was always asking me if I knew or heard of her 
 
SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER. 67 
 
 mother's brother, the Lord Kilgobbin, and, to tell truth, I 
 fancied some one had been hoaxing her with the name, 
 and never believed that there was even a place with such a 
 designation." 
 
 " Kilgobbin does not sound like a lordly title. How about 
 Mademoiselle — what is the name? " 
 
 " Kostalergi; they call themselves princes." 
 
 '' With all my heart. I was only going to say, as you 've 
 got a sort of knack of entanglement — is there, or has there 
 been, anything of that sort here? " 
 
 " Flirtation — a little of what is called ' spooning' — but 
 no more. But why do you ask ? " 
 
 " First of all, you are an engaged man." 
 
 "All true, and I mean to keep my engagement. I can't 
 marry, however, till I get a mission, or something at home 
 as good as a mission. Lady Maude knows that ; her friends 
 know it, but none of us imagine that we are to be miserable 
 in the mean time." 
 
 "I'm not talking of misery. I'd only say, don't get 
 yourself into any mess. These foreign girls are very wide 
 awake." 
 
 " Don't believe that, Harry ; one of our home-bred damsels 
 would give them a distance and beat them in the race for a 
 husband. It's only in England girls are trained to angle 
 for marriage, take my word for it." 
 
 "Be it so, — I only warn you that if you get into any 
 scrape I '11 accept none of the consequences. Lord Danes- 
 bury is ready enough to say that, because I am some ten 
 years older than you, I should have kept you out of mis- 
 chief. I never contracted for such a bear-leadership; 
 though I certainly told Lady Maude I 'd turn Queen's 
 evidence against you if you became a traitor." 
 
 " I wonder you never told me that before," said Walpole, 
 with some irritation of manner. 
 
 "I only wonder that I told it now!" replied the other, 
 gruffly. 
 
 "Then I am to take it, that in your office of guardian 
 you'd rather we 'd decline this invitation, eh?" 
 
 " I don't care a rush for it either way, but looking to the 
 sort of day it is out there, I incline to keep the house." 
 
68 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " I don't mind bad weather, and I '11 go," said Walpole, in 
 a way that showed temper was involved in the resolution. 
 
 Lockwood made no other reply than heaping a quantity of 
 turf on the fire, and seating himself beside it. 
 
 When a man tells his fellow-traveller that he means to 
 go his own road, — that companionship has no tie upon him, 
 — he virtually declares the partnership dissolved ; and while 
 Lockwood sat reflecting over this, he was also canvassing 
 with himself how far he might have been to blame in pro- 
 voking this hasty resolution. 
 
 *' Perhaps he was irritated at my counsels, perhaps the 
 notion of anything like guidance offended him ; perhaps it 
 was the phrase ' bear-leadership,' and the half-threat of 
 betraying him, has done the mischief." Now, the gallant 
 soldier was a slow thinker ; it took him a deal of time to 
 arrange the details of any matter in his mind, and when he 
 tried to muster his ideas there were many which would not 
 answer the call, and of those which came, there were not a 
 few which deemed to present themselves in a refractory and 
 unwilling spirit, so that he had almost to suppress a mutiny 
 before he proceeded to his inspection. 
 
 Nor did the strong cheroots, which he smoked to clear his 
 faculties and develop his mental resources, always contribute 
 to this end, though their soothing influence certainly helped 
 to make him more satisfied with his judgments. 
 
 "Now, look here, Walpole," said he, determining that he 
 would save himself all unnecessary labor of thought by 
 throwing the burden of the case on the respondent, — " look 
 here: take a calm view of this thing, and see if it's quite 
 wise In you to go back into trammels it cost you some trouble 
 to escape from. You call it spooning, but you won't deny 
 you went very far with that young woman, — farther, I sus- 
 pect than you 've told me yet. Eh ! is that true or not? " 
 
 He waited a reasonable time for a reply ; but none com- 
 ing, he went on; "I don't want a forced confidence. You 
 may say it 's no business of mine, and there I agree with 
 you, and probably if you put me to the question in the same 
 fashion I 'd give you a very short answer. Remember one 
 thing, however, old fellow: I've seen a precious deal more 
 of life and the world than you have! From sixteen years of 
 
SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER. 69 
 
 age, when you were hammering away at Greek verbs and 
 some such balderdash at Oxford, I was up at Rangoon with 
 the very fastest set of men — ay, of women, too — I ever 
 lived with in all my life. Half of our fellows were killed 
 off by it. Of course people will say climate, climate! but 
 if I were to give you the history of one day — just twenty- 
 four hours of our life up there — you 'd say that the wonder 
 is there 's any one alive to tell it.'* 
 
 He turned around at this to enjoy the expression of 
 horror and surprise he hoped to have called up, and per- 
 ceived for the first time that he was alone. He rang the 
 bell, and asked the waiter where the other gentleman had 
 gone, and learned that he had ordered a car, and set out 
 for Kilgobbin Castle more than half an hour before. 
 
 ''All right," said he, fiercely. "I wash my hands of it 
 altogether! I'm heartily glad I told him so before he 
 went." He smoked on very vigorously for half an hour, 
 the burden of his thoughts being perhaps revealed by the 
 summing-up, as he said, " And when you are ' in for it, ' 
 Master Cecil, and some precious scrape it will be, if I move 
 hand or foot to pull you through it, call me a Major of 
 Marines, that 's all, — just call me a Major of Marines! " 
 The ineffable horror of such an imputation served as matter 
 for revery for hours. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG. 
 
 While Lockwood continued thus to doubt and debate with 
 himself, Walpole was already some miles on his way to 
 Kilgobbin. Not, indeed, that he had made any remarkable 
 progress, for the "mare that was to rowl his honor over in 
 an hour and half " had to be taken from the field where she 
 had been ploughing since daybreak, while "the boy" that 
 should drive her was a little old man who had to be aroused 
 from a condition of drunkenness in a hayloft, and installed 
 in his office. 
 
 Nor were these the only difficulties. The roads that led 
 through the bog were so numerous and so completely alike 
 that it only needed the dense atmosphere of a rainy day to 
 make it matter of great difficulty to discover the right 
 track. More than once were they obliged to retrace their 
 steps after a considerable distance; and the driver's impa- 
 tience always took the shape of a reproach to Walpole, who, 
 having nothing else to do, should surely have minded 
 where they were going. Now, not only was the traveller 
 utterly ignorant of the geography of the land he journeyed 
 in, but his thoughts were far and away from the scenes 
 around him. Very scattered and desultory thoughts were 
 they, at one time over the Alps and with "long-agoes:" 
 nights at Rome clashing with mornings on the Campagna ; 
 vast salons crowded with people of many nations, all more 
 or less busy with that great traffic which, whether it take 
 the form of religion, or politics, or social intrigue, hate, 
 love, or rivalry, makes up what we call "the world;" or 
 there were sunsets dying away rapidly — as they will do — 
 over that great plain outside the city, whereon solitude and 
 
A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG. 71 
 
 silence are as much masters as on a vast prairie of the West; 
 and he thought of times when he rode back at nightfall 
 beside Nina Kostalergi, when little flashes would cross 
 them of that romance that very worldly folk now and then 
 taste of, and delight in with a zest all the greater that the 
 sensation is so new and strange to them. Then there was 
 the revulsion from the blaze of waxlights and the glitter of 
 diamonds, the crash of orchestras and the din of conversa- 
 tion, the intoxication of the flattery that champagne only 
 seems to "accentuate," to the unbroken stillness of the 
 hour, when even the footfall of the horse is unheard, and a 
 dreamy doubt that this quietude, this soothing sense of 
 calm, is higher happiness than all the glitter and all the 
 splendor of the ball-room, and that in the dropping words 
 we now exchange, and in the stray glances, there is a sig- 
 nificance and an exquisite delight we never felt till now; 
 for, glorious as is the thought of a returned affection, full 
 of ecstasy the sense of a heart all, all our own, there is in 
 the first half-doubtful, distrustful feeling of falling in love, 
 with all its chances of success or failure, something that 
 has its moments of bliss nothing of earthly delight can ever 
 equal. To the verge of that possibility Walpole had 
 reached — but gone no further — with Nina Kostalergi. The 
 young men of the age are an eminently calculating and 
 prudent class, and they count the cost of an action with a 
 marvellous amount of accuracy. Is it the turf and its 
 teachings to which this crafty and cold-blooded spirit is 
 owing? Have they learned to "square their book" on life 
 by the lessons of Ascot and Newmarket, and seen that, no 
 matter how probably they "stand to win" on this, they 
 must provide for that, and that no caution or foresight is 
 enough that will not embrace every casualty of any 
 venture ? 
 
 There is no need to tell a younger son of the period that 
 he must not marry a pretty girl of doubtful family and no 
 fortune. He may have his doubts on scores of subjects: 
 he may not be quite sure whether he ought to remain a Whig 
 with Lord Russell or go in for Odgerism and the ballot; he 
 may be uncertain about Colenso, and have his misgivings 
 about the Pentateuch; he may not be easy in his mind 
 
72 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 about the Russians in the East, or the Americans in the 
 West; uncomfortable suspicions may cross him that the 
 Volunteers are not as quick in evolution as the Zouaves, 
 or that England generally does not sing " Rule Britannia " 
 so lustily as she used to do. All these are possible mis- 
 givings; but that he should take such a plunge as matri- 
 mony, on other grounds than the perfect prudence and profit 
 of the investment, could never occur to him. 
 
 As to the sinfulness of tampering with a girl's affections 
 by what in slang is called "spooning," it was purely absurd 
 to think of it. You might as well say that playing sixpenny 
 whist made a man a gambler. And then, as to the spoon- 
 ing, it was partie egale ; the lady was no worse off than the 
 gentleman. If there were by any hazard — and this he was 
 disposed to doubt — "affections" at stake, the man "stood 
 to lose " as much as the woman. But this was not the 
 aspect in which the case presented itself, flirtation being, in 
 his idea, to marriage what the preliminary canter is to the 
 race, — something to indicate the future, but so dimly and 
 doubtfully as not to decide the hesitation of the waverer. 
 
 If, then, Walpole was never for a moment what mothers 
 call serious in his attentions to Mademoiselle Kostalergi, 
 be was not the less fond of her society ; he frequented the 
 places where she was likely to be met with, and paid her 
 that degree of "court " that only stopped short of being 
 particular by his natural caution. There was the more 
 need for the exercise of this quality at Rome, since there 
 were many there who knew of his engagement with his 
 cousin. Lady Maude, and who would not have hesitated to 
 report on any breach of fidelity. Now, however, all these 
 restraints were withdrawn. They were not in Italy, where 
 London, by a change of venue, takes its " records " to be 
 tried in the dull days of winter. They were in Ireland, and 
 in a remote spot of Ireland, where there were no gossips, 
 no clubs, no afternoon-tea committees to sit on reputations, 
 and was it not pleasant now to see this nice girl again in 
 perfect freedom? These were, loosely stated, the thoughts 
 which occupied him as he went along; very little disposed 
 to mind how often the puzzled driver halted to decide the 
 road, or how frequently he retraced miles of distance. Men 
 
A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG. 73 
 
 of the world, especially when young in life, and more real- 
 istic than they will be twenty years later, proud of the in- 
 credulity they can feel on the score of everything and 
 everybody, are often fond of making themselves heroes to 
 their own hearts of some little romance which shall not cost 
 them dearly to indulge in, and merely engage some loose- 
 lying sympathies without in any way prejudicing their road 
 in life. They accept of these sentimentalities as the vicar's 
 wife did the sheep in the picture, pleased to "have as manyv 
 as the painter would put in for nothing." 
 
 Now, Cecil Walpole never intended that this little Irish 
 episode — and episode he determined it should be — should 
 in any degree affect the serious fortunes of his life. He 
 was engaged to his cousin, Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, and 
 they would be married some day. Not that either was very 
 impatient to exchange present comfort — and, on her side, 
 affluence — for a marriage on small means and no great 
 prospects beyond that. They were not much in love. 
 Walpole knew that the Lady Maude's fortune was small; 
 but the man who married her must "be taken care of," and 
 by either side, for there were as many Tories as Whigs in 
 the family, and Lady Maude knew that half a dozen years 
 ago she would certainly not have accepted Walpole; but 
 that with every year her chances of a better parti were di- 
 minishing ; and, worse than all this, each was well aware of 
 the inducements by which the other was influenced. Nor 
 did the knowledge in any way detract from their self- 
 complacence or satisfaction with the match. 
 
 Lady Maude was to accompany her uncle to Ireland, and 
 do the honors of his court; for he was a bachelor, and 
 pleaded hard with his party on that score to be let off 
 accepting the viceroyalty. 
 
 Lady Maude, however, had not yet arrived, and even if 
 she had, how should she ever hear of an adventure in the 
 Bog of Allen! 
 
 But was there to be an adventure ? and if so, what sort 
 of adventure? Irishmen, Walpole had heard, had all the 
 jealousy about their women that characterizes savage races, 
 and were ready to resent what, in civilized people, no one 
 would dream of regarding as matter for umbrage. Well, 
 
74 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 then, it was only to be more cautious, — more on one's 
 guard; besides, the tact, too, which a knowledge of life 
 should give — 
 
 "Eh, what 's this? Why are you stopping here? " 
 
 This was addressed now to the driver, who had descended 
 from his box, and was standing in advance of the horse. 
 
 "Why don't I drive on, is it?" asked he, in a voice of 
 despair. "Sure, there 's no road." 
 
 "And does it stop here?" cried Walpole, in horror; for 
 he now perceived that the road really came to an abrupt 
 ending in the midst of the bog. 
 
 "Begorra, it 's just what it does. Ye see, your honor," 
 added he, in a confidential tone, " it 's one of them tricks 
 the English played us in the year of the famine. They got 
 two millions of money to make roads in Ireland, but they 
 were so afraid it would make us prosperous and richer than 
 themselves that they set about making roads that go no- 
 where. Sometimes to the top of a mountain, or down to 
 the sea, where there was no harbor, and sometimes, like this 
 one, into the heart of a bog." 
 
 "That was very spiteful and very mean, too," said 
 Walpole. 
 
 "Wasn't it just mean, and nothing else! and it's five 
 miles we '11 have to go back now to the- cross-roads. 
 Begorra, your honor, it 's a good dhrink ye '11 have to give 
 me for this day's work." 
 
 "You forget, my friend, that but for your own con- 
 founded stupidity I should have been at Kilgobbin Castle 
 by this time." 
 
 "And ye '11 be there yet, with God's help!" said he, 
 turning the horse's head. "Bad luck to them for the road- 
 making; and it 's a pity, after all, it goes nowhere, for it 's 
 the nicest bit to travel in the whole country." 
 
 "Come now, jump up, old fellow, and make your beast 
 step out. I don't want to pass the night here." 
 
 "You would n't have a dhrop of whiskey with your 
 honor? " 
 
 "Of course not." 
 
 "Nor even brandy? " 
 
 "No, not even brandy." 
 
A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG. 76 
 
 "Musba, I 'm thinking you must be English," muttered 
 he, half sulkily. 
 
 "And if I were, is there any great harm in that? " 
 
 "By coorse not; how could ye help it? I suppose we 'd 
 all of us be better if we could. Sit a bit more forward, 
 your honor; the bellyband does be lifting her; and as 
 you 're doing nothing, just give her a welt of that stick in 
 your hand, now and then, for I lost the lash off my whip, 
 and I 've nothing but this! " And he displayed the short 
 handle of what had once been a whip, with a thong of 
 leather dangling at the end. 
 
 " I must say I was n't aware that I was to have worked my 
 passage," said Walpole, with something between drollery 
 and irritation. 
 
 "She does n't care for bating; stick her with the end of 
 it. That 's the way. We '11 get on elegant now. I suppose 
 you was never here before ? " 
 
 "No; and I think I can promise you I'll not come 
 again." 
 
 "I hope you will, then, and many a time, too. This is 
 the Bog of Allen you 're travelling now, and they tell there 's 
 not the like of it in the three kingdoms." 
 
 "I trust there's not!" 
 
 "The English, they say, has no bogs. Nothing but 
 coal." 
 
 "Quite true." 
 
 "Erin, ma bouchal you are! first gem of the say! that 's 
 what Dan O'Connell always called you. Are you gettin' 
 tired with the stick?" 
 
 "I 'm tired of your wretched old beast, and your car, and 
 yourself, too," said Walpole; "and if I were sure that was 
 the castle yonder, I 'd make my way straight to it on foot." 
 
 "And why wouldn't you, if your honor liked it best? 
 Why would ye be beholden to a car if you'd rather walk? 
 Only mind the bog-holes ; for there 's twenty feet of water 
 in some of them, and the sides is so straight you '11 never 
 get out if you fall in." 
 
 "Drive on, then. I'll remain where I am; but don't 
 bother me with your talk; and no more questioning." 
 
 "By coorse I won't, — why would I? Is n't your honor a 
 
76 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 gentleman, and have n't you a right to say what you plaze; 
 and what am I but a poor boy, earning his bread ? Just the 
 way it is all through the world ; some has everything they 
 want, and more besides, and others has n't a stitch to their 
 backs, or maybe a pinch of tobacco to put in a pipe." 
 
 This appeal was timed by seeing that Walpole had just 
 lighted a fresh cigar, whose fragrant fumes were wafted 
 across the speaker's nose. 
 
 Firm to his determination to maintain silence, Walpole 
 paid no attention to the speech, nor uttered a word of any 
 kind; and as a light drizzling rain had now begun to fall, 
 and obliged him to shelter himself under an umbrella, he 
 was at length saved from his companion's loquacity. 
 Baffled, but not beaten, the old fellow began to sing, at 
 first in a low, droning tone ; but growing louder as the fire 
 of patriotism warmed him, he shouted, to a very wild and 
 somewhat irregular tune, a ballad, of which Walpole could 
 not but hear the words occasionally, while the tramping of 
 the fellow's feet on the foot-board kept time to his song: 
 
 ** 'T is our fun they can't forgive us, 
 
 Nor our wit so sharp and keen ; 
 But there 's nothing that provokes them 
 
 Like our wearin' of the green. 
 They thought Poverty would bate us, 
 
 But we '11 sell our last ' boneen ' 
 And we '11 live on could paytatees, 
 
 All for wearin' of the green. 
 
 Oh, the wearin' of the green — the wearin' of the green ! 
 
 'Tis the color best becomes us 
 
 Is the wearin' of the green ! " 
 
 "Here 's a cigar for you, old fellow; and stop that infer- 
 nal chant." 
 
 "There 's only five verses more, and I '11 sing them for 
 your honor before I light the baccy." 
 
 "If you do, then, you shall never light baccy of mine. 
 Can't you see that your confounded song is driving me 
 mad?" 
 
 "Faix, ye 're the first I ever see disliked music," mut- 
 tered he, in a tone almost compassionate. 
 
 And now as Walpole raised the collar of his coat to 
 
A DRIVE THROUGH A BOG. 77 
 
 defend his ears, and prepared, as well he might, to resist 
 the weather, he muttered, "And this is the beautiful land 
 of scenery; and this the climate; and this the amusing and 
 witty peasant we read of. I have half a mind to tell the 
 world how it has been humbugged ! " And thus musing, he 
 jogged on the weary road, nor raised his head till the heavy 
 clash of an iron gate aroused him, and he saw that they 
 were driving along an approach, with some clumps of pretty 
 but young timber on either side. 
 
 "Here we are, your honor, safe and sound," cried the 
 driver, as proudly as if he had not been five hours over what 
 should have been done in one and a half. "This is Kil- 
 gobbin. All the ould trees was cut down by Oliver Crom- 
 well, they say; but there will be a fine wood here yet. 
 That's the castle you see yonder, over them trees; but 
 there 's no flag flying. The Lord 's away. I suppose I '11 
 have to wait for your honor? You '11 be coming back with 
 me?" 
 
 "Yes, you '11 have to wait." And Walpole looked at his 
 watch, and saw it was already past five o'clock. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 
 
 When the hour of luncheon came, and no guests made their 
 appearance, the young girls at the castle began to discuss 
 what they should best do. "I know nothing of fine people 
 and their ways," said Kate; "you must take the whole 
 direction here, Nina." 
 
 "It is only a question of time, and a cold luncheon can 
 wait without difficulty." 
 
 And so they waited till three, then till four, and now it 
 was five o'clock; when Kate, who had been over the 
 kitchen-garden, and the calves' paddock, and inspecting a 
 small tract laid out for a nursery, came back to the house 
 very tired, and, as she said, also very hungry. "You 
 know, Nina," said she, entering the room, "I ordered no 
 dinner to-day. I speculated on our making our dinner when 
 your friends lunched; and as they have not lunched, we 
 have not dined; and I vote we sit down now. I 'm afraid I 
 shall not be as pleasant company as that Mr. — do tell me 
 his name — Walpole; but I pledge myself to have as good 
 an appetite." 
 
 Nina made no answer. She stood at the open window; 
 her gaze steadily bent on the strip of narrow road that trav- 
 ersed the wide moor before her. 
 
 "Ain't you hungry? I mean, ain't you famished, child? " 
 asked Kate. 
 
 "No, I don't think so. I could eat; but I believe I 
 could go without eating just as well." 
 
 "Well, I must dine; and if you were not looking so nice 
 and fresh, with a rosebud in your hair and your white dress 
 so daintily looped up, I 'd ask leave not to dress." 
 
 "If you were to smooth your hair, and, perhaps, change 
 your boots — " 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 79 
 
 " Oh, I know, and become in every respect a little civil- 
 ized. My poor dear cousin, what a mission you have 
 undertaken among the savages ! Own it honestly, you never 
 guessed the task that was before you when you came 
 here." 
 
 "Oh, it 's very nice savagery, all the same," said the 
 other, smiling pleasantly. 
 
 " There now ! " cried Kate, as she threw her hat to one 
 side, and stood arranging her hair before the glass. "I 
 make this toilette under protest, for we are going in to 
 luncheon, not dinner ; and all the world knows, and all the 
 illustrated newspapers show, that people do not dress for 
 lunch. And, by the way, that is something you have not 
 got in Italy. All the women gathering together in their 
 garden-bonnets and their morning muslins, and the men in 
 their knickerbockers and their coarse tweed coats." 
 
 " I declare I think you are in better spirits since you see 
 these people are not coming." 
 
 " It is true. You have guessed it, dearest. The thought 
 of anything grand, — as a visitor; anything that would for 
 a moment suggest the unpleasant question, Is this right? 
 or. Is that usual ? — makes me downright irritable. Come, 
 are you ready ? May I offer you my arm ? " 
 
 And now they were at table, Kate rattling away in un- 
 wonted gayety, and trying to rally Nina out of her disap- 
 pointment. 
 
 "I declare, Nina, everything is so pretty I am ashamed 
 to eat. Those chickens near you are the least ornamental 
 things I see. Cut me off a wing. Oh, I forgot, you never 
 acquired the barbarous art of carving." 
 
 "I can cut this," said Nina, drawing a dish of tongue 
 towards her. 
 
 "What! that marvellous production like a parterre of 
 flowers ? It would be downright profanation to destroy it. " 
 
 "Then shall I give you some of this, Kate? " 
 
 "Why, child, that is strawberry-cream. But I cannot 
 eat all alone; do help yourself." 
 
 "I shall take something by and by." 
 
 " What do young ladies in Italy eat when they are — no^ 
 I don't mean in love; I shall call it — in despair? " 
 
80 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Give me some of that white wine beside you. There ! 
 don't you hear a noise? I 'm certain I heard the sound of 
 wheels." 
 
 " Most sincerely, I trust not. I would n't for anything 
 these people should break in upon us now. If my brother 
 Dick should drop in, I'd welcome him, and he would make 
 our little party perfect. Do you know, Nina, Dick can be 
 so jolly. AYhat 's that? there are voices there without." 
 
 As she spoke, the door was opened, and Walpole entered. 
 The young girls had but time to rise from their seats, when 
 — they never could exactly say how — they found them- 
 selves shaking hands with him in great cordiality. 
 
 "And your friend, — where is he?" 
 
 "Nursing a sore throat, or a sprained ankle, or a some- 
 thing or other. Shall I confess it, — as only a suspicion on 
 my part, however, — that I do believe he was too much 
 shocked at the outrageous liberty I took in asking to be 
 admitted here to accept any partnership in the imperti- 
 nence?" 
 
 "We expected you at two or three o'clock," said Nina. 
 
 "And shall I tell you why I was not here before? Per- 
 haps you '11 scarcely credit me when I say I have been five 
 hours on the road." 
 
 "Five hours! How did you manage that? " 
 
 "In this way. I started a few minutes after twelve 
 .from the inn, — I on foot, the car to overtake me." And he 
 went on to give a narrative of his wanderings over the bog, 
 I imitating, as well as he could, the driver's conversations 
 with him, and the reproaches he vented on his inattention to 
 the road. Kate enjoyed the story with all the humoristic 
 fun of one who knew thoroughly how the peasant had been 
 playing with the gentleman, just for the indulgence of that 
 strange sarcastic temper that underlies the Irish nature; 
 and she could fancy how much more droll it would have 
 been to have heard the narrative as told by the driver of 
 the car. 
 
 "And don't you like his song, Mr. Walpole? " 
 
 "What! ' The Wearing of the Green? ' It was the drear- 
 iest dirge I ever listened to." 
 
 "Come, you shall not say so. When we go into the 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 81 
 
 drawing-room, Nina shall sing it for you, and I '11 wager 
 you recant your opinion." 
 
 "And do you sing rebel canticles, Mademoiselle 
 Kostalergi?" 
 
 "Yes, I do all my cousin bids me. I wear a red cloak. 
 How is it called ? " 
 
 "Connemara? " 
 
 Nina nodded. 
 
 " That 's the name, but I 'm not going to say it; and when 
 we go abroad — that is, on the bog there, for a walk — we 
 dress in green petticoats and wear very thick shoes." 
 
 *'And, in a word, are very generally barbarous." 
 
 *'Well, if you be really barbarians," said Walpole, 
 filling his glass, "I wonder what I would not give to be 
 allowed to join the tribe." 
 
 ''Oh, you 'd want to be a sachem, or a chief, or a 
 mystery-man, at least; and we couldn't permit that," cried 
 Kate. 
 
 ''No; I crave admission as the humblest of your 
 followers." 
 
 "Shall we put him to the test, Nina? " 
 
 " How do you mean ? " cried the other. 
 
 "Make him take a Ribbon oath, or the pledge of a UnitegK 
 Irishman. I 've copies of both in papa's study." / 
 
 "I should like to see these immensely," said Walpole. 
 
 "I'll see if I can't find them," cried Kate, rising, and 
 hastening away. 
 
 For some seconds after she left the room there was perfect 
 silence. Walpole tried to catch Nina's eye before he 
 spoke, but she continued steadily to look down, and did 
 not once raise her lids. 
 
 "Is she not very nice, — is she not very beautiful?" 
 asked she, in a low voice. 
 
 "It is of you I want to speak." 
 
 And he drew his chair closer to her, and tried to take 
 her hand ; but she withdrew it quickly, and moved slightly 
 away. 
 
 " If you knew the delight it is to me to see you again, 
 Nina — well, Mademoiselle Kostalergi. Must it be 
 Mademoiselle ? " 
 
 6 
 
82 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " I don't remember it was ever ' Nina, ' " said she, coldly. 
 
 "Perhaps only in my thoughts. To my heart, I can 
 swear, you were Nina. But tell me how you came here, 
 and when, and for how long, for I want to know all. Speak 
 to me, I beseech you. She '11 be back in a moment, and 
 when shall I have another instant alone with j^-ou like this? 
 Tell me how you came amongst them, and are they really 
 all rebels ? " 
 
 Kate entered at the instant, saying, "I can't find it; but 
 I'll have a good search to-morrow, for I know it 's there." 
 
 "Do, by all means, Kate, for Mr. Walpole is very anx- 
 ious to learn if he be admitted legitimately into this 
 brotherhood, — whatever it be ; he has just asked me if we 
 were really all rebels here." 
 
 "I trust he does not suppose I would deceive him," said 
 Kate, gravely. "And when he hears you sing, ' The black- 
 ened hearth, the fallen roof,' he '11 not question you^ Nina. 
 Do you know that song, Mr. Walpole? " 
 
 He smiled as he said "No." 
 
 "Won't it be so nice," said she, "to catch a fresh ingen- 
 uous Saxon wandering innocently over the Bog of Allen, 
 and send him back to his friends a Fenian ! " 
 
 "Make me what you please, but don't send me away." 
 
 " Tell me, really, what would you do if we made you take 
 the oath? " 
 
 "Betray you, of course, the moment I got up to Dublin." 
 
 Nina's eyes flashed angrily, as though such jesting was 
 an offence. 
 
 " No, no, the shame of such treason would be intolerable ; 
 but you 'd go your way and behave as though you never 
 saw us." 
 
 "Oh, he could do that without the inducement of a per- 
 jury," said Nina, in Italian; and then added aloud, "Let 's 
 go and make some music. Mr. Walpole sings charmingly, 
 Kate, and is very obliging about it, — at least, he used 
 to be." 
 
 "I am all that I used to be — towards that," whispered he, 
 as she passed him to take Kate's arm and walk away. 
 
 "You don't seem to have a thick neighborhood about 
 you," said Walpole. "Have you any people living near? " 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 83 
 
 "Yes, we have a dear old friend, — a Miss O'Shea, a 
 maiden lady, who lives a few miles off. By the way, 
 there 's something to show you, — an old maid who hunts 
 her own harriers." 
 
 "What! are you in earnest? " 
 
 "On my word, it is true! Nina can't endure her; but 
 Nina doesn't care for hare-hunting, and, I 'm afraid to say, 
 never saw a badger drawn in her life." 
 
 "And have you?" asked he, almost with horror in his 
 tone. 
 
 "I '11 show you three regular little turnspit dogs to-morrow 
 that will answer that question." 
 
 "How I wish Lockwood had come out here with me! " said 
 Walpole, almost uttering a thought. 
 
 " That is, you wish he had seen a bit of barbarous Ire- 
 land he 'd scarcely credit from mere description. But per- 
 haps I 'd have been better behaved before him. I 'm 
 treating you with all the freedom of an old friend of 
 my cousin's." 
 
 Nina had meanwhile opened the piano, and was letting 
 her hands stray over the instrument in occasional chords ; 
 and then, in a low voice that barely blended its tones with 
 the accompaniment, she sang one of those little popular 
 songs of Italy, called "Stornelli," — wild, fanciful melodies, 
 with that blended gayety and sadness which the songs of a 
 people are so often marked by. 
 
 "That is a very old favorite of mine," said Walpole, 
 approaching the piano as noiselessly as though he feared 
 to disturb the singer; and now he stole into a chair at her 
 side. "How that song makes me wish we were back again, 
 where I heard it first! " whispered he, gently. 
 
 "I forget where that was," said she, carelessly. 
 
 "No, Nina, you do not," said he, eagerly; "it was at 
 Albano, the day we all went to Pallavicini's villa." 
 
 "And I sung a little French song, ' Si vous n'avez rien a 
 me dire,' which you were vain enough to imagine was a 
 question addressed to yourself; and you made me a sort 
 of declaration; do you remember all that? " 
 
 "Every word of it." 
 
 "Why don't you go and speak to my cousin? She has 
 
84 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 opened the window and gone out upon the terrace, and I 
 trust you understand that she expects you to follow her." 
 There was a studied calm in the way she spoke that showed 
 she was exerting considerable self-control. 
 
 "No, no, Nina, it is with you I desire to speak, to see 
 you that I have come here." 
 
 *'And so you do remember that you made me a declara- 
 tion? It made me laugh afterwards as I thought it over." 
 
 "Made you laugh! " 
 
 "Yes, I laughed to myself at the ingenious way in which 
 you conveyed to me what an imprudence it was in you to 
 fall in love with a girl who had no fortune, and the shock it 
 would give your friends when they should hear she was a 
 Greek." 
 
 *'How can you say such painful things, Nina? how can 
 you be so pitiless as this?" 
 
 " It was you who had no pity, sir. I felt a deal of pity ; 
 I will not deny it was for myself. I don't pretend to say 
 that I could give a correct version of the way in which you 
 conveyed to me the pain it^ gave you that I was not a prin- 
 cess, a Borromeo, or a Colonna, or an Altieri. That Greek 
 adventurer, yes, — you cannot deny it, I overheard these 
 words myself. You were talking to an English girl ; a tall, 
 rather handsome person she was, — I shall remember her 
 name in a moment if you cannot help me to it sooner, — a 
 Lady Bickerstaff e — " 
 
 "Yes, there was a Lady Maude Bickerstaff e; she merely 
 passed through Rome for Naples." 
 
 "You called her a cousin, I remember." 
 
 "There is some cousinship between us; I forget exactly 
 in what degree." 
 
 "Do try and remember a little more; remember that you 
 forgot you had engaged me for the cotillon, and drove 
 away with that blond beauty, — and she was a beauty, or 
 had been a few years before; at all events you lost all 
 memory of the daughter of the adventurer." 
 
 "You will drive me distracted, Nina, if you say such 
 things." 
 
 "I know it is wrong and it is cruel, and it is worse than 
 wrong and cruel, it is what you English call under-bred, to 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 86 
 
 be so individually disagreeable ; but this grievance of mine 
 has been weighing very heavily on my heart, and I have 
 been longing to tell you so." 
 
 "Why are you not singing, Nina? " cried Kate from the 
 terrace. "You told me of a duet, and I think you are bent 
 on having it without music.'* 
 
 "Yes, we are quarrelling fiercely," said Nina. "This 
 gentleman has been rash enough to remind me of an 
 unsettled score between us, and as he is the defaulter — " 
 
 "I dispute the debt." 
 
 "Shall I be the judge between you? " asked Kate. 
 
 "On no account; my claim once disputed, I surrender 
 it," said Nina. 
 
 " I must say you are very charming company. You won't 
 sing, and you '11 only talk to say disagreeable things. Shall 
 I make tea and see if it will render you more amiable ? " 
 
 "Do so, dearest, and then show Mr. Walpole the house; 
 he has forgotten what brought him here, I really believe." 
 
 "You know that I have not," muttered he, in a tone of 
 deep meaning. 
 
 "There 's no light now to show him the house; Mr. Wal- 
 pole must come to-morrow, when papa will be at home and 
 delighted to see him." 
 
 "May I really do this?" 
 
 "Perhaps, besides, your friend will have found the little 
 inn so insupportable that he too will join us. Listen to 
 that sigh of poor Nina's and you '11 understand what it is 
 to be dreary! " 
 
 "No; I want my tea." 
 
 "And it shall have it," said Kate, kissing her with a 
 petting affectation, as she left the room. 
 
 "Now one word, only one," said Walpole, as he drew 
 his chair close to her; "if I swear to you — " 
 
 "What's that? who is Kate angry with?" cried Nina, 
 rising and rushing towards the door. "What has hap- 
 pened ? " 
 
 "I'll tell you what has happened," said Kate, as with 
 flashing eyes and heightened color she entered the room. 
 "The large gate of the outer yard, that is every night locked 
 and strongly barred at sunset, has been left open, and they 
 
86 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 tell me that three men have come in — Sally says five — and 
 are hiding in some of the outhouses." 
 
 "What for? Is it to rob, think you? " asked Walpole. 
 
 "It is certainly for nothing good. They all know that 
 papa is away, and the house so far unprotected," continued 
 Kate, calmly. "We must find out to-morrow who has left 
 the gate unbolted. This was no accident, and now that 
 they are setting fire to the ricks all round us, it is no time 
 for carelessness." 
 
 "Shall we search the oflSces and the outbuildings?" 
 asked Walpole. 
 
 "Of course not; we must stand by the house and take 
 care that they do not enter it. It 's a strong old place; and 
 even if they forced an entrance below, they couldn't set 
 fire to it." 
 
 "Gould they force their way up? " asked Walpole. 
 
 "Not if the people above have any courage. Just come 
 and look at the stair; it was made in times when people 
 thought of defending themselves." They issued forth now 
 together to the top of the landing, where a narrow, steep 
 flight of stone steps descended between two walls to the 
 basement-story. A little more than half-way down was a 
 low iron gate or grille of considerable strength ; though, not 
 being above four feet in height, it could have been no great 
 defence, which seemed, after all, to have been its intention. 
 "When this is closed," said Kate, shutting it with a heavy 
 bang, "it 's not such easy work to pass up against two or 
 three resolute people at the top; and see here," added she, 
 showing a deep niche or alcove in the wall, "this was evi- 
 dently meant for the sentry who watched the wicket; he 
 could stand here out of the reach of all fire." 
 
 " Would you not say she was longing for a conflict? " said 
 Nina, gazing at her. 
 
 *'No, but if it comes I '11 not decline it." 
 
 "You mean you '11 defend the stair? " asked Walpole. 
 
 She nodded assent. 
 
 "What arms have you?" 
 
 "Plenty; come and look at them. Here," said she, enter- 
 ing the dining-room, and pointing to a large oak sideboard 
 covered with weapons, — "here is probably what has led 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 87 
 
 these people here. They are going through the country, 
 latterly, on every side, in search of arms. I believe this is 
 almost the only house where they have not called." 
 
 '*And do they go away quietly when their demands are 
 complied with?" 
 
 "Yes, when they chance upon people of poor courage 
 they leave them with life enough to tell the story. — What 
 is it, Mathew?" asked she of the old serving- man who 
 entered the room. 
 
 "It 's the ' boys,' miss, and they want to talk to you, if 
 you '11 step out on the terrace. They don't mean any harm 
 at all." 
 
 "What do they want, then? " 
 
 "Just a spare gun or two, miss, or an ould pistol, or a 
 thing of the kind that was no use." 
 
 "Was it not brave of them to come here when my father 
 was from home? Are n't they fine courageous creatures to 
 come and frighten two lone girls, — eh. Mat? " 
 
 "Don't anger them, miss, for the love of Joseph! Don't 
 say anything hard; let me hand' them that ould carbine 
 there, and the fowling-piece; and if you'd give them a 
 pair of horse-pistols, I'm sure they'd go away quiet." 
 
 A loud noise of knocking, as though with a stone, at the 
 outer door, broke in upon the colloquy, and Kate passed 
 into the drawing-room, and opened the window, out upon 
 the stone terrace which overlooked the yard. "Who is 
 there? — who are you? — what do you want?" cried she, 
 peering down into the darkness, which in the shadow of the 
 house was deeper. 
 
 "We 've come for arms," cried a deep hoarse voice. 
 
 " My father is away from home ; come and ask for them 
 when he 's here to answer you." 
 
 A wild, insolent laugh from below acknowledged what 
 they thought of this speech. 
 
 "Maybe that was the rayson we came now, miss," said 
 a voice, in a lighter tone. 
 
 " Fine courageous fellows you are to say so ; I hope Ire- 
 land has more of such brave patriotic men." 
 
 "You'd better leave that, anyhow," said another; and 
 as he spoke he levelled and fired, but evidently with inten» 
 
88 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 tion to terrify rather than wound, for the plaster came tum- 
 bling down from several feet above her head ; and now the 
 knocking at the door was redoubled, and with a noise that 
 resounded through the house. 
 
 "Would n't you advise her to give up the arms and let 
 them go?" said Nina, in a whisper to Walpole; but though 
 she was deadly pale, there was no tremor in her voice. 
 
 "The door is giving way, the wood is completely rotten. 
 Now for the stairs. Mr. Walpole, you 're going to stand 
 by me ? " 
 
 *' I should think so, but I 'd rather you 'd remain here. I 
 know my ground now." 
 
 "No, I must be beside you. You'll have to keep a 
 rolling fire, and I can load quicker than most people — 
 come along now, we must take no light with us — follow 
 me." 
 
 "Take care," said Nina to Walpole, as he passed, but 
 with an accent so full of a strange significance it dwelt on 
 his memory long after. 
 
 "What was it Nina whispered you, as you came by?" 
 said Kate. 
 
 " Something about being cautious, I think," said he, care- 
 lessly. 
 
 " Stay where you are, Mathew," said the girl, in a severe 
 tone, to the old servant, who was oflSciously pressing forward 
 with a light. 
 
 "Go back!" cried she, as he persisted in following 
 her. 
 
 " That's the worst of all our troubles here, Mr. Walpole," 
 said she, boldly ; '* you cannot depend on the people of your 
 own household. The very people you have nursed in sick- 
 ness, if they only belong to some secret association will 
 betray you ! " She made no secret of her words, but spoke 
 them loud enough to be heard by the group of servants now 
 gathered on the landing. Noiseless she tripped down the 
 stairs, and passed into the little dark alcove, followed by 
 Walpole, carrying any amount of guns and carbines under 
 his arm. 
 
 " These are loaded, I presume? " said he. 
 
 "All, and ready capped. The short carbine is charged 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 89 
 
 with a sort of canister shot, and keep it for a short range — 
 if they try to pass over the iron gate. Now mind me, and 
 I will give you the directions I heard my father give on this 
 spot once before. Don't fire till they reach the foot of the 
 stair." 
 
 " I cannot hear you," said he ; for the din beneath, where 
 they battered at the door, was now deafening. 
 
 " They'll be in in another moment — there, the lock has 
 fallen off — the door has given way," whispered she; ''be 
 steady now, no hurry — steady and calm." 
 
 As she spoke, the heavy oak door fell to the ground, and 
 a perfect silence succeeded to the late din. After an instant 
 muttering whispers could be heard, and it seemed as if they 
 doubted how far it was safe to enter, for all was dark within. 
 Something was said in a tone of command, and at the mo- 
 ment one of the part}^ flung forward a bundle of lighted 
 straw and tow, which fell at the foot of the stairs, and for 
 a few seconds lit up the place with a red lurid gleam, show- 
 ing the steep stair and the iron bars of the little gate that 
 crossed it. 
 
 " There 's the iron wicket they spoke of," cried one. " All 
 right, come on ! " And the speaker led the way, cautiously, 
 however, and slowly, the others after him. 
 
 "No, not yet," whispered Kate, as she pressed her hahd 
 upon Walpole's. 
 
 "I hear voices up there," cried the leader from below. 
 '' We '11 make them leave that, anyhow." And he fired off 
 his gun in the direction of the upper part of the stair ; a 
 quantity of plaster came clattering down as the ball struck 
 the ceiling. 
 
 " Now," said she. " Now, and fire low! " 
 
 He discharged both barrels so rapidly that the two deto- 
 nations blended into one, and the assailants replied by a 
 volley, the echoing din almost sounding like artillery. Fast 
 as Walpole could fire, the girl replaced the piece by another ; 
 when suddenly she cried, " There is a fellow at the gate — 
 the carbine — the carbine now, and steady." A heavy crash 
 and a cry followed his discharge, and snatching the weapon 
 from him, she reloaded and handed it back with lightning 
 speed. *' There is another there," whispered she ; and Wal- 
 
90 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 pole moved further out, to take a steadier aim. All was 
 still ; not a sound to be heard for some seconds, when the 
 hinges of the gate creaked and the bolt shook in the lock. 
 Walpole fired again, but as he did so, the others poured in 
 a rattling volley, one shot grazing his cheek, and another 
 smashing both bones of his right arm, so that the carbine 
 fell powerless from his hand. The intrepid girl sprang to 
 his side at once, and then passing in front of him, she fired 
 some shots from a revolver in quick succession. A low, 
 confused sound of feet, and a scuflfling noise followed, when 
 a rough, hoarse voice cried out, ' ' Stop firing ; we are 
 wounded, and going away." 
 
 '' Are you badly hurt? " whispered Kate to Walpole. 
 
 '' Nothing serious : be still and listen ! " 
 
 " There, the carbine is ready again. Oh, you cannot 
 hold it — leave it to me," said she. 
 
 From the difl3culty of removal, it seemed as though one 
 of the party beneath was either killed or badly wounded, 
 for it was several minutes before they could gain the outer 
 door. 
 
 " Are they really retiring?" whispered Walpole. 
 
 "Yes; they seem to have suffered heavily." 
 
 "Would you not give them one shot at parting — that 
 carbine is charged ? " asked he, anxiously. 
 
 "Not for worlds," said she; "savage as they are, it 
 would be ruin to break faith with them." 
 
 "Give me a pistol, my left hand is all right." Though 
 he tried to speak with calmness, the agony of pain he was 
 suffering so overcame him that he leaned his head down, 
 and rested it on her shoulder. 
 
 "My poor, poor fellow," said she, tenderly, "I would 
 not for the world that this had happened." 
 
 "They're gone, Miss Kate, they've passed out at the 
 big gate, and they're off," whispered old Mathew, as he 
 stood trembling behind her. 
 
 " Here, call some one, and help this gentleman up the 
 stairs, and get a mattress down on the floor at once ; send 
 off a messenger, Sally, for Dr. Tobin. He can take the 
 car that came this evening, and let him make what haste 
 he can." 
 
cyC^y^^^iYSi^^n-iS^^A^^-^-^k^z^ ,«!^^^<yi>^/^^2^^>^<{^V^«a^^fe^<l<^ 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
THE SEARCH FOR ARMS. 91 
 
 *'Is he wounded?" said Nina, as they laid him down 
 on the floor. Walpole tried to smile and say something, 
 but no sound came forth. 
 
 "My own dear, dear Cecil," whispered Nina, as she 
 knelt and kissed his hand; ''tell me it is not dangerous." 
 He had fainted. 
 
CHAPTER XL 
 
 WHAT THE PAPERS SAID OF IT. 
 
 The wounded man had just fallen into a first sleep after 
 his disaster, when the press of the capital was already 
 proclaiming throughout the land the attack and search for 
 arms at Kilgobbin Castle. In the national papers a very 
 few lines were devoted to the event ; indeed their tone was 
 one of party sneer at the importance given by their con- 
 temporaries to a very ordinary incident. " Is there," asked 
 the '' Convicted Felon," "anything very strange or new in 
 the fact that Irishmen have determined to be armed? Is 
 English legislation in this country so marked by justice, 
 clemency, and generosity that the people of Ireland prefer to 
 submit their lives and fortunes to its sway, to trusting what 
 brave men alone trust in, — their fearlessness and their dar- 
 ing? What is there, then, so remarkable in the repairing to 
 Mr. Kearney's house for a loan of those weapons of which 
 his family for several generations have forgotten the use ? " 
 In the Government journals the story of the attack was 
 headed, ''Attack on Kilgobbin Castle. Heroic resistance 
 by a young lady ; " in which Kate Kearney's conduct was 
 described in colors of extravagant eulogy. She was alter- 
 nately Joan of Arc and the Maid of Saragossa, and it was 
 gravely discussed whether any and what honors of the 
 Crown were at her Majesty's disposal to reward such bril- 
 liant heroism. In another print of the same stamp the 
 narrative began: "The disastrous condition of our coun- 
 try is never displayed in darker colors than when the totally 
 unprovoked character of some outrage has to be recorded 
 by the press. It is our melancholy task to present such a 
 case as this to our readers to-day. If it was our wish to 
 
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID OF IT. 93 
 
 exhibit to a stranger the picture of an Irish estate in which 
 all the blessings of good management, intelligence, kindli- 
 ness, and Christian charity were displayed ; to show him 
 a property where the well-being of landlord and tenant were 
 inextricably united, where the condition of the people, their 
 dress, their homes, their food, and their daily comforts 
 could stand comparison with the most favored English 
 county, we should point to the Kearney estate of Kilgob- 
 bin ; and yet it is here, in the very house where his ances- 
 tors have resided for generations, that a most savage and 
 dastardly attack is made ; and if we feel a sense of shame 
 in recording the outrage, we are recompensed by the proud 
 elation with which we can recount tlie repulse, — the noble 
 and gallant achievement of an Irish girl. History has the 
 record of more momentous feats, but we doubt that there 
 is one in the annals of any land in which a higher heroism 
 was displayed than in this splendid defence by Miss Kear- 
 ney." Then followed the story ; not one of the papers 
 having any knowledge of Walpole's presence on the occa- 
 sion, or the slightest suspicion that she was aided in any 
 way. 
 
 Joe Atlee was busily engaged in conning over and com- 
 paring these somewhat contradictory reports, as he sat at 
 his breakfast, his chum Kearney being still in bed and 
 asleep after a late night at a ball. At last there came a 
 telegraphic despatch for Kearney ; armed with which, Joe 
 entered the bedroom and woke him. 
 
 "Here's something for you, Dick," cried he. "Are 
 you too sleepy to read it ? " 
 
 "Tear it open and see what it is, like a good fellow," 
 said the other, indolently. 
 
 "It's from your sister, — at least, it is signed Kate. It 
 says : ' There is no cause for alarm. All is going on well, 
 and papa will be back this evening. I write by this post.' " 
 
 " What does all that mean?" cried Dick, in surprise. 
 
 " The whole story is in the papers. The boys have taken 
 the opportunity of your father's absence from home to make 
 a demand for arms at your house, and your sister, it seems, 
 showed fight and beat them off. They talk of two fellows 
 being seen badly wounded, but, of course, that part of the 
 
94 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 story cannot be relied on; That they got enough to make 
 them beat a retreat is, however, certain ; and as they were 
 what is called a strong party, the feat of resisting them is 
 no small glory for a young lady." 
 
 " It was just what Kate was certain to do. There's no 
 man with a braver heart." 
 
 ''I wonder how the beautiful Greek behaved? I should 
 like greatly to hear what part she took in the defence of the 
 citadel. Was she fainting or in hysterics, or so overcome 
 by terror as to be unconscious ? " 
 
 ''I'll make you any wager you like, Kate did the whole 
 thing herself. There was a Whiteboy attack to force the 
 stairs when she was a child, and I suppose we rehearsed that 
 combat fully fifty — ay, five hundred times. Kate always 
 took the defence, and though we were sometimes four to one, 
 she kept us back." 
 
 "By Jove! I think I should be afraid of such a young 
 lady." 
 
 " So you would. She has more pluck in her heart than 
 half that blessed province you come from. That 's the blood 
 of the old stock you are often pleased to sneer at, and of 
 which the present will be a lesson to teach you better." 
 
 "May not the lovely Greek be descended from some 
 ancient stock, too? Who is to say what blood of Pericles 
 she has not in her veins ? I tell you I '11 not give up the 
 notion that she was a sharer in this glory." 
 
 "If you've got the papers with the account, let me see 
 them, Joe. I've half a mind to run down by the night-mail, 
 — that is, if I can. Have you got any tin, Atlee? " 
 
 "There were some shillings in one of my pockets last 
 night. How much do you want? " 
 
 " Eighteen-and-six first class, and a few shillings for a 
 cab." 
 
 " I can manage that ; but I '11 go and fetch you the papers, 
 there's time enough to talk of the journey." 
 
 The newsman had just deposited the "Croppy" on the 
 table as Joe returned to the breakfast-table, and the story of 
 Kilgobbin headed the first column in large capitals. ' ' While 
 our contemporaries," it began, "are recounting with more 
 than their wonted eloquence the injuries inflicted on three 
 
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID OF IT. 95 
 
 poor laboring- men, who, in their ignorance of the locality, 
 had the temerity to ask for alms at Kilgobbin Castle yester- 
 day evening, and were ignominiously driven away from the 
 door by a young lady, whose benevolence was administered 
 through a blunderbuss, we, who form no portion of the polite 
 press, and have no pretension to mix in what are euphuisti- 
 cally called the ' best circles' of this capital, would like to 
 ask, for the information of those humble classes among 
 which our readers are found, is it the custom for young 
 ladies to await the absence of their fathers to entertam 
 young gentlemen tourists? and is a reputation for even 
 heroic courage not somewhat dearly purchased at the price 
 of the companionship of the admittedly most profligate man 
 of a vicious and corrupt society ? The herome who defended 
 Kilgobbin can reply to our query." 
 
 Joe Atlee read this paragraph three times over before he 
 carried in the paper to Kearney. 
 
 "Here's an insolent paragraph, Dick," he cried, as he 
 threw the paper to him on the bed. "Of course, it's a 
 thing cannot be noticed in any way, but it's not the less 
 rascally for that. " 
 
 "You know the fellow who edits this paper, Joe?" said 
 Kearney, trembling with passion. 
 
 " No ; my friend is doing his bit of oakum at Kilmainham. 
 They gave him thirteen months, and a fine that he '11 never 
 be able to pay ; but what would you do if the fellow who 
 wrote it were in the next room at this moment? " 
 
 "Thrash him within an inch of his life." 
 
 "And, with the inch of life left him, he'd get strong 
 again and write at you and all belonging to you every day 
 of his existence. Don't you see that all this license is one 
 of the prices of liberty ? There 's no guarding against ex- 
 cesses when you establish a rivalry. The doctors could tell 
 you how many diseased lungs and aneurisms are made by 
 training for a rowing-match." 
 
 "I '11 go down by the mail to-night and see what has given 
 the origin to this scandalous falsehood." 
 
 "There's no harm in doing that, especially if you take 
 me with you." 
 
 " Why should I take you, or for what?" 
 
96 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " As guide, counsellor, and friend," 
 
 " Bright thought, when all the money we can muster 
 between us is only enough for one fare." 
 
 " Doubtless, first class; but we could go third class, two 
 of us for the same money. Do you imagine that Damon and 
 Pythias would have been separated if it came even to travel- 
 ling in a cow compartment?" 
 
 '' I wish you could see that there are circumstances in life 
 where the comic man is out of place." 
 
 ' ' I trust I shall never discover them 5 at least, so long as 
 fate treats me with ' heavy tragedy.' " 
 
 "I'm not exactly sure either, whether they'd like to 
 receive you just now at Kilgobbin." 
 
 "Inhospitable thought! My heart assures me of a most 
 cordial welcome." 
 
 " And I should only stay a day or two at farthest." 
 
 " Which would suit me to perfection. I must be back 
 here by Tuesday if I had to walk the distance." 
 
 " Not at all improbable, so far as I know of your 
 resources." 
 
 " What a churlish dog it is ! Now had you. Master Dick, 
 proposed to me that we should go down and pass a week at 
 a certain small thatched cottage on the banks of the Ban, 
 where a Presbyterian minister with eight olive branches 
 vegetates, discussing tough mutton and tougher theology on 
 Sundays, and getting through the rest of the week with the 
 parables and potatoes, I 'd have said, Done ! " 
 
 " It w^as the inopportune time I was thinking of. Who 
 knows what confusion this event may not have thrown 
 them into? If you like to risk the discomfort, I make no 
 objection." 
 
 "To so heartily expressed an invitation there can be but 
 one answer, I yield." 
 
 "Now look here, Joe, I 'd better be frank with you ; don't 
 try it on at Kilgobbin as you do with me." 
 
 " You are afraid of my insinuating manners, are you? " 
 
 " I am afraid of your confounded impudence, and of that 
 notion you cannot get rid of, that your cool familiarity is a 
 fashionable tone." 
 
 " How men mistake themselves ! I pledge you my word, 
 
WHAT THE PAPERS SAID OF IT. 97 
 
 if I was asked what was the great blemish in my manner, 
 I'd have said it was bashfulness." 
 
 ''Well, then, it is not! " 
 
 *' Are you sure, Dick, are you quite sure?" 
 
 '' I am quite sure, aud unfortunately for you, you'll find 
 that the majority agree with me." 
 
 " ' A wise man should guard himself against the defects 
 that he might have, without knowing it.' That is a Persian 
 proverb, which you will find in ' Hafiz.' I believe you never 
 read ' Hafiz ' ! " 
 
 *' No, nor you either." 
 
 '' That's true ; but I can make my own ' Hafiz,' and just 
 as good as the real article. By the way, are you aware that 
 the water-carriers at Tehran sing ' Lalla Rookh,' and believe 
 it a national poem?" 
 
 '' I don't know, and I don't care." 
 
 *' I'll bring down an ' Anacreon ' with me, and see if the 
 Greek cousin can spell her way through an ode." 
 
 ''And I distinctly declare you shall do no such thing." 
 
 " Oh dear, oh dear, what an unamiable trait is envy ! By 
 the way, was that your frock-coat I wore yesterday at the 
 races ? " 
 
 " I think you know it was ; at least you remembered it 
 when you tore the sleeve." 
 
 "True, most true; that torn sleeve was the reason the 
 rascal would only let me have fifteen shillings on it." 
 
 " And you mean to say you pawned my coat? " 
 
 " I left it in the temporary care of a relative, Dick ; but it 
 is a redeemable mortgage, and don't fret about it." 
 
 "Ever the same! " 
 
 ' ' No, Dick, that means worse and worse ! Now, I am in 
 the process of reformation. The natural selection, however, 
 where honesty is in the series, is a slow proceeding, and the 
 organic changes are very complicated. As I know, however, 
 you attach value to the effect you produce in that coat, I '11 
 go and recover it. I shall not need Terence or Juvenal till 
 we come back, and I '11 leave them in the avuncular hands 
 till then." 
 
 " I wonder you 're not ashamed of these miserable straits. " 
 
 "I am very much ashamed of the world that imposes 
 
 7 
 
98 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 them on me. I 'm thoroughly ashamed of that public in 
 lacquered leather that sees me walking in broken boots. I 'm 
 heartily ashamed of that well-fed, well-dressed, sleek society, 
 that never so much as asked whether the intellectual-looking 
 man in the shabby hat, who looked so lovingly at the spiced 
 beef in the window, had dined yet, or was he fasting for a 
 wager ? " 
 
 *' There, don't carry away that newspaper ; I want to read 
 over that pleasant paragraph again ! " 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY. 
 
 The two friends were deposited at the Moate station at a 
 few minutes after midnight, and their available resources 
 amounting to something short of two shillings, and the fare 
 of a car and horse to Kilgobbin being more than three times 
 that amount, they decided to devote their small balance to 
 purposes of refreshment, and then set out for the castle on 
 foot. 
 
 '' It is a fine moonlight; I know all the short cuts, and 1 
 want a bit of walking besides," said Kearney; and though 
 Joe was of a self-indulgent temperament, and would like to 
 have gone to bed after his supper and trusted to the chapter 
 of accidents to reach Kilgobbin by a conveyance some time, 
 any time, he had to yield his consent and set out on the 
 road. 
 
 '* The fellow who comes with the letter-bag will fetch over 
 our portmanteau," said Dick, as they started. 
 
 "• I wish you'd give him directions to take charge of me, 
 too," said Joe, who felt very indisposed to a long walk. 
 
 *' I like ^/ou,'' said Dick, sneeringly; "you are always 
 telling me that you are the sort of fellow for a new colony, 
 life in the bush, and the rest of it, and when it comes to a 
 question of a few miles' tramp on a bright night in June, 
 you try to skulk it in every possible way. You 're a great 
 humbug, Master Joe." 
 
 ' ' And you a very small humbug, and there lies the differ- 
 ence between us. The combinations in your mind are so 
 few, that, as in a game of only three cards, there is no skill 
 in the playing ; while in my nature, as in that game called 
 tarocco, there are half a dozen packs mixed up together, 
 and the address required to play them is considerable." 
 
100 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " You have a very satisfactory estimate of your own 
 abilities, Joe." 
 
 " And why not? If a clever fellow did n't know he was 
 clever, the opinion of the world on his superiority would 
 probably turn his brain." 
 
 " And what do you say if his own vanity should do it? " 
 
 "There is really no way of explaining to a fellow like 
 you — " 
 
 ' ' What do you mean by a fellow like rbe ? " broke in 
 Dick, somewhat angrily. 
 
 " I mean this, that I 'd as soon set to work to explain the 
 theory of exchequer bonds to an Esquimau, as to make an 
 unimaginative man understand something purely speculative. 
 What you, and scores of fellows like you, denominate vanity, 
 is only another form of hopefulness. You and your brethren 
 — for you are a large family — do not know what it is to 
 Hope ! that is, you have no idea of what it is to build on the 
 foundation of certain qualities you recognize in yourself, and 
 to say that ' if I can go so far with such a gift, such another 
 will help me on so much farther.' " 
 
 '' 1 tell you one thing I do hope, which is, that the next 
 time I set out a twelve miles' walk, 1 '11 have a companion 
 less imbued with self -admiration." 
 
 " And you might and might not find him pleasanter com- 
 pany. Cannot you see, old fellow, that the very things you 
 object to in me are what are wanting in you? They are, so 
 to say, the complements of your own temperament." 
 
 '' Have you a cigar? " 
 
 '*Two — take them both. I'd rather talk than smoke 
 just now." 
 
 " I am almost sorry for it, though it gives me the tobacco." 
 
 '* Are we on your father's property yet? " 
 
 "Yes; part of that village we came through belongs to 
 us, and all this bog here is ours." 
 
 "Why don't you reclaim it? Labor costs a mere nothing 
 in this country. Why don't you drain those tracts, and treat 
 the soil with lime ? I 'd live on potatoes, I 'd make my family 
 live on potatoes, and my son, and my grandson, for three 
 generations, but I 'd win this land back to culture and 
 productiveness." 
 
THE JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY. 101 
 
 " The fee-simple of the soil would n't pay the cost. It 
 would be cheaper to save the money and buy an estate." 
 
 "That is one, and a very narrow view of it; but imagine 
 the glory of restoring a lost tract to a nation, welcoming 
 back the prodigal, and installing him in his place amongst 
 his brethren. This was all forest once. Under the shade of 
 the mighty oaks here those gallant O'Caharneys your ances- 
 tors followed the chase, or rested at noontide, or skedaddled 
 in double-quick before those smart English of the Pale, who 
 I must say treated your forbears with scant courtesy." 
 
 *' We held our own against them for many a year." 
 
 " Only when it became so small it was not worth taking. 
 Is not your father a Whig ? " 
 
 *'He's a Liberal, but he troubles himself little about 
 parties." 
 
 " He 's a stout Catholic, though, is n't he? " 
 
 " He is a very devout believer in his Church," said Dick, 
 with the tone of one who did not desire to continue the 
 theme. 
 
 ' ' Then why does he stop at Whiggery ? why not go in for 
 nationalism and all the rest of it?" 
 
 " And what's all the rest of it? " 
 
 "Great Ireland, — no first flower of the earth or gem of 
 the sea humbug, — but Ireland great in prosperity, her har- 
 bors full of ships," the woollen trade, her ancient staple, 
 revived : all that vast unused water-power, greater than all 
 the steam of Manchester and Birmingham tenfold, at full 
 work ; the linen manufacture developed and promoted — " 
 
 '' And the Union repealed ? " 
 
 " Of course ; that should be first of all. Not that I object 
 to the Union, as many do, on the grounds of English igno- 
 rance as to Ireland. My dislike is, that, for the sake of 
 carrying through certain measures necessary to Irish interests, 
 I must sit and discuss questions which have no possible con- 
 cern for me, and touch me no more than the debates in the 
 Cortes, or the Reichskammer at Vienna. What do you or I 
 care for who rules India, or who owns Turkey? What 
 interest of mine is it whether Great Britain has five iron- 
 clads or fifty, or whether the Yankees take Canada, and the 
 Russians Caboul ? " 
 
102 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " You 're a Fenian, and I am not." 
 
 " I suppose you 'd call yourself an Englishman? " 
 
 ''I am an English subject, and I owe my allegiance to 
 England." 
 
 "Perhaps, for that matter, I owe some too; but I owe 
 a great many things that I don't distress myself about 
 paying." 
 
 " Whatever your sentiments are on these matters, — and, 
 Joe, I am not disposed to think you have any very fixed 
 ones, — pray do me the favor to keep them to yourself while 
 under my father's roof. I can almost promise you he '11 ob- 
 trude none of his peculiar opinions on you, and 1 hope you 
 will treat him with a like delicacy. " 
 
 ''What will your folks talk, then? I can't suppose they 
 care for books, art, or the drama. There is no society, so 
 there can be no gossip. If that yonder be the cabin of one 
 of your tenants, I '11 certainly not start the question of 
 farming." 
 
 " There are poor on every estate," said Dick, curtly. 
 
 " Now, what sort of a rent does that fellow pay, — five 
 pounds a year ? " 
 
 " More likely five-and-twenty or thirty shillings." 
 
 "By Jove, I'd like to set up house in that fashion, and 
 make love to some delicately nurtured miss, win her affec- 
 tions, and bring her home to such a sp'ot. Would n't that 
 be a touchstone of affection, Dick ? " 
 
 " If I could believe you were in earnest, I 'd throw you 
 neck and heels into that bog-hole." 
 
 "Oh, if you would! " cried he, and there was a ring of 
 truthfulness in his voice now there could be no mistaking. 
 
 Half ashamed of the emotion his idle speech had called up, 
 and uncertain how best to treat the emergency, Kearney said 
 nothing, and Atlee walked on for miles without a word. 
 
 " You can see the house now. It tops the trees yonder,'* 
 said Dick. 
 
 " That is Kilgobbin Castle, then? " said Joe, slowly. 
 
 "There's not much of castle left about it. There is a 
 square block of a tower, and you can trace the moat and 
 some remains of outworks." 
 
 " Shall I make you a confession, Dick? I envy you all 
 
THE JOURNEY TO THE COUNTRY. 103 
 
 that ! I envy you what smacks of a race, a name, an ances- 
 try, a lineage. It 's a great thing to be able to ' take up the! 
 running,' as the folks say, instead of making all the race! 
 yourself; and there's one inestimable advantage in it, it; 
 rescues you from all indecent haste about asserting your 
 station. You feel yourself to be a somebody and you 've 
 not hurried to proclaim it. There now, my boy, if you 'd 
 have said only half as much as that on the score of your ; 
 family, I 'd have called you an arrant snob. So much for ' 
 consistency." 
 
 *' What you have said gave me pleasure, I'll own that." 
 
 *' I suppose it was you planted those trees there. It was 
 a nice thought, and makes the transition from the bleak bog 
 to the cultivated land more easy and graceful. Now I see 
 the castle well. It 's a fine portly mass against the morning 
 sky, and I perceive you fly a flag over it." 
 
 " When the Lord is at home." 
 
 " Ay, and by tlie way, do you give him his title while talk- 
 ing to him here ? " 
 
 '' The tenants do, and the neighbors and strangers do as 
 they please about it." 
 
 '^ Does he like it himself? " 
 
 "If I was to guess, I should perhaps say he does like it. 
 Here we are now. Inside this low gate you are within the 
 demesne, and I may bid you welcome to Kilgobbin. We 
 shall build a lodge here one of these days. There 's a 
 good stretch, however, yet to the castle. We call it two 
 miles, and it's not far short of it." 
 
 " What a glorious morning! There is an ecstasy in 
 scenting these nice fresh woods in the clear sunrise, and 
 seeing those modest daffodils make their morning toilet." 
 
 "That's a fancy of Kate's. There is a border of such 
 wild-flowers all the way to the house." 
 
 " And those rills of clear water that flank the road, are 
 they of her designing ? " 
 
 " That they are. There was a cutting made for a rail- 
 road line about four miles from this, and they came upon a 
 sort of pudding-stone formation, made up chiefly of white 
 pebbles. Kate heard of it, purchased the whole mass, and 
 had these channels paved with them from the gate to the 
 
104 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 castle, and that's the reason this water has its crystal 
 cl^ness." 
 
 " She's worthy of Shakspeare's sweet epithet, the 'dain- 
 tiest Kate in Christendom.' Here 's her health ! " and he 
 stopped down, and filling his palm with the running water, 
 drank it off. 
 
 'I see it's not yet five o'clock. We'll steal quietly 
 off to bed, and have three or four hours sleep before we 
 show ourselves." 
 
 m 
 
< 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 A SICK-ROOM. 
 
 Cecil Walpole occupied the state room and the state bed 
 at Kilgobbin Castle ; but the pain of a very serious wound 
 had left him very little faculty to know what honor was 
 rendered him, or of what watchful solicitude he was the 
 object. The fever brought on by his wound had obliter- 
 ated in his mind all memory of where he was ; and it was 
 only now — that is, on the same morning that the young 
 men had arrived at the castle — that he was able to con- 
 verse without much difficulty, and enjoy the companionship 
 of Lockwood, who had come over to see him and scarcely 
 quitted his bedside since the disaster. 
 
 "It seems going on all right," said Lockwood, as he 
 lifted the iced cloths to look at the smashed limb, which 
 lay swollen and livid on a pillow outside the clothes. 
 
 " It 's not pretty to look at, Harry ; but the doctor says 
 'we shall save it,* — his phrase for not cutting it off." 
 
 " They 've taken up two fellows on suspicion, and I 
 believe they were of the party here that night." 
 
 *' I don't much care about that. It was a fair fight, and 
 I suspect I did not get the worst of it. What really does 
 grieve me is to think how ingloriously one gets a wound 
 that in real war would have been a title of honor." 
 
 " If I had to give a V. C. for this affair, it would be to 
 that fine girl I 'd give it, and not to you, Cecil." 
 
 *' So should I. There is no question whatever as to our 
 respective shares in the achievement." 
 
 "And she is so modest and unaffected about it all, and 
 when she was showing me the position and the alcove, she 
 never ceased to lay stress on the safety she enjoyed dur- 
 ing the conflict." 
 
106 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''Then she said nothing about standing in front of me 
 after I was wounded?" 
 
 " Not a word. She said a great deal about your coolness 
 and indifference to danger, but nothing about her own." 
 
 "Well, I suppose it's almost a shame to own it, — not 
 that I could have done anything to prevent it, — but she 
 did step down one step of the stair and actually cover me 
 from fire." 
 
 "She's the finest girl in Europe," said Lockwood, 
 warmly. 
 
 "And if it was not the contrast with her cousin, I'd 
 almost say one of the handsomest," said Cecil. 
 
 "The Greek is splendid, I admit that, though she'll 
 not speak — she'll scarcely notice me." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 " I can't imagine, except it might have been an awk- 
 ward speech I made when we were talking over the row. 
 I said, 'Where were you? w^hat were you doing all this 
 time?' " 
 
 "And what answer did she make you?" 
 
 "None; not a word. She drew herself proudly up, and 
 opened her eyes so large and full upon me that I felt I must 
 have appeared some sort of monster to be so stared at." 
 
 "I've seen her do that." 
 
 " It was very grand and very beautiful ; but I '11 be shot 
 if I 'd like to stand under it again. From that time to this 
 she has never deigned me more than a mere salutation." 
 
 "And are you good friends with the other girl?" 
 
 "The best in the world. I don't see much of her, for 
 she 's always abroad, over the farm or among the tenants : 
 but when we meet we are very cordial and friendly." 
 
 "And the father, what is he like?" 
 
 " My Lord is a glorious old fellow, full of hospitable plans 
 and pleasant projects; but terribly distressed to think that 
 this unlucky incident should prejudice you against Ireland. 
 Indeed, he gave me to understand that there must have 
 been some mistake or misconception in the matter, for the 
 castle had never been attacked before; and he insists on 
 saying that if you will stop here — I think he said ten years 
 — you '11 not see another such occurrence." 
 
A SICK-ROOM. 107 
 
 "It 's rather a hard way to test the problem, though." 
 
 "What's more, he included me in the experiment." 
 
 "And this title? Does he assume it, or expect it to be 
 recognized?" 
 
 "I can scarcely tell you. The Greek girl ' my Lords * 
 him occasionally; his daughter, never. The servants 
 always do so ; and I take it that people use their own dis- 
 cretion about it." 
 
 "Or do it in a sort of indolent courtesy, as they call 
 Marsala sherry, but take care at the same time to pass 
 the decanter. I believe you telegraphed to his Excellency ? " 
 
 "Yes; and he means to come over next week." 
 
 "Any news of Lady Maude? " 
 
 "Only that she comes with him; and I 'm sorry for it." 
 
 "So am I, — deuced sorry! In a gossiping town like 
 Dublin there will be surely some story afloat about these 
 handsome girls here. She saw the Greek, too, at the Duke 
 of Rigati's ball at Rome, and she never forgets a name or a 
 face. A pleasant trait in a wife ! " 
 
 "Of course the best plan will be to get removed, and be 
 safely installed in our old quarters at the castle before they 
 arrive." 
 
 "We must hear what the doctor says." 
 
 "He '11 say no, naturally, for he '11 not like to lose his 
 patient. He will have to convej^ you to town, and we 'II 
 try and make him believe it will be the making of him. 
 Don't you agree with me, Cecil, it 's the thing to do? " 
 
 "I have not thought it over yet. I will to-day. By the 
 way, I know it's the thing to do," repeated he, with an air 
 of determination. "There will be all manner of reports, 
 scandals, and falsehoods to no end about this business here ; 
 and when Lady Maude learns, as she is sure to learn, that 
 the ' Greek girl ' is in the story, I cannot measure the mis- 
 chief that may come of it." 
 
 "Break off the match, eh?" 
 
 "That is certainly ' on the cards.' " 
 
 "I suspect even that wouldn't break your heart." 
 
 "I don't say it would; but it would prove very inconven- 
 ient in many ways. Danesbury has great claims on his 
 party. He came here as Viceroy, dead against his will; 
 
108 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 and, depend upon it, he made his terms. Then if these 
 people go out, and the Tories want to outbid them, Danes- 
 bury could take — ay, and would take — office under them." 
 
 'M cannot follow all that. All I know is, I like the old 
 boy himself, though he is a bit pompous now and then, 
 and fancies he's Emperor of Russia." 
 
 ''I wish his niece did n't imagine she was an Imperial 
 princess." 
 
 "That she does! I think she is the haughtiest girl I ever 
 met. To be sure, she was a great beauty. " 
 
 '')Fas, Harry! What do you mean by 'was'? Lady 
 Maude is not eight-and-twenty." 
 
 "Ain't she, though? Will you have a ten-pound note on 
 it that she's not over thirty-one; and 1 can tell you who 
 could decide the wager?" 
 
 "A delicate thought! — a fellow betting on the age of the 
 girl he 's going to marry! " 
 
 "Ten o'clock! — nearly half-past ten! " said Lockwood, 
 rising from his chair. "I must go and have some breakfast. 
 I meant to have been down in time to-day, and breakfasted 
 with the old fellow and his daughter; for coming late brings 
 me to a tete-a-tete with the Greek damsel, and it is n't jolly, 
 I assure you." 
 
 "Don't you speak?" 
 
 "Never a word! She's generally reading a newspaper 
 when I go in. She lays it down ; but after remarking that 
 she fears I '11 find the coffee cold, she goes on with her 
 breakfast, kisses her Maltese terrier, asks him a few ques- 
 tions about his health, apd whether he would like to be in a 
 warmer climate, and then sails away. " 
 
 "And how she walks! " 
 
 " Is she bored here ? " 
 
 "She says not." 
 
 "She can scarcely like these people; they 're not the sort 
 of thing she has ever been used to. " 
 
 "She tells me she likes them; they certainly like her." 
 
 "Well," said Lockwood, with a sigh, "she's the most 
 beautiful woman, certainly, I've ever seen; and, at this 
 moment, I 'd rather eat a crust with a glass of beer under a 
 hedge than I 'd go down and sit at breakfast with her." 
 
A SICK-ROOM. 109 
 
 "I '11 be shot if I '11 not tell her that speech the first day 
 I 'm down again." 
 
 "So you may; for by that time I shall have seen her for 
 the last time." And with this he strolled out of the room 
 and down the stairs towards the breakfast-parlor. 
 
 As he stood at the door, he heard the sound of voices 
 laughing and talking pleasantly. He entered, and Nina 
 arose as he came forward, and said, "Let me present my 
 cousin, — Mr. Richard Kearney, Major Lockwood ; his 
 friend, Mr. Atlee." 
 
 The two young men stood up, — Kearney stiff and haughty, 
 and Atlee with a sort of easy assurance that seemed to 
 suit his good-looking but certainly snobbish style. As for 
 Lockwood, he was too much a gentleman to have more than 
 one manner, and he received these two men as he would 
 have received any other two of any rank anywhere. 
 
 "These gentlemen have been showing me some strange 
 versions of our little incident here in the Dublin papers," 
 said Nina to Lockwood. "I scarcely thought we should 
 become so famous." 
 
 "I suppose they don't stickle much for truth," said Lock- 
 wood, as he broke his egg, in leisurely fashion. 
 
 "They were scarcely able to provide a special corre- 
 spondent for the event," said Atlee; "but I take it they 
 give the main facts pretty accurately and fairly." 
 
 "Indeed!" said Lockwood, more struck by the manner 
 than by the words of the speaker. "They mention, then, 
 that my friend received a bad fracture of the forearm." 
 
 "No, I don't think they do; at least, so far as I have 
 seen. They speak of a night attack on Kilgobbin Castle, 
 made by an armed party of six or seven men with faces 
 blackened, and their complete repulse through the heroic 
 conduct of a young lady." 
 
 "The main facts, then, include no mention of poor Wal- 
 pole and his misfortune? " 
 
 "I don't think that we mere Irish attach any great 
 importance to a broken arm, whether it came of a cricket- 
 ball or gun ; but we do interest ourselves deeply when an 
 Irish girl displays feats of heroism and courage that men 
 find it hard to rival." 
 
110 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 '*It was very fine," said Lockwood, gravely. 
 
 *'Fine! I should think it was fine!" burst out Atlee. 
 "It was so fine that, had the deed been done on the other 
 side of this narrow sea, the nation would not have been 
 satisfied till your Poet Laureate had commemorated it in 
 verse." 
 
 "Have they discovered any traces of the fellows?" said 
 Lockwood, who declined to follow the discussion into this 
 channel. 
 
 "My father has gone over to Moate to-day," said Kear- 
 ney, now speaking for the first time, "to hear the examina- 
 tion of two fellows who have been taken up on suspicion." 
 
 "You have plenty of this sort of thing in your country," 
 said Atlee to Nina. 
 
 "Where do you mean when you say my country? " 
 
 "I mean Greece." 
 
 "But I have not seen Greece since I was a child, so high; 
 I have lived always in Italy." 
 
 "Well, Italy has Calabria and the Terra del Lavoro." 
 
 "And how much do we in Rome know about either? " 
 
 "About as much," said Lockwood, "as Belgravia does of 
 the Bog of Allen." 
 
 "You '11 return to your friends in civilized life with 
 almost the fame of an African traveller, Major Lockwood," 
 said Atlee, pertly. 
 
 "If Africa can boast such hospitality, I certainly rather 
 envy than compassionate Dr. Livingstone," said he, 
 politely. 
 
 "Somebody," said Kearney, dryly, "calls hospitality the 
 breeding of the savage." 
 
 "But I deny that we are savage," cried Atlee. "I con- 
 tend for it that all our civilization is higher, and that class 
 for class we are in a more advanced culture than the Eng- 
 lish; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as 
 our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to 
 ours; that throughout our middle classes there is not only 
 a higher morality but a higher refinement than with you." 
 
 "I read in one of the most accredited journals of England 
 the other day that Ireland had never produced a poet, could 
 not even show a second-rate humorist," said Kearney. 
 
A SICK-ROOM. Ill 
 
 "Swift and Sterne were third-rate, or, perhaps, English," 
 said Atlee. 
 
 "These are themes I'll not attempt to discuss," said 
 Lockwood; "but I know one thing, it takes three times 
 as much military force to govern the smaller island." 
 
 "That is to say, to govern the country after your fashion; 
 but leave it to ourselves. Pack your portmanteaus and go 
 away, and then see if we '11 need this parade of horse, foot, 
 and dragoons ; these batteries of guns and these brigades of 
 peelers." 
 
 "You 'd be the first to beg us to come back again." 
 
 "Doubtless, as the Greeks are begging the Turks. Eh, 
 Mademoiselle; can you fancy throwing yourself at the feet 
 of a Pasha and asking leave to be his slave? " 
 
 "The only Greek slave I ever heard of," said Lockwood, 
 "was in marble and made by an American." 
 
 "Come into the drawing-room and I'll sing you some- 
 thing," said Nina, rising. 
 
 "Which will be far nicer and pleasanter than all this dis- 
 cussion," said Joe. 
 
 "And if you '11 permit me," said Lockwood, "we '11 leave 
 the drawing-room door open and let poor Walpole hear the 
 music." 
 
 "Would it not be better first to see if he 's asleep? " said 
 she. 
 
 "That's true. I '11 step up and see." 
 
 Lockwood hurried away; and Joe Atlee, leaning back in 
 his chair, said, "Well, we gave the Saxon a canter, I 
 think. As you know, Dick, that fellow is no end of a 
 swell." 
 
 "You know nothing about him," said the other, gruflfly. 
 
 "Only so much as newspapers could tell me. He 's Mas- 
 ter of the Horse in the Viceroy's household, and the other 
 fellow is Private Secretary, and some connection besides. 
 I say, Dick, it 's all King James's times back again. There 
 has not been so much grandeur here for six or eight gener- 
 ations." 
 
 "There has not been a more absurd speech made than 
 that, within the time." 
 
 "And he is really somebody? " said Nina to Atlee. 
 
112 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "A gran signore davvero^" said he, pompously. "If you 
 don't sing your very best for him, I '11 swear you are a 
 republican." 
 
 "Come, take my arm, Nina. I may call you Nina, may 
 I not?" whispered Kearney. 
 
 "Certainly, if I may call you Joe." 
 
 "You may, if you like," said he, roughly; "but my name 
 is Dick." 
 
 "I am Beppo, and very much at your orders," said Atlee, 
 stepping forward and leading her away. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 AT DINNER. 
 
 They were assembled in the drawing-room before dinner, 
 when Lord Kilgobbin arrived, heated, dusty, and tired after 
 his twelve-miles' drive. *'I say, girls," said he, putting 
 his head inside the door, "is it true that our distinguished 
 guest is not coming down to dinner; for, if so, 1 '11 not 
 wait to dress?" 
 
 "No, papa; he said he'd stay with Mr. Walpole. 
 They 've been receiving and despatching telegrams all day, 
 and seem to have the whole world on their hands," said 
 Kate. 
 
 ''Well, sir, what did you do at the sessions? " 
 
 "Yes, my Lord," broke in Nina, eager to show her more 
 mindful regard to his rank than Atlee displayed; "tell us 
 your news." 
 
 " I suspect we have got two of them, and are on the traces 
 of the others. They are Louth men, and were sent special 
 here to give me a lesson, as they call it. That 's what our 
 blessed newspapers have brought us to. Some idle vaga- 
 bond, at his wits' end for an article, fastens on some 
 unlucky country gentleman, neither much better nor worse 
 than his neighbors, holds him up to public reprobation, 
 perfectly sure that within a week's time some rascal who 
 owes him a grudge — the fellow he has evicted for non- 
 payment of rent, the blackguard he prosecuted for perjury, 
 or some other of the like stamp — will write a piteous letter 
 to the editor, relating his wrongs. The next act of the 
 drama is a notice on the hall-door, with a coffin at the top; 
 and the piece closes with a charge of slugs in your body, as 
 you are on your road to Mass. Now, if I had the making 
 
 8 
 
114 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 of the laws, the first fellow I 'd lay hands on would be the 
 newspaper writer. Eh, Master Atlee, am I right? " 
 
 "I go with you to the furthest extent, my Lord." 
 
 *'I vote we hang Joe, then," cried Dick. "He is the 
 only member of the fraternity I have any acquaintance 
 with." 
 
 "What! do you tell me that you write for the papers? " 
 asked my Lord, slyly. 
 
 "He's quizzing, sir; he knows right well I have no gifts 
 of that sort." 
 
 "Here's dinner, papa. Will you give Nina your arm? 
 Mr. Atlee, you are to take me." 
 
 "You'll not agree with me, Nina, my dear," said the old 
 man, as he led her along; "but I 'm heartily glad we have 
 not that great swell who dined with us yesterday." 
 
 "I do agree with you, uncle, — I dislike him." 
 
 "Perhaps I am unjust to him; but I thought he treated 
 us all with a sort of bland pity that I found very offensive." 
 
 "Yes; I thought that, too. His manner seemed to say, 
 ' I am very sorry for you, but what can be done ? ' " 
 
 "Is the other fellow — the wounded one — as bad?" 
 
 She pursed up her lip, slightly shrugged her shoulders, 
 and then said, "There 's not a great deal to choose between 
 them; but I think I like him better." 
 
 "How do you like Dick, eh?" said he, in a whisper. 
 
 "Oh, so much," said she, with one of her half downcast 
 looks, but which never prevented her seeing what passed in 
 her neighbor's face. 
 
 "Well, don't let him fall in love with you^'' said he, with 
 a smile, "for it would be bad for you both." 
 
 "But why should he?" said she, with an air of inno- 
 cence. 
 
 "Just because I don't see how he is to escape it. 
 What 's Master Atlee saying to you, Kitty? " 
 
 "He's giving me some hints about horse-breaking," said 
 she, quietly. 
 
 "Is he, by George! Well, I'd like to see him follow 
 you over that fallen timber in the back lawn. We '11 have 
 you out. Master Joe, and give you a field-day to-morrow," 
 said the old man. 
 
AT DINNER. 115 
 
 *'I vote we do," cried Dick; "unless, better still, we 
 could persuade Miss Betty to bring the dogs over and give 
 us a cub-hunt." 
 
 "I want to see a cub-hunt," broke in Nina. 
 
 "Do you mean that you ride to hounds, Cousin Nina?" 
 asked Dick. 
 
 " I should think that any one who has taken the ox-fences 
 on the Roman Campagna, as I have, might venture to face 
 your small stone- walls here." 
 
 "That's plucky, anyhow; and I hope, Joe, it will put 
 you on your metal to show yourself worthy of your com- 
 panionship. What is old Mathew looking so mysteriously 
 about? What do you want? " 
 
 The old servant thus addressed had gone about the room 
 with the air of one not fully decided to whom to speak; 
 and at last he leaned over Miss Kearney's shoulder, and 
 whispered a few words in her ear. "Of course not, Mat! " 
 said she ; and then turning to her father, — " Mat has such 
 an opinion of my medical skill, he wants me to see Mr. 
 Walpole, who, it seems, has got up, and evidently increased 
 his pain by it." 
 
 "Oh, but is there no doctor near us?" asked Nina, 
 eagerly. 
 
 "I'd go at once," said Kate, frankly, "but my skill does 
 not extend to surgery. " 
 
 "I have some little knowledge in that way; I studied and 
 walked the hospitals for a couple of years," broke out Joe. 
 "Shall I go up to him?" 
 
 "By all means," cried several together; and Joe rose and 
 followed Mathew upstairs. 
 
 "Oh, are you a medical man?" cried Lockwood, as the 
 other entered. 
 
 "After a fashion, I may say I am. At least, I can tell 
 you where my skill will come to its limit, and that is 
 something." 
 
 "Look here, then; he would insist on getting up, and I 
 fear he has displaced the position of the bones. You must 
 be very gentle, for the pain is terrific." 
 
 "No; there 's no great mischief done; the fractured parts 
 are in a proper position. It is the mere pain of disturbance. 
 
116 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Cover it all over with the ice again, and " — here he felt his 
 pulse — "let him have some weak brandy-and- water." 
 
 "That's sensible advice; I feel it. I am shivery all 
 over," said Walpole. 
 
 "I '11 go and make a brew for you," cried Joe, "and you 
 shall have it as hot as you can drink it." 
 
 He had scarcely left the room when he returned with the 
 smoking compound. 
 
 "You 're such a jolly doctor," said Walpole, "I feel sure 
 you 'd not refuse me a cigar? " 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 "Only think! that old barbarian who was here this morn- 
 ing said I was to have nothing but weak tea or iced 
 lemonade." 
 
 Lockwood selected a mild-looking weed, and handed it 
 to his friend, and was about to offer one to Atlee, when he 
 said, — 
 
 "But we have taken you from your dinner; pray go back 
 again." 
 
 "No, we were at dessert. I'll stay here and have a 
 smoke, if you will let me. Will it bore you, though?" 
 
 "On the contrary," said Walpole, "your company will be 
 a great boon to us ; and as for myself, you have done me 
 good already." 
 
 "What would you say, Major Lockwood, to taking my 
 place belowstairs? They are just sitting over their wine, 
 — some very pleasant claret; and the young ladies, 1 per- 
 ceive, here, give half an hour of their company before they 
 leave the dining-room." 
 
 "Here goes, then," said Lockwood. "Now that you 
 remind me of it, I do want a glass of wine." 
 
 Lockwood found the party belowstairs eagerly discussing 
 Joe Atlee's medical qualifications, and doubting whether, 
 if it was a knowledge of civil engineering or marine gun- 
 nery had been required, he would not have been equally ready 
 to offer himself for the emergency. 
 
 "I '11 lay my life on it, if the real doctor arrives, Joe will 
 take the lead in the consultation," cried Dick; "he is the 
 most unabashable villain in Europe." 
 
 "Well, he has put Cecil all right," said Lockwood. "He 
 
AT DINNER. 117 
 
 has settled the arm most comfortably on the pillow, the 
 pain is decreasing every moment, and by his pleasant and 
 jolly talk he is making Walpole even forget it at times. " 
 
 This was exactly what Atlee was doing. Watching care- 
 fully the sick man's face, he plied him with just that amount 
 of amusement that he could bear without fatigue. He told 
 him the absurd versions that had got abroad of the incident 
 in the press; and cautiously feeling his way, went on to tell 
 how Dick Kearney had started from town full of the most 
 fiery intentions towards that visitor whom the newspapers 
 called a '^ noted profligate" of London celebrity. "If you 
 had not been shot before, we were to have managed it for 
 you now," said he. 
 
 ''Surely these fellows who wrote this had never heard 
 of me." 
 
 ''Of course they had not, further than you were on the 
 Viceroy's staff; but is not that ample warranty for profli- 
 gacy? Besides, the real intention was not to assail you, 
 but the people here who admitted you." Thus talking, he 
 led Walpole to own that he had no acquaintanceship with 
 the Kearneys, that a mere passing curiosity to see the inter- 
 esting house had provoked his request, to which the answer, 
 coming from an old friend, led to his visit. Through this 
 channel Atlee drew him on to the subject of the Greek girl 
 and her parentage. As Walpole sketched the society of 
 Rome, Atlee, who had cultivated the gift of listening fully 
 as much as that of talking, knew where to seem interested 
 by the views of life thrown out, and where to show a racy 
 enjoyment of the little humoristic bits o^ description which 
 the other was rather proud of his skill in deploying; and 
 as Atlee always appeared so conversant with the family 
 history of the people they were discussing, Walpole spoke 
 with unbounded freedom and openness. 
 
 "You must have been astonished to meet the ' Titian 
 girl ' in Ireland? " said Joe, at last; for he had caught up 
 the epithet dropped accidentally in the other's narrative, and 
 kept it for use. 
 
 "Was I not! but if my memory had been clearer, I 
 should have remembered she had Irish connections. I had 
 heard of Lord Kilgobbin on the other side of the Alps." 
 
Ife 
 
 118 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I don't doubt that the title would meet a readier accept- 
 ance there than here." 
 
 "Ah, you think so! " cried Walpole. "What is the 
 meaning of a rank that people acknowledge or deny at 
 pleasure? Is this peculiar to Ireland? " 
 
 " If you had asked whether persons anywhere else would 
 like to maintain such a strange pretension, I might perhaps 
 have answered you." 
 
 "For the few minutes of his visit to me, I liked him; he 
 seemed frank, hearty, and genial." 
 
 "I suppose he is, and I suspect this folly of the Lordship 
 is no fancy of his own." 
 
 "Nor the daughter's, then, I '11 be bound? " 
 
 "No; the son, I take it, has all the ambition of the 
 house." 
 
 "Do you know them well? " 
 
 "No, I never saw them till yesterday. The son and I 
 are chums; we live together, and have done so these three 
 years." 
 
 "You like your visit here, however?" 
 
 "Yes. It 's rather good fun on the whole. I was afraid 
 of the indoor life when I was coming down; but it's 
 pleasanter than I looked for." 
 
 "When I asked you the question, it was not out of idle 
 curiosity. I had a strong personal interest in your answer. 
 In fact, it was another way of inquiring whether it would 
 be a great sacrifice to tear yourself away from this." 
 
 "No, inasmuch as the tearing-away process must take 
 place in a couple of days, — three at farthest." 
 
 "That makes what I have to propose all the easier. It is 
 a matter of great urgency for me to reach Dublin at once. 
 This unlucky incident has been so represented by the news- 
 papers as to give considerable uneasiness to the Govern- 
 ment, and they are even threatened with a discussion on it 
 in the House. Now, I 'd start to-morrow if I thought I 
 could travel with safety. You have so impressed me with 
 your skill, that, if I dared, I 'd ask you to convoy me up. 
 Of course I mean as my physician." 
 
 "But I 'm not one, nor ever intend to be." 
 
 "You studied, however? " 
 
AT DINNER. 119 
 
 "As I have done scores of things. I know a little bit of 
 criminal law, have done some shipbuilding, rode haute ecole 
 in Cooke's circus, and, after M. Dumas, I am considered 
 the best amateur macaroni-maker in Europe." 
 
 "And which of these careers do you intend to abide by ? " 
 
 "None; not one of them. ' Financing' is the only pursuit 
 that pays largely. I intend to go in for money." 
 
 "I should like to hear your ideas on that subject." 
 
 "So you shall, as we travel up to town." 
 
 "You accept my offer then? " 
 
 "Of course 1 do. I am delighted to have so many hours 
 in your company. I believe I can safely say I have that 
 amount of skill to be of service to you. One begins his 
 medical experience with fractures. They are the pot-hooks 
 «ind hangers of surgery, and I have gone that far. Now, 
 what are your plans ? " 
 
 "My plans are to leave this early to-morrow, so as to rest 
 during the hot hours of the day, and reach Dublin by 
 nightfall. Why do you smile ? " 
 
 "I smile at your notion of climate; but I never knew any 
 man who had been once in Italy able to disabuse himself 
 of the idea that there were three or four hours every sum- 
 mer day to be passed with close shutters and iced drinks." 
 
 "Well, I believe I was thinking of a fiercer sun and a 
 hotter soil than these. To return to my project; we can 
 find means of- posting, carriage and horses, in the village. 
 I forget its name." 
 
 "I'll take care of all that. At what hour will you 
 start?" 
 
 "I should say by six or seven. I shall not sleep; and I 
 shall be all impatience till we are away." 
 
 "Well, is there anything else to be thought of?" 
 
 " There is, — that is, I have something on my mind, and 
 I pjn debating with myself how far, on a half -hour's 
 acquaintance, I can make you a partner in it." 
 
 "I cannot help you by my advice. I can only say that 
 if you like to trust me, I '11 know how to respect the 
 confidence." 
 
 Walpole looked steadily and steadfastly at him, and the 
 examination seemed to satisfy him; for he said, "I will 
 
120 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 trust you, — not that the matter is a secret in any sense 
 that involves consequences; but it is a thing that needs a 
 little tact and discretion, a slight exercise of a light hand, 
 which is what my friend Lockwood fails in. Now you could 
 do it." 
 
 "If lean, I will. What is it?" 
 
 "Well, the matter is this. I have written a few lines 
 here, very illegibly and badly, as you may believe, for they 
 were with my left hand ; and besides having the letter con- 
 veyed to its address, I need a few words of explanation." 
 
 "The Titian girl," muttered Joe, as though thinking 
 aloud. 
 
 "Why do you say so? " 
 
 "Oh, it was easy enough to see her greater anxiety and 
 uneasiness about you. '^here was an actual flash of» 
 jealousy across her features when Miss Kearney proposed 
 coming up to see you." 
 
 "And was this remarked, think you? " 
 
 "Only by me. 1 saw, and let her see I saw it, and we 
 understood each other from that moment." 
 
 "I must n't let you mistake me. You are not to suppose 
 that there is anything between Mademoiselle Kostalergi and 
 myself. I knew a good deal about her father, and there 
 were family circumstances in which I was once able to be 
 of use; and I wished to let her know that if at any time she 
 desired to communicate with me I could procure an address 
 under which she could write with freedom." 
 
 "As for instance: * J. Atlee, 48 Old Square, Trinity Col- 
 lege, Dublin. ' " 
 
 "Well, I did not think of that at the moment," said Wal- 
 pole, smiling. "Now," continued he, "though I have 
 written all this, it is so blotted and disgraceful generally — 
 done with the left hand and while in great pain — that I 
 think it would be as well not to send the letter, but simply 
 a message — " 
 
 Atlee nodded, and Walpole went on: "A message to say 
 that I was wishing to write, but unable ; and that if I had 
 her permission, so soon as my fingers could hold a pen, to 
 finish — yes, to finish that communication I had already 
 begun; and if she felt there was no inconvenience in writ- 
 
AT DINNER. 121 
 
 ing to me, under cover to your care, I should pledge my- 
 self to devote all my zeal and my best services to her 
 interests." 
 
 ''In fact, I am to lead her to suppose she ought to have 
 the most implicit confidence in you, and to believe in me 
 because I say so." 
 
 "I do not exactly see that these are my instructions to 
 you." 
 
 "Well, you certainly want to write to her." 
 
 "I don't know that I do." 
 
 "At all events, you want her to write to you.'' 
 
 "You are nearer the mark now." 
 
 "That ought not to be very difficult to arrange. I '11 go 
 down now and have a cup of tea; and I may, I hope, come 
 up and see you again before bedtime.'* 
 
 "Wait one moment," cried Walpole, as the other was 
 about to leave the room. "Do you see a small tray on that 
 table yonder, with some trinkets? Yes, that is it. Well, 
 will you do me the favor to choose something amongst 
 them as your fee? Come, come, you know you are my 
 doctor now, and I insist on this. There 's nothing of any 
 value there, and you will have no misgivings." 
 
 "Am I to take it haphazard? " asked Atlee. 
 
 "Whatever you like," said the other, indolently. 
 
 "I have selected a ring," said Atlee, as he drew it on his 
 finger. 
 
 "Not an opal?" 
 
 "Yes, it is an opal with brilliants round it." 
 
 "I 'd rather you 'd taken all the rest than that. Not that 
 I ever wear it, but somehow it has a bit of memory attached 
 to it!" 
 
 "Do you know," said Atlee, gravely, "you are adding 
 immensely to the value I desired to see in it? I wanted 
 something as a souvenir of you, — what the Germans call an 
 Andenken ; and here is evidently what has some secret clew 
 to your affections. It was not an old love-token ? " 
 
 "No; or I should certainly not part with it." 
 
 "It did not belong to a friend now no more? " 
 
 "Nor that, either," said he, smiling at the other's per- 
 sistent curiosity. 
 
122 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Then, if it be neither the gift of an old love nor a lost 
 friend, I '11 not relinquish it," cried Joe. 
 
 "Be it so," said Walpole, half carelessly. "Mine was a 
 mere caprice, after all. It is linked with a reminiscence, 
 — there's the whole of it; but if you care for it, pray 
 keep it." 
 
 "I do care for it, and I will keep it." 
 
 It was a very peculiar smile that curled Walpole's lip as 
 he heard this speech; and there was an expression in his 
 eyes that seemed to say, " What manner of man is this; 
 what sort of nature, new and strange to me, is he made 
 of?" 
 
 "By-bye! " said Atlee, carelessly; and he strolled away. 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 IN THE GARDEN AT DUSK. 
 
 When Atlee quitted Walpole's room, he was far too full of 
 doubt and speculation to wish to join the company in the 
 drawing-room. He had need of time to collect his thoughts, 
 too, and arrange his plans. This sudden departure of his 
 would, he well knew, displease Kearney. It would savor 
 of a degree of impertinence, in treating their hospitality so 
 cavalierly, that Dick was certain to resent, and not less 
 certain to attribute to a tuft-hunting weakness on Atlee' s 
 part of which he had frequently declared he detected signs 
 in Joe's character. 
 
 "Be it so. I '11 only say, you '11 not see me cultivate 
 * swells ' for the pleasure of their society, or even the charms 
 of their cookery. If I turn them to no better uses than dis- 
 play. Master Dick, you may sneer freely at me. I have 
 long wanted to make acquaintance with one of these fellows, 
 and luck has now given me the chance. Let us see if I 
 know how to profit by it." 
 
 And, thus muttering to himself, he took his way to the 
 farm-yard, to find a messenger to despatch to Kilgobbin for 
 post-horses. 
 
 The fact that he was not the owner of a half-crown in the 
 world very painfully impressed itself on a negotiation 
 which, to be prompt, should be prepaid, and which he was 
 endeavoring to explain to two or three very idle but very 
 incredulous listeners, not one of whom could be induced to 
 accept a ten miles' tramp of a drizzling night without the 
 prompting of a tip in advance. 
 
 "It's every step of eight miles," cried one. 
 
 "No; but it's ten," asseverated another with energy, "by 
 ray son that you must go by the road. There 's nobody 
 would venture across the bog in the dark." 
 
124 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Wid five shillings in my hand — " 
 
 "And five more when ye come back," continued another, 
 who was terrified at the low estimate so rashly adventured. 
 
 "If one had even a shilling or two to pay for a drink 
 when he got in to Kilbeggan wet through and shivering — " 
 
 The speaker was not permitted to finish his ignominiously 
 low proposal, and a low growl of disapprobation smothered 
 his words. 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me," said Joe, angrily, "that 
 there 's not a man here will step over to the town to order a 
 chaise and post-horses ? " 
 
 "And if yer honor will put his hand in his pocket and 
 tempt us with a couple of crown pieces, there 's no saying 
 what we would n't do," said a little bandy old fellow, who 
 was washing his face at the pump. 
 
 "And are crown-pieces so plentiful with you down here 
 that you can earn them so easily ? " said Atlee, with a 
 sneer. 
 
 "Be me sowl, yer honor, it's thinking that the^^'re not so 
 asy to come at, makes us a bit lazy this evening ! " said a 
 ragged fellow, with a grin, which was quickly followed by a 
 hearty laugh from those around him. 
 
 Something that sounded like a titter above his head made 
 Atlee look up ; and there, exactly over where he stood, was 
 Nina, leaning over a little stone balcony in front of a win- 
 dow, an amused witness of the scene beneath. 
 
 *' I have two words for yourself," cried he to her in 
 Italian. "Will you come down to the garden for one 
 moment?" 
 
 "Cannot the two words be said in the drawing-room?" 
 asked she, half saucily, in the same language. 
 
 "No; they cannot be said in the drawing-room," con- 
 tinued he, sternly. 
 
 "It's dropping rain. I should get wet." 
 
 " Take an umbrella, then, but come. Mind me, Signora 
 Nina, I am the bearer of a message for you." 
 
 There was something almost disdainful in the toss of her 
 head as she heard these words, and she hastily retired from 
 the balcony and entered the room. 
 
 Atlee watched her, by no means certain what her gesture 
 
IN THE GARDEN AT DUSK. 125 
 
 might portend. Was she iDdignant with him for the liberty 
 he had taken? or was she about to comply with his request, 
 and meet him ? He knew too little of her to determine which 
 was the more likely ; and he could not help feeling that, had 
 he only known her longer, his doubt might have been just as 
 great. Her mind, thought he, is perhaps like my own ; it 
 has many turnings, and she 's never very certain which one 
 of them she will follow. Somehow, this imputed wilfulness 
 gave her, to his eyes, a charm scarcely second to that of her 
 exceeding beauty. And what beauty it was ! The very 
 perfection of symmetry in every feature when at rest, while 
 the varied expressions of her face as she spoke or smiled 
 or listened, imparted a fascination which only needed the 
 charm of her low liquid voice to be irresistible. 
 
 How she vulgarizes that pretty girl, her cousin, by mere 
 contrast! What subtle essence is it, apart from hair and 
 eyes and skin, that spreads an atmosphere of conquest over 
 these natures, and how is it that men have no ascendencies 
 of this sort, — nothing that imparts to their superiority the 
 sense that worship of them is in itself an ecstasy? 
 
 " Take my message into town," said he to a fellow near, 
 " and you shall have a sovereign when you come back with 
 the horses ; " and with this he strolled away across a little 
 paddock and entered the garden. It was a large, ill-culti- 
 vated space, more orchard than garden, with patches of 
 smooth turf, through which daffodils and lilies were scat- 
 tered, and little clusters of carnations occasionally showed, 
 where flower-beds had once existed. " What would I not 
 give," thought Joe, as he strolled along the velvety sward, 
 over which a clear moonlight had painted the forms of many 
 a straggling branch, — " what would I not give to be the son 
 of a house like this, with an old and honored name, with an 
 ancestry strong enough to build upon for future preten- 
 sions, and then with an old home, peaceful, tranquil, and 
 unmolested : where, as in such a spot as this, one might 
 dream of great things, perhaps more, might achieve them ! 
 What books would I not write ! What novels, in which, 
 fashioning the hero out of my own heart, I could tell scores 
 of impressions the world had made upon me in its aspect of 
 religion or of politics or of society ! What essays could I 
 
 /' 
 
126 LORD KILGOBBIN. . 
 
 not compose here, — the mind elevated by that buoyauc}^ 
 which comes of the consciousness of being free for a great 
 effort! Free from the vulgar interruptions that cling to 
 poverty like a garment, free from the paltry cares of daily 
 subsistence, free from the damaging incidents of a doubtful 
 position and a station that must be continually asserted. 
 That one disparagement, perhaps, worst of all," cried he, 
 aloud : " how is a man to enjoy his estate if he is ' put upon 
 his title ' every day of the week ? One might as well be a 
 French Emperor, and go every spring to the country for a 
 character." 
 
 " What shocking indignity is this you are dreaming of? " 
 said a very soft voice near him ; and turning he saw Nina, 
 who was moving across the grass, with her dress so draped 
 as to show the most perfect instep and ankle with a very 
 unguarded indifference. 
 
 " This is very damp for you; shall we not come out into 
 the walk ? " said he. 
 
 "It is very damp," said she, quickly; "but I came be- 
 cause you said you had a message for me: is this true?" 
 
 " Do you think I could deceive you? " said he, with a sort 
 of tender reproachfulness. 
 
 " It might not be so very easy, if you were to try," 
 replied she, laughing. 
 
 " That is not the most gracious way to answer me." 
 
 " Well, I don't believe we came here to pay compliments ; 
 certainly I did not, and my feet are very wet already, — look 
 there and see the ruin of a ' chaussure ' I shall never replace 
 in this dear land of coarse leather and hobnails." 
 
 As she spoke, she showed her feet, around which her 
 bronzed shoes hung limp and misshapen. 
 
 "Would that I could be permitted to dry them with my 
 kisses ! " said he, as, stooping, he wiped them with his hand- 
 kerchief, but so deferentially and so respectfully, as though 
 the homage had been tendered to a princess. Nor did she 
 for a moment hesitate to accept the service. 
 
 "There, that will do," said she, haughtily. "Now for 
 your message." 
 
 "We are going away. Mademoiselle," said Atlee, with a 
 melancholy tone. 
 
IN THE GARDEN AT DUSK. 127 
 
 " sir?" 
 
 " By ' we,' Mademoiselle, I meant to convey Walpole and 
 myself." And now he spoke with the irritation of one who 
 had felt a pull-up. 
 
 '' Ah, indeed ! " said she, smiling, and showing her pearly 
 teeth. *" We' meant Mr. Walpole and Mr. Atlee." 
 
 '' You should never have guessed it?" cried he, in question. 
 
 " Never, — certainly," was her cool rejoinder. 
 
 "Well! He was less defiant, or mistrustful, or whatever 
 be the name for it. We were only friends of half an hour's 
 growth when he proposed the journey. He asked me to 
 accompany him as a favor ; and he did more. Mademoiselle : 
 he confided to me a mission, — a very delicate and confiden- 
 tial mission, — such an oflfice as one does not usually depute 
 to him of whose fidelity or good faith he has a doubt, not to 
 speak of certain smaller qualities, such as tact and good 
 taste." 
 
 *'0f whose possession Mr. Atlee is now asserting him- 
 self? " said she, quietly. 
 
 He grew crimson at a sarcasm whose impassiveness made 
 it all the more cutting. 
 
 ''My mission was in this wise, Mademoiselle," said he, 
 with a forced calm in his manner. " I was to learn from 
 Mademoiselle Kostalergi if she should desire to communicate 
 with Mr. Walpole touching certain family interests in which 
 his counsels might be of use; and in this event I was to 
 place at her disposal an address by which her letters should 
 reach him." 
 
 "No, sir," said she, quietly, "you have totally mistaken 
 any instructions that were given you. Mr. Walpole never 
 pretended that I had written or was likely to write to him ; 
 he never said that he was in any way concerned in family 
 questions that pertained to me ; least of all, did he presume 
 to suppose that if I had occasion to address him by letter, I 
 should do so under cover to another." 
 
 "You discredit my character of envoy, then?" said he, 
 smiling easily. 
 
 " Totally and completely, Mr. Atlee ; and I only wait for 
 you yourself to admit that I am right, to hold out my hand 
 to you, and say let us be friends." 
 
128 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I'd perjure myself twice at such a price. Now for the 
 hand." 
 
 '^Not so fast, — first the coufession," said she, with a 
 faint smile. 
 
 ''Well, on my honor," cried he, seriously, "he told me 
 he hoped you might write to him. I did not clearly under- 
 stand about what, but it pointed to some matter in which a 
 family interest was mixed up, and that you might like your 
 communication to have the reserve of secrecy." 
 
 "All this is but a modified version of what you were to 
 disavow." 
 
 " Well, I am only repeating it now to show you how far I 
 am going to perjure myself." 
 
 "That is, you see, in fact, that Mr. Walpole could never 
 have presumed to give you such instructions, — that gentle- 
 men do not send such messages to young ladies, — do not 
 presume to say that they dare do so ; and last of all, if they 
 ever should chance upon one whose nice tact and cleverness 
 would have fitted him to be the bearer of such a commission, 
 those same qualities of tact and cleverness would have saved 
 him from undertaking it. That is what you see, Mr. Atlee, 
 is it not? " 
 
 "You are right. I see it all." And now he seized her 
 hand and kissed it as though he had won the right to that 
 rapturous enjoyment. 
 
 She drew her hand away, but so slowly and so gently as 
 to convey nothing of rebuke or displeasure. " And so you 
 are going away ? " said she, softly. 
 
 ' ' Yes ; Walpole has some pressing reason to be at once in 
 Dublin. He is afraid to make the journey without a doctor ; 
 but rather than risk delay in sending for one, he is willing 
 to take me as his body surgeon, and I have accepted the 
 charge." 
 
 The frankness with which he said this seemed to influence 
 her in his favor, and she said, with a tone of like candor, 
 " You were right. His family are people of influence, and 
 will not readily forget such a service." 
 
 Though he winced under the words, and showed that it 
 was not exactly the mode in which he wanted his courtesy 
 to be regarded, she took no account of the passing irrita- 
 tion, but went on : — 
 
IN THE GARDEN AT DUSK. 129 
 
 " If you fancy you know something about me, Mr. Atlee, 
 /know far more about you. Your chum, Dick Kearney, has 
 been so outspoken as to his friend, that my cousin Kate and 
 I have been accustomed to discuss you like a near acquaint- 
 ance — what am I saying? — I mean like an old friend." 
 
 " I am very grateful for this interest; but will you kindly 
 say what is the version my friend Dick has given of me ? 
 what are the lights that have fallen upon my humble 
 character?" 
 
 " Do you fancy that either of us have time at this moment 
 to open so large a question ? Would not the estimate of Mr. 
 Joseph Atlee be another mode of discussing the times we 
 live in, and the young gentlemen, more or less ambitious, 
 who want to influence them ? Would not the question embrace 
 everything, from the difficulties of Ireland to the puzzling 
 embarrassments of a clever young man who has everything 
 in his favor in life, except the only thing that makes life 
 worth living for? " 
 
 " You mean fortune, — money? '' 
 
 "Of course I mean money. What is so powerless as 
 poverty? Do I not know it, — not of yesterday, or the day 
 before, but for many a long year? What so helpless, what 
 so jarring to temper, so dangerous to all principle, and so 
 subversive of all dignity? I can afford to say these things, 
 and you can afford to hear them, for there is a sort of 
 brotherhood between us. We claim the same land for our 
 origin. Whatever our birthplace, we are both Bohemians ! " 
 
 She held out her hand as she spoke, and with such an air 
 of cordiality and frankness that Joe caught the spirit of the 
 action at once, and, bending over, pressed his lips to it, as 
 he said, " I seal the bargain." 
 
 ''And swear to it?" 
 
 " I swear to it," cried he. 
 
 "There, that is enough. Let us go back, or rather, let 
 me go back alone. I will tell them I have seen you, and 
 heard of your approaching departure." 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 THE TWO " KEARNEYS." 
 
 A VISIT to his father was not usually one of those things that 
 young Kearney either speculated on with pleasure before- 
 hand, or much enjoyed when it came. Certain measures of 
 decorum, and some still more pressing necessities of economy, 
 required that he should pass some months of every year at 
 home ; but they were always seasons looked forward to with 
 a mild terror, and when the time drew nigh, met with a 
 species of dogged fierce resolution that certainly did not 
 serve to lighten the burden of the infliction; and though 
 Kate's experience of this temper was not varied by any 
 exceptions, she would still go on looking with pleasure for 
 the time of his visit, and plotting innumerable little schemes 
 for enjoyment while he should remain. The first day or two 
 after his arrival usually went over pleasantly enough. Dick 
 came back full of his town life, and its amusements ; and 
 Kate was quite satisfied to accept gayety at second-hand. 
 He had so much of balls, and picnics, and charming rides 
 in the Phoenix, of garden-parties in the beautiful environs 
 of Dublin, or more pretentious entertainments, that took 
 the shape of excursions to Bray or Killiney. She came 
 at last to learn all his friends and acquaintances by name, 
 and never confounded the stately beauties that he wor- 
 shipped afar off, with the "awfully jolly girls" whom he 
 flirted with quite irresponsibly. She knew, too, all about his 
 male companions, from the flash young fellow-commoner 
 from Downshire, who had a saddle-horse and a mounted 
 groom waiting for him every day after morning lecture, 
 down to that scampish Joe Atlee, with whose scrapes and 
 eccentricities he filled many an idle hour. 
 
 Independently of her gift as a good listener, Kate would 
 very willingly have heard all Dick's adventures and descrip- 
 
THE TWO "KEARNEYS." 131 
 
 tions not only twice but tenth told ; just as the child listens 
 with unwearied attention to the fairy tale whose end he is 
 well aware of, but still likes the little detail falling fresh 
 upon his ear, so would this yQung girl make him go over 
 some narrative she knew by heart, and would not suffer him 
 to omit the slightest incident or most trifling circumstance 
 that heightened the history of the story. 
 
 As to Dick, however, the dull monotony of the daily life, 
 the small and vulgar interests of the house or the farm, 
 which formed the only topics, the undergrowl of economy 
 that ran through every conversation, as though penurious- 
 ness was the great object of existence, — but, perhaps more 
 than all these together, the early hours, — so overcame him 
 that he at first became low-spirited, and then sulky, seldom 
 appearing save at meal-times, and certainly contributing 
 little to the pleasure of the meeting ; so that at last, though 
 she might not easily have been brought to the confession, 
 Kate Kearney saw the time of Dick's departure approach 
 without regret, and was actually glad to be relieved from 
 that terror of a rupture between her father and her brother 
 of which not a day passed without a menace. 
 
 Like all men who aspire to something in Ireland, Kearney 
 desired to see his son a barrister; for great as are the re- 
 wards of that high career, they are not the fascinations 
 which appeal most strongly to the squirearchy, who love to 
 think that a country gentleman may know a little law and 
 be never the richer for it, — may have acquired a profes- 
 sion, and yet never know what was a client or what a fee. 
 
 That Kearney of Kilgobbin Castle should be reduced to 
 tramping his way down the Bachelor's Walk to the Four 
 Courts, with a stuff bag carried behind him, was not to be 
 thought of; but there were so many positions in life, so 
 many situations for which that gifted creature the barrister 
 of six years' standing was alone eligible, that Kearney was 
 very anxious his son should be qualified to accept that 
 £1000 or £1800 a year which a gentleman could hold with- 
 out any shadow upon his capacity, or the slightest reflec- 
 tion on his industry. 
 
 Dick Kearney, however, had not only been living a very 
 gay life in town, but, to avail himself of a variety of those 
 
132 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 flattering attentions which this interested world bestows by 
 preference on men of some pretension, had let it be believed 
 that he was the heir to a very considerable estate, and, by 
 great probability, also to a title. To have admitted that 
 he thought it necessary to follow any career at all would 
 have been to abdicate these pretensions, and so he evaded 
 that question of the law, in all discussions with his father, 
 sometimes affecting to say he had not made up his mind, 
 or that he had scruples of conscience about a barrister's 
 calling, or that he doubted whether the Bar of Ireland was 
 not, like most high institutions, going to be abolished by 
 Act of Parliament, and all the litigation of the land be 
 done by deputy in Westminster Hall. 
 
 On the morning after the visitors took their departure 
 from Kilgobbin, old Kearney, who usually relapsed from any 
 exercise of hospitality into a more than ordinary amount of 
 parsimony, sat thinking over the various economies by 
 which the domestic budget could be squared, and after a 
 very long seance with old Gill, in which the question of 
 raising some rents and diminishing certain bounties was 
 discussed, he sent up the steward to Mr. Richard's room to 
 say he wanted to speak to him. 
 
 Dick at the time of the message was stretched full length 
 on a sofa, smoking a meerschaum, and speculating how it 
 was that the "swells" took to Joe Atlee, and what they saw 
 in that confounded snob, instead of himself. Having in a 
 degree satisfied himself that Atlee's success was all owing 
 to his intense and outrageous flattery, he was startled from 
 his re very by the servant's entrance. 
 
 "How is he this morning, Tim?" asked he, with a know- 
 ing look. "Is he fierce? is there anything up? have the 
 heifers been passing the night in the wheat, or has any one 
 come over from Moate with a bill ? " 
 
 "No, sir, none of them; but his blood's up about some- 
 thing. Ould Gill is gone down the stair, swearing like 
 mad, and Miss Kate is down the road, with a face like a 
 turkey-cock." 
 
 "I think you'd better say I was out, Tim, — that you 
 couldn't find me in my room." 
 
 "I dare n't, sir. He saw that little Skye terrier of yours 
 
THE TWO "KEARNEYS." 133 
 
 below, and he said to me, ' Mr. Dick is sure to be at home ; 
 tell him I want him immediately.' " 
 
 ''But if I had a bad headache, and could n't leave my bed, 
 wouldn't that be excuse enough?" 
 
 " It would make him come here. And if I was you, sir, 
 I 'd go where I could get away myself, and not where he 
 could stay as long as he liked." 
 
 "There 's something in that. I '11 go, Tim. Say I '11 be 
 down in a minute." 
 
 Very careful to attire himself in the humblest costume of 
 his wardrobe, and specially mindful that neither studs nor 
 watch-chain should offer offensive matter of comment, he 
 took his way toward^ the dreary little den, which, filled 
 with old top-boots, driving-whips, garden-implements, and 
 fishing-tackle, was known as "the Lord's study," but whose 
 sole literary ornament was a shelf of antiquated almanacs. 
 There was a strange grimness about his father's aspect 
 which struck young Kearney as he crossed the threshold. 
 His face wore the peculiar sardonic expression of one who 
 had not only hit upon an expedient, but achieved a surprise, 
 as he held an open letter in one hand and he motioned with 
 the other to a seat. 
 
 " I 've been waiting till these people were gone, Dick, — 
 till we had a quiet house of it, — to say a few words to you. 
 I suppose your friend Atlee is not coming back here ? " 
 
 "I suppose not, sir." 
 
 "I don't like him, Dick; and I 'm much mistaken if he 
 is a good fellow." 
 
 "I don't think he is actually a bad fellow, sir. He is 
 often terribly hard up, and has to do scores of shifty 
 things ; but I never found him out in anything dishonorable 
 or false." 
 
 "That 's a matter of taste, perhaps. Maybe you and I 
 might differ about what was honorable or what was false. 
 At all events, he was under our roof here ; and if those nobs 
 — or swells, I believe you call them — were like to be of use 
 to any of us, we, the people that were entertaining them, 
 were the first to be thought of; but your pleasant friend 
 thought differently, and made such good use of his time that 
 he cut you out altogether, Dick, — he left you nowhere. " 
 
134 LORD KTLGOBBIN. 
 
 "Really, sir, it never occurred to me till now to take that 
 view of the situation." 
 
 "Well, take that view of it now, and see how you '11 like 
 it! You have your way to work in life as well as Mr. 
 Atlee. From all I can judge, you 're scarcely as well calcu- 
 lated to do it as he is. You have not his smartness, you 
 have not his brains, and you have not his impudence, — and, 
 faith, I 'm much mistaken but it 's the best of the three! " 
 
 "I don't perceive, sir, that we are necessarily pitted 
 against each other at all." 
 
 "Don't you? Well, so much the worse for you if you 
 don't see that every fellow that has nothing in the world is 
 the rival of every other fellow that 's in the same plight. 
 For every one that swims, ten, at least, sink." 
 
 "Perhaps, sir, to begin, I never fully realized the first 
 condition. I was not exactly aware that I was without 
 anything in the world." 
 
 "I 'm coming to that, if you '11 have a little patience. 
 Here is a letter from Tom McKeown, of Abbey Street. I 
 wrote to him about raising a few hundreds on mortgage, to 
 clear off some of our debts, and have a trifle in hand for 
 drainage and to buy stock, and he tells me that there 's no 
 use in going to any of the money-lenders so long as your 
 extravagance continues to be the talk of the town. Ay, 
 you need n't grow red nor frown that way. The letter was 
 a private one to myself, and I 'm only telling it to you in 
 confidence. Hear what he says: ' You have a right to 
 make your son a fellow-commoner if you like, and he has 
 a right, by his father's own showing, to behave like a man 
 of fortune; but neither of you have a right to believe that 
 men who advance money will accept thes€ pretensions as 
 good security, or think anything but the worse of you both 
 for your extravagance. ' " 
 
 "And you don't mean to horsewhip him, sir?" burst out 
 Dick. 
 
 "Not, at any rate, till I pay off two thousand pounds 
 that I owe him, and two years' interest at six per cent, 
 that he has suffered me to become his debtor for." 
 
 "Lame as he is, I '11 kick him before twenty- four hours 
 are over." 
 
THE TWO "KEARNEYS.'* 135 
 
 *'If you do, he'll shoot you like a dog; and it wouldn't 
 be the first time he handled a pistol. No, no, Master 
 Dick. Whether for better or worse, I can't tell; but the 
 world is not what it was when I was your age. There 's no 
 provoking a man to a duel nowadays ; nor no posting him 
 when he won't fight. Whether it 's your fortune is damaged 
 or your feelings hurt, you must look to the law to redress 
 you ; and to take your cause into your own hands is to have 
 the whole world against you." 
 
 "And this insult is, then, to be submitted to?" 
 
 "It is, first of all, to be ignored. It 's the same as if you 
 never heard it. Just get it out of your head, and listen to 
 what he says. Tom McKeown is one of the keenest fellows 
 I know ; and he has business with men who know not only 
 what's doing in Downing Street, but what's going to be 
 done there. Now here 's two things that are about to take 
 place: one is the same as done, for it 's all ready prepared, 
 — the taking away the landlord's right, and making the 
 State determine what rent the tenant shall pay, and how 
 long his tenure will be. The second won't come for two 
 sessions after, but it will be law all the same. There 's to 
 be no primogeniture class at all, no entail on land, but a 
 subdivision, like in America and, I believe, in France." 
 
 "I don't believe it, sir. These would amount to a revo- 
 lution." 
 
 "Well, and why not? Ain't we always going through a 
 sort of mild revolution? What 's parliamentary government 
 but revolution, weakened, if you like, like watered grog; 
 but the spirit is there all the same. Don't fancy that 
 because you can give it a hard name you can destroy it. 
 But hear what Tom is coming to. ' Be early,' says he; 
 ' take Time by the forelock ; get rid of your entail and get 
 rid of your land. Don't wait till the Government does both 
 for you, and have to accept whatever condition the law will 
 cumber you with, but be before them! Get your son to 
 join you in docking the entail ; petition before the court for 
 a sale, yourself or somebody for you ; and wash your hands 
 clean of it all. It's bad property, in a very ticklish coun- 
 try, ' says Tom ; and he dashes the words, — ' bad property 
 in a very ticklish country ; and if you take my ^vice 
 
136 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 you '11 get clear of both. ' You shall read it all yourself by 
 and by ; I am only giving you the substance of it, and none 
 of the reasons." 
 
 " This is a question for very grave consideration, to say 
 the least of it. It is a bold proposal." 
 
 "So it is, and so says Tom himself; but he adds, 
 'There 's no time to be lost; for once it gets about how 
 Gladstone 's going to deal with land, and what Bright has 
 "m his head for eldest sons, you might as well'wEistle as try 
 to dispose of that property.' To be sure, he says," added 
 nEepafter a pause, — "he says, ' If you insist on holding on, 
 — if you cling to the dirty acres because they were your 
 father's and your great-grandfather's, and if you think that 
 being Kearney of Kilgobbin is a sort of title, in the name 
 of God stay where you are, but keep down your expenses. 
 Give up some of your useless servants, reduce your saddle- 
 horses,' — my saddle-horses, Dick! 'Try if you can live 
 without fox-hunting. ' Fox-hunting ! ' Make your daugh- 
 ter know that she needn't dress like a duchess,' — poor 
 Kitty 's very like a duchess ; ' and, above all, persuade your 
 lazy, idle, and very self-sufficient son to take to some 
 respectable line of life to gain his living. I would n't say 
 that he mightn't be an apothecary; but if he liked law 
 better than physic, I might be able to do something for him 
 in my own office.' " 
 
 "Have you done, sir? " said Dick, hastily, as his father 
 wiped his spectacles, and seemed to prepare for another 
 heat. 
 
 "He goes on to say that he always requires one hundred 
 and fifty guineas fee with a young man ; ' but we are old 
 friends, Mathew Kearney,' says he, 'and we'll make it 
 pounds.' " 
 
 " To fit me to be an attorney ! " said Dick, articulating 
 each word with a slow and almost savage determination. 
 
 "Faith! it would have been well for us if one of the 
 family had been an attorney before now. We 'd never have 
 gone into that action about the mill race, nor had to pay 
 those heavy damages for levelling Moore's barn. A little 
 law would have saved us from evicting those blackguards at 
 Mullenalick, or kicking Mr. Hall's bailiff before witnesses." 
 
THE TWO "KEARNEYS." 137 
 
 To arrest his father's recollection of the various occasions 
 on which his illegality had betrayed him into loss and dam- 
 age, Dick blurted out, " I 'd rather break stones on the road 
 than I M be an attorney." 
 
 " Well, you '11 not have to go far for employment, for they 
 are just laying down new metal this moment; and you 
 need n't lose time over it," said Kearney, with a wave of 
 his hand, to show that the audience was over and the con- 
 ference ended. 
 
 ''There 's just one favor I would ask, sir," said Dick, 
 with his hand on the lock. 
 
 "You want a hammer, I suppose," said his father, with 
 a grin, — " is n't that it ? " 
 
 With something that, had it been uttered aloud, sounded 
 very like a bitter malediction, Dick rushed from the room, 
 slamming the door violently after him as he went. 
 
 "That 's the temper that helps a man to get on in life," 
 said the old man, as he turned once more to his accounts, 
 and set to work to see where he had blundered in his 
 figures. 
 
CHAPTER XVTI. 
 
 dick's re very. 
 
 When Dick Kearney left his father, he walked from the 
 house, and not knowing, or* much caring in what direction 
 he went, turned into the garden. It was a wild, neglected 
 sort of spot, more orchard than garden, with fruit-trees of 
 great size, long past bearing, and close underwood in places 
 that barred the passage. Here and there little patches 
 of cultivation appeared; sometimes flowering plants, but 
 oftener vegetables. One long alley, with tall hedges of 
 box, had been preserved, which led to a little mound planted 
 with laurels and arbutus, and known as "Laurel Hill; " here 
 a little rustic summer-house had once stood, and still, 
 though now in ruins, showed where, in former days, people 
 came to taste the fresh breeze above the tree-tops, and enjoy 
 the wide range of a view that stretched to the Slieve-Bloom 
 Mountains, nearly thirty miles away. 
 
 Young Kearney reached this spot, and sat down to gaze 
 upon a scene every detail of which was well known to him, 
 but of which he was utterly unconscious as he looked. "I 
 am turned out to starve," cried he, aloud, as though there 
 was a sense of relief in thus proclaiming his sorrow to the 
 winds. "I am told to go and work upon the roads, to live 
 by my daily labor. Treated like a gentleman until I am 
 bound to that condition by every tie of feeling and kindred, 
 and then bade to know myself as an outcast. I have not 
 even Joe Atlee's resource; I have not imbibed the instincts 
 of the lower orders so as to be able to give them back to 
 them in fiction or in song. I cannot either idealize rebellion, 
 or make treason tuneful. 
 
 "It is not yet a week since that same Atlee envied me my 
 station as the son and heir to this place, and owned to me 
 that there was that in the sense of name and lineage that 
 
DICK'S REVERY. 139 
 
 more than balanced personal success, and here I am now, a 
 beggar! I can enlist, however, blessings on the noble 
 career that ignores character and defies capacity. I don't 
 know that I '11 bring much loyalty to her Majesty's cause, 
 but I '11 lend her the aid of as broad shoulders and tough 
 sinews as my neighbors." And here his voice grew louder 
 and harsher, and with a ring of defiance in it. *'And no 
 cutting off the entail, my Lord Kilgobbin ! no escape from 
 that cruel necessity of an heir ! I may carry my musket in 
 the ranks, but I '11 not surrender my birthright! " 
 
 The thought that he had at length determined on the 
 path he should follow aroused his courage and made his 
 heart lighter; and then there was that in the manner he was 
 vindicating his station and his claim that seemed to savor 
 of heroism. He began to fancy his comrades regarding 
 him with a certain deference, and treating him with a 
 respect that recognized his condition. "I know the shame 
 my father will feel when he sees to what he has driven me. 
 What an offence to his love of rank and station to behold 
 his son in the coarse uniform of a private! An only son, 
 and heir, too! I can picture to myself his shock as he 
 reads the letter in which I shall say good-bye, and then turn 
 to tell my sister that her brother is a common soldier, and 
 in this way lost to her forever! 
 
 "And what is it all about? What terrible things have I 
 done? What entanglements have I contracted? Where 
 have I forged ? Whose name have I stolen ? whose daugh- 
 ter seduced? What is laid to my charge, beyond that I 
 have lived like a gentleman, and striven to eat and drink 
 and dress like one? And I'll wager my life that for one 
 who will blame him there will be ten — no, not ten, fifty — 
 to condemn me. I had a kind, trustful, affectionate father, 
 restricting himself in scores of ways to give me my educa- 
 tion among the highest class of my contemporaries. I was 
 largely supplied with means, indulged in every way, and 
 if I turned my steps towards home, welcomed with love and 
 affection." 
 
 "And fearfully spoiled by all the petting he met with," 
 said a sofi voice, leaning over his shoulder, while a pair of,^ 
 very liquid gray eyes gazed into his own. 
 
140 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "What, Nina! — Mademoiselle Nina, I mean," said he; 
 "have you been long there? " 
 
 "Long enough to hear you make a very pitiful lamenta- 
 tion over a condition that I, in my ignorance, used to believe 
 was only a little short of Paradise." 
 
 "You fancied that, did you?" 
 
 "Yes, I did so fancy it." 
 
 " Might I be bold enough to ask from what circumstance, 
 though? I entreat you to tell me what belongings of mine, 
 what resources of luxury or pleasure, what incident of my 
 daily life suggested this impression of yours ? " 
 
 " Perhaps, as a matter of strict reasoning, I have little to 
 show for my conviction ; but if you ask me why I thought 
 as I did, it was simply from contrasting your condition with 
 my own, and seeing that in everything where my lot has 
 gloom and darkness, if not worse, yours, my ungrateful 
 cousin, was all sunshine." 
 
 " Let us see a little of this sunshine. Cousin Nina. Sit 
 down here beside me, and show me, I pray, some of those 
 bright tints that I am longing to gaze on." 
 
 "There 's not room for both of us on that bench." 
 
 "Ample room; we shall sit the closer." 
 
 "No, Cousin Dick; give me your arm and we '11 take a 
 stroll together." 
 
 "Which way shall it be?" 
 
 "You shall choose, cousin." 
 
 "If I have the choice, then, I'll carry you off, Nina, for 
 I 'm thinking of bidding good-bj'e to the old house and all 
 within it." 
 
 "I don't think I'll consent that far," said she, smiling. 
 "I have had my experience of what it is to be without a 
 home, or something very nearly that. I '11 not willingly 
 recall the sensation. But what has put such gloomy 
 thoughts in your head? What, or rather who, is driving 
 you to this?" 
 
 "My father, Nina, my father! " 
 
 "This is past my comprehending." 
 
 "I '11 make it very intelligible. My father, by way of 
 curbing my extravagance, tells me I must give up all pre- 
 tension to the life of a gentleman, and go into an office as 
 
DICK'S KEVERY. 141 
 
 a clerk. I refuse. He insists, and tells me, moreover, a 
 number of little pleasant traits of my unfitness to do any- 
 thing, so that I interrupt him by hinting that I might 
 possibly break stones on the highway. He seizes the 
 project with avidity, and offers to supply me with a hammer 
 for my work. All fact, on my honor! I am neither adding 
 to nor concealing. I am relating what occurred little more 
 than an hour ago, and I have forgotten nothing of the inter- 
 view. He, as I said, offers to give me a stone-hammer. 
 And now I ask you, is it for me to accept this generous 
 offer, or would it be better to wander over that bog yonder, 
 and take my chance of a deep pool, or the bleak world where 
 immersion and death are just as sure, though a little slower 
 in coming? " 
 
 "Have you told Kate of this? " 
 
 "No, I have not seen her. I don't know if I had seen 
 her that I should have told her. Kate has so grown to 
 believe all my father's caprices to be absolute wisdom that 
 even his sudden gusts of passion seem to her like flashes of 
 a bright intelligence, too quick and too brilliant for mere 
 reason. She could give me no comfort nor counsel, either." 
 
 "I am not of your mind," said she, slowly. "She has 
 the great gift of what people so mistakingly call common- 
 sense." 
 
 "And she 'd recommend me, perhaps, not to quarrel with 
 my father, and to go and break the stones." 
 
 "Were you ever in love. Cousin Dick?" asked she, in 
 a tone every accent of which betokened earnestness and 
 even gravity. 
 
 "Perhaps I might say never. I have spooned or flirted, 
 or whatever the name of it might be; but I was never 
 seriously attached to one girl, and unable to think of any- 
 thing but her. But what has your question to do with 
 this?" 
 
 "Everything. If you really loved a- girl, — that is, if she 
 filled every corner of your heart, if she was first in every 
 plan and project of your life, not alone her wishes and her 
 likings, but her very words and the sound of her voice, — if 
 you saw her in everything that was beautiful, and heard her 
 in every tone that delighted you, — if to be moving in the 
 
142 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 air she breathed was ecstasy, and that heaven itself without 
 her was cheerless ; if — " 
 
 "Oh, don't go on, Nina. None of these ecstasies could 
 ever be mine. I have no nature to be moved or moulded 
 in this fashion. I might be very fond of a girl; but she 'd 
 never drive me mad if she left me for another." 
 
 "I hope she may, then, if it be with such false money 
 you would buy her," said she, fiercely. "Do you know," 
 added she, after a pause, "I was almost on the verge of 
 saying, go and break the stones; the Dietier is not much 
 beneath you, after all ! " 
 
 "This is scarcely civil, Mademoiselle; see what my 
 candor has brought upon me! " 
 
 "Be as candid as you like upon the faults of your nature. 
 Tell every wickedness that you have done or dreamed of, 
 but don't own to cold-heartedness. For that there is no 
 sympathy! " 
 
 "Let us go back? a bit, then," said he, "and let us sup- 
 pose that I did love in the same fervent and insane manner 
 you spoke of, what and how would it help me here? " 
 
 "Of course it would. Of all the ingenuity that plotters 
 talk of, of all the imagination that poets dream, there is 
 nothing to compare with love. To gain a plodding subsist- 
 ence a man will do much. To win the girl he loves, to 
 make her his own, he will do everything; he will strive, 
 and strain, and even starve to win her. Poverty will have 
 nothing mean if confronted for her, hardship have no 
 suffering if endured for her sake. With her before him all 
 the world shows but one goal; without her life is a mere 
 dreary task, and himself a hired laborer." 
 
 "I confess, after all this, that I don't see how breaking 
 stones would be more palatable to me because some pretty 
 girl that I was fond of saw me hammering away at my 
 limestone ! " 
 
 "If you could have loved as I would wish you to love, 
 your career had never fallen to this. The heart that loved 
 would have stimulated the head that thought. Don't fancy 
 that people are only better because they are in love; but 
 they are greater, bolder, brighter, more daring in danger, 
 and more ready in every emergency. So wonder-working 
 
DICK'S EEVERY. 143 
 
 is the real passion that even in the base mockery of Love 
 men have risen to genius. Look what it made Petrarch; 
 and I might say Byron, too, tho' he never loved worthy of 
 the name." 
 
 *'And how came you to know all this, cousin mine? I 'm 
 really curious to know that." 
 
 "I was reared in Italy, Cousin Dick, and I have made a 
 deep study of nature through French novels." 
 
 Now there was a laughing devilry in her eye, as she said 
 this, that terribly puzzled the young fellow; for just at the 
 very moment her enthusiasm had begun to stir his breast, 
 her merry mockery wafted It away as with a storm- 
 wind. 
 
 "I wish I knew if you were serious," said he, gravely. 
 
 ''Just as serious as you were when you spoke of being 
 ruined." 
 
 "I was so, I pledge my honor. The conversation I 
 reported to you really took place ; and when you joined me, 
 I was gravely deliberating with myself whether I should 
 take a header into a deep pool or enlist as a soldier." 
 
 ''Fie, fie! how ignoble all that is! You don't know the 
 hundreds of thousands of things one can do in life. Do 
 you speak French or Italian?" 
 
 "I can read them, but not freely; but how are they to help 
 me?" 
 
 "You shall see; first of all, let me be your tutor. We 
 shall take two hours, three if you like, every morning. 
 Are you free now from all your college studies? " 
 
 "I can be after "Wednesday next. I ought to go up for 
 my term examination." 
 
 "Well, do so; but mind, don't bring down Mr. Atlee 
 with you." 
 
 "My chum is no favorite of yours? " 
 
 "That's as it may be," said she, haughtily. "I have 
 only said let us not have the embarrassment, or, if you like 
 it, the pleasure of his company. I '11 give you a list of 
 books to bring down, and my life be on it, but my course 
 of study will surpass what you have been doing at Trinity. 
 Is it agreed?" 
 
 "Give me till to-morrow to think of it, Nina." 
 
144 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''That does not sound like a very warm acceptance; but 
 be it so, — till to-morrow." 
 
 ''Here are some of Kate's dogs," cried he, angrily. 
 "Down, Fan, down! I say. I'll leave you now before she 
 joins us. Mind, not a word of what I told you." 
 
 And, without another word, he sprang over a low fence, 
 and speedily disappeared in the copse beyond it. 
 
 "Wasn't that Dick I saw making his escape?" cried 
 Kate, as she came up. 
 
 "Yes, we were taking a walk together, and he left me 
 very abruptly." 
 
 "I wish I had not spoiled a tete-a-tete,'* said Kate, 
 merrily. 
 
 "It is no great mischief; we can always renew it." 
 
 "Dear Nina," said the other, caressingly, as she drew 
 her arm around her, — " dear, dear Nina, do not, do not, I 
 beseech you." 
 
 "Don't what, child? — you must not speak riddles." 
 
 "Don't make that poor boy in love with you. You your- 
 self told me you could save him from it if you liked." 
 
 "And so I shall, Kate, if you don't dictate or order me. 
 Leave me quite to myself and I shall be most merciful." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 MATHEW Kearney's "study." 
 
 Had Mathew Kearney but read the second sheet of his cor- 
 respondent's letter, it is more than likely that Dick had not 
 taken such a gloomy view of his condition. Mr. McKeown's 
 epistle continued in this fashion: "That ought to do for 
 him, Mathew, or my name ain't Tom McKeown. It is 
 not that he is any worse or better than other young fel- 
 lows of his own stamp, but he has the greatest scamp in 
 Christendom for his daily associate. Atlee is deep in all 
 the mischief that goes on in the national press. I believe 
 he is a head-centre of the Fenians, and I know he has a 
 correspondence with the French socialists, and that Rights- 
 of-labor-knot of vagabonds who meet at Geneva. Your boy 
 is not too wise to keep himself out of these scrapes, and 
 he IS just by name and station of consequence enough to 
 make these fellows make up to and flatter him. Give him a 
 sound fright then ; and when he is thoroughly alarmed about 
 his failure, send him abroad for a short tour, let him go 
 study at Halle or Heidelberg, — anything, in short, that will 
 take him away from Ireland, and break off his intimacy 
 with this Atlee and his companions. While he is with you 
 at Kilgobbin, don't let him make acquaintance with those 
 Radical fellows in the county towns. Keep him down, 
 Mathew, keep him down ; and if you find that you cannot 
 do this, make him believe that you '11 be one day lords of 
 Kilgobbin, and the more he has to lose the more reluctant 
 he '11 be to risk it. If he 'd take to farming, and marry 
 some decent girl, even a little beneath him in life, it would 
 save you all uneasiness ; but he is just that thing now that 
 brings all the misery on us in Ireland. He thinks he 's a 
 
 10 
 
146 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 gentleman because he can do nothing ; and to save himself 
 from the disgrace of incapacity he 'd like to be a rebel." 
 
 If Mr. Tom McKeown's reasonings were at times some- 
 what abstruse and hard of comprehension to his friend 
 Kearney, it was not that he did not bestow on them due 
 thought and reflection; and over this private and strictly 
 confidential page he had now meditated for hours. 
 
 "Bad luck to me," cried he at last, " if I see what he 's at. 
 If I 'm to tell the boy he is ruined to-day, and to-morrow to 
 announce to him that he is a lord, — if I 'm to threaten him 
 now with poverty, and the morning after I 'm to send him 
 to Halle or Hell, or wherever it is, — I '11 soon be out of my 
 mind, myself, through bare confusion. As to having him 
 ' down,' he 's low enough; but so shall I be, too, if I keep 
 him there. I 'm not used to seeing my house uncomfort- 
 able, and I cannot bear it." 
 
 Such were some of his reflections over his agent's advice; 
 and it may be imagined that the Machiavellian Mr. McKeown 
 had fallen upon a very inapt pupil. 
 
 It must be owned that Mathew Kearney was somewhat 
 out of temper with his son even before the arrival of this 
 letter. While the "swells," as he would persist in calling 
 the two English visitors, were there, Dick took no trouble 
 about them, nor to all seeming made any impression on 
 them. As Mathew said, "He let Joe Atlee make all the 
 running, and, signs on it! Joe Atlee was taken off to town 
 as Walpole's companion, and Dick not so much as thought 
 of. Joe, too, did the honors of the house as if it was his 
 own, and talked to Lockwood about coming down for the 
 partridge-shooting, as if he was the head of the family. 
 The fellow was a bad lot,«and McKeown was right so far, 
 
 — the less Dick saw of him the better." 
 
 The trouble and distress these reflections, and others like 
 them, cost him would more than have recompensed Dick, 
 had he been hard-hearted enough to desire a vengeance. 
 "For a quarter of an hour, or maybe twenty minutes, '' said 
 he, " I can be as angry as any man in Europe, and, if it was 
 required of me during that time to do anything desperate, 
 
 — downright wicked, — I could be bound to do it ; and 
 what 's more, I 'd stand to it afterwards if it cost me the 
 
MATHEW KEARNEY'S "STUDY." 147 
 
 gallows. But as for keeping up the same mind, as for being 
 able to say to myself my heart is as hard as ever, I 'm just 
 as much bent on cruelty as I was yesterday, — that 's clean 
 beyond me ; and the reason, God help me, is no great com- 
 fort to me after all; for it 's just this, — that when I do a 
 hard thing, whether distraining a creature out of his bit of 
 ground, selling a widow's pig, or fining a fellow for shoot- 
 ing a hare, I lose my appetite and have no heart for my 
 meals ; and as sure as 1 go asleep, I dream of all the mis- 
 fortunes in life happening to me, and my guardian angel 
 sitting laughing all the while and saying to me, ' Didn't you 
 bring it on yourself, Mathew Kearney? could n't you bear a 
 little rub without trying to make a calamity of it? Must 
 somebody be always punished when anything goes wrong in 
 life ? Make up your mind to have six troubles every day 
 of your life, and see how jolly you '11 be the day you can 
 only count five, or maybe four.' " 
 
 As Mr. Kearney sat brooding in this wise, Peter Gill 
 made his entrance into the study with the formidable 
 monthly lists and accounts, whose examination constituted 
 a veritable doomsday to the unhappy master. 
 
 " Would n't next Saturday do, Peter? " asked Kearney, in 
 a tone of almost entreaty. 
 
 "I 'm afther ye since Tuesday last, and I don't think I '11 
 be able to go on much longer." 
 
 Now, as Mr. Gill meant by this speech to imply that he 
 was obliged to trust entirely to his memory for all the details 
 which would have been committed to writing by others, and 
 to a notched stick for the manifold dates of a vast variety 
 of events, it was not really a very unfair request he had 
 made for a peremptory hearing. 
 
 "I vow to the Lord," sighed out Kearney, "I believe I 'm 
 the hardest worked man in the three kingdoms." 
 
 "Maybe you are," muttered Gill, though certainly the 
 concurrence scarcely sounded hearty, while he meanwhile 
 arranged the books. 
 
 "Oh, I know well enough what you mean. If a man 
 does n't work with a spade or follow the plough, you won't 
 believe that he works at all. He must drive, or dig, or 
 drain, or mow. There 's no labor but what strains a man's 
 
148 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 back, and makes him weary about the loins ; but I '11 tell 
 you, Peter Gill, that it 's here " — and he touched his fore- 
 head with his finger, — ''it's here is the real workshop. 
 It's thinking and contriving; setting this against that; 
 doing one thing that another may happen, and guessing 
 what will come if we do this and don't do that; carrying 
 everything in your brain, and, whether you are sitting over 
 a glass with a friend, or taking a nap after dinner, think- 
 ing away all the time! What would you call that, Peter 
 Gill, — what would you call that? " 
 
 ''Madness, begorra, or mighty near it! " 
 
 "No; it's just work, — brain-work. As much above 
 mere manual labor as the intellect, the faculty that raises us 
 above the brutes, is above the — the — " 
 
 "Yes," said Gill, opening the large volume, and vaguely 
 passing his hand over a page. "It's somewhere there 
 about the Conacre!" 
 
 "You 're little better than a beast! " said Kearney, 
 angrily. 
 
 "Maybe I am, and maybe I'm not. Let us finish this, 
 now that we 're about it." 
 
 And so saying, he deposited his other books and papers 
 on the table, and then drew from his breast-pocket a some- 
 what thick roll of exceedingly dirty bank-notes, fastened 
 with a leather thong. 
 
 "I'm glad to see some money at last, Peter," cried 
 Kearney, as his eye caught sight of the notes. 
 
 "Faix, then, it's little good they'll do ye," muttered 
 the other, gruflfly. 
 
 "What d' ye mean by that, sir? " asked he, angrily. 
 
 "Just what I said, my Lord, the devil a more nor less; 
 and that the money you see here is no more yours nor it is 
 mine! It belongs to the land it came from. Ay, ay, 
 stamp away, and go red in the face; you must hear the 
 truth, whether you like it or no. The place we 're living in 
 is going to rack and ruin out of sheer bad treatment. 
 There 's not a hedge on the estate; there isn't a gate that 
 could be called a gate; the holes the people live in isn't 
 good enough for badgers ; there 's no water for the mill at 
 the cross-roads; and the Loch meadows is drowned with 
 
MATHEW KEARNEY'S "STUDY." 149 
 
 wet, — we 're dragging for the hay, like sea- weed ! And 
 you think you 've a right to these," — and he actually shook 
 the notes at him, — "to go and squander them on them 
 ' impedint ' Englishmen that was laughing at you! Did n't 
 I hear them myself about the tablecloth that one said was 
 the sail of a boat." 
 
 "Will you hold your tongue?" cried Kearney, wild with 
 passion. 
 
 "1 will not! I'll die on the floore but I'll speak my 
 mind." 
 
 This was not only a favorite phrase of Mr. Gill's, but it 
 was so far significant that it always indicated he was about 
 to give notice to leave, — a menace on his part of no unfre- 
 quent occurrence. 
 
 " Ye 's going, are ye? " asked Kearney, jeeringly. 
 
 "I just am; and I'm come to give up the books, and 
 to get my receipts and my charac — ter." 
 
 "It won't be hard to give the last, anyway," said Kear- 
 ney, with a grin. 
 
 " So much the better. It will save your honor much 
 writing, with all that you have to do." 
 
 "Do you want me to kick you out of the office, Peter 
 Gill?" 
 
 "No, my Lord, I'm going quiet and peaceable. I 'm only 
 asking my rights." 
 
 "You 're bidding hard to be kicked out, you are? " 
 
 "Am I to leave them here, or will your honor go over the 
 books with me?" 
 
 "Leave the notes, sir, and go to the devil." 
 
 "I will, my Lord; and one comfort at least, I'll have: 
 it won't be harder to put up with his temper." 
 
 Mr. Gill's head barely escaped the heavy account-book 
 which struck the door above him as he escaped from the 
 room, and Mathew Kearney sat back in his chair and 
 grasped the arms of it like one threatened with a fit. 
 
 "Where 's Miss Kitty, — where 's my daughter? " cried he 
 aloud, as though there was some one within hearing. 
 "Taking the dogs a walk, I '11 be bound," muttered he, "or 
 gone to see somebody's child with the measles, devil fear 
 her! She has plenty on her hands to do anywhere but at 
 
150 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 home. The place might be going to rack and ruin for her 
 if there was only a young colt to look at, or a new litter of 
 pigs! And so you think to frighten me, Peter Gill! 
 You 've been doing the same thing every Easter, and every 
 harvest, these five-and-twenty years ! I can only say I wish 
 you had kept your threat long ago, and the property would n't 
 have as many tumble-down cabins and ruined fences as it 
 has now, and my rent-roll, too, wouldn't have been the 
 worse. I don't believe there 's a man in Ireland more 
 cruelly robbed than myself. There is n't an estate in the 
 county has not risen in value except my own! There 's not 
 a landed gentleman has n't laid by money in the barony 
 but myself, and if you were to believe the newspapers, I 'm 
 the hardest landlord in the province of Leinster. Is that 
 Mickey Doolan, there? Mickey!" cried he, opening the 
 window, "did you see Miss Kearney anywhere about? " 
 
 "Yes, my Lord. I see her coming up the Bog road with 
 Miss O'Shea." 
 
 "The worse luck mine," muttered he, as he closed the 
 •window, and leaned his head ou his hand. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 AN UNWELCOME VISIT. 
 
 If Mathew Kearney had been put to the question, he could 
 not have concealed the fact, that the human being he most 
 feared and dreaded in life was his neighbor Miss Betty 
 O'Shea. 
 
 With two years of seniority over him, Miss Betty had 
 bullied him as a child, snubbed him as a youth, and op- 
 posed and sneered at him ever after; and to such an 
 extent did her influence over his character extend, accord- 
 ing to his own belief, that there was not a single good 
 trait of his nature she had not thwarted by ridicule, nor a 
 single evil temptation to whicli he had yielded, that had 
 not come out of sheer opposition to that lady's dictation. 
 
 Malevolent people, indeed, had said that Mathew Kearney 
 had once had matrimonial designs on Miss Betty, or rather, 
 on that snug place and nice property called " O'Shea's 
 Barn," of which she was sole heiress ; but he most stoutly 
 declared this story to be groundless, and in a forcible 
 manner asseverated that had he been Robinson Crusoe and 
 Miss Betty the only inhabitant of the island with him, he 
 would have lived and died in celibacy rather than have 
 contracted dearer ties. 
 
 Miss Betty, to give her the name by which she was best 
 known, was no miracle of either tact or amiability, but she 
 had certain qualities that could not be disparaged. She 
 was a strict Catholic, charitable, in her own peculiar and 
 imperious way, to the poor, very desirous to be strictly just 
 and honest, and such a sure foe to everything that she 
 thought pretension or humbug of any kind — which meant 
 anything that did not square with her own habits — that 
 
152 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 she was perfectly intolerable to all who did not accept her- 
 self and her own mode of life as a model and an example. 
 
 Thus, a stout-bodied copper urn on the tea-table, a very 
 uncouth jaunting-car, driven by an old man, whose only 
 livery was a cockade, some very muddy port as a dinner 
 wine, and whiskey-punch afterwards on the brown mahog- 
 any, were so many articles of belief with her, to dissent 
 from any of which was a downright heresy. 
 
 Thus, after Nina arrived at the castle, the appearance of 
 napkins palpably affected her constitution ; with the advent 
 of finger-glasses she ceased her visits, and bluntly declined 
 all invitations to dinner. That coffee and some indescrib- 
 able liberties would follow, as postprandial excesses, she 
 secretly imparted to Kate Kearney, in a note, which con- 
 cluded with the assurance that when the day of these enor- 
 mities arrived, O'Shea's Barn would be open to her as a 
 refuge and a sanctuary ; " but not," added she, '' with your 
 cousin, for I'll not let the hussy cross my doors." 
 
 For months now this strict quarantine had lasted, and 
 except for the interchange of some brief and very uninterest- 
 ing notes, all intimacy had ceased between the two houses 
 — a circumstance, I am loath to own, which was most un- 
 gallantly recorded every day after dinner by old Kearney, 
 who drank ^'Miss Betty's health, and long absence to her." 
 It was then with no small astonishment Kate was overtaken 
 in the avenue by Miss Betty on her old chestnut mare 
 Judy, a small bog-boy mounted on the croup behind, to 
 act as groom ; for in this way Paddy Walshe was accus- 
 tomed to travel, without the slightest consciousness that he 
 was not in strict conformity with the ways of Rotten Row 
 and the " Bois." 
 
 That there was nothing " stuck-up " or pretentious about 
 this mode of being accompanied by one's groom — a prop- 
 osition scarcely assailable — was Miss Betty's declaration, 
 delivered in a sort of challenge to the world. Indeed, 
 certain ticklesome tendencies in Judy, particularly when 
 touched with the heel, seemed to offer the strongest protest 
 against the practice ; for whenever pushed to any increase 
 of speed or admonished in any way, the beast usually re- 
 sponded by a hoist of the haunches, which invariably com- 
 
AN UNWELCOME VISIT. 153 
 
 pelled Paddy to clasp his mistress round the waist for 
 safety, — a situation which, however repugnant to maiden 
 bashfulness, time, and perhaps necessity, had reconciled 
 her to. At all events, poor Paddy's terror would have been 
 the amplest refutation of scandal, while the stern immobil- 
 ity of Miss Betty during the embrace would have silenced 
 even malevolence. 
 
 On the present occasion a sharp canter of several miles 
 had reduced Judy to a very quiet and decorous pace, so 
 that Paddy and his mistress sat almost back to back, — a 
 combination that only long habit enabled Kate to witness 
 without laughing. 
 
 ''Are you alone up at the castle, dear?" asked Miss 
 Betty, as she rode along at her side ; "or have you the house 
 full of what the papers call ' distinguished company ? ' " 
 
 "We are quite alone, godmother. My brother is with 
 us, but we have no strangers." 
 
 "I am glad of it. I've come over to 'have it out' with 
 your father, and it's pleasant to know we shall be to 
 ourselves." 
 
 Now, as this announcement of having "it out" conveyed 
 to Kate's mind nothing short of an open declaration of war, 
 a day of reckoning on which Miss O'Shea would come pre- 
 pared with a full indictment, and a resolution to prosecute 
 to conviction, the poor girl shuddered at a prospect so cer- 
 tain to end in calamity. 
 
 " Papa is very far from well, godmother," said she, in a 
 mild way. 
 
 " So they tell me in the town," said the other, snappishly. 
 " His brother magistrates said that the day he came in, about 
 that supposed attack — the memorable search for arms — " 
 
 "Supposed attack! but, godmother, pray don't imagine 
 we had invented all that. I think you know me well enough 
 and long enough to know — " 
 
 "To know that you would not have had a young scamp 
 of a Castle aide-de-camp on a visit during your father's 
 absence, not to say anything about amusing your English 
 visitor by shooting down your own tenantry." 
 
 ' ' Will you listen to me for five minutes ? " 
 
 " No, not for three." 
 
154 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Two, then — one even — one minute, godmother, will 
 convince you how you wrong me." 
 
 " I won't give you that. I didn't come over about you 
 nor your affairs. When the father makes a fool of himself, 
 why would n't the daughter? The whole country is laughing 
 at him. His Lordship indeed ! a ruined estate and a tenantry 
 in rags ; and the only remedy, as Peter Gill tells me, raising 
 the rents, — raising the rents wliere every one is a pauper." 
 
 •'What would you have him do. Miss O'Shea?" said 
 Kate, almost angrily. 
 
 " I '11 tell you what I 'd have him do. I 'd have him rise 
 of a morning before nine o'clock, and be out with his laborers 
 at daybreak. I 'd have him reform a whole lazy household 
 of blackguards, good for nothing but waste and wickedness. 
 I 'd have him apprentice your brother to a decent trade or a 
 light business. I 'd have him declare he 'd kick the first man 
 that called him ' My Lord ; ' and for yourself, well, it 's no 
 matter — " 
 
 " Yes, but it is, godmother, a great matter to me at least. 
 What about myself ? " 
 
 " Well, I don't wish to speak of it, but it just dropped out 
 of my lips by accident; and perhaps, though not pleasant to 
 talk about, it 's as well it was said and done with. I meant 
 to tell your father that it must be all over between you and 
 my nephew, Gorman ; that I won't have him back here on 
 leave as I intended. I know it did n't go far, dear. There 
 was none of what they call love in the case. You would 
 probably have liked one another well enough at last ; but I 
 w^on't have it, and it 's better we came to the right under- 
 standing at once." 
 
 "Your curb-chain is loose, godmother," said the girl; 
 who now, pale as death and trembling all over, advanced to 
 fasten the link. 
 
 " I declare to the Lord he 's asleep ! " said Miss Betty, as 
 the wearied head of her page dropped heavily on her shoulder. 
 " Take the curb off, dear, or I may lose it. Put it in your 
 pocket for me, Kate ; that is, if you wear a pocket." 
 
 " Of course I do, godmother. I carry very stout keys in 
 it, too. Look at these." 
 
 "Ay, ay. I liked all that, once on a time, well enough, 
 
AN UNWELCOME VISIT. 155 
 
 and used to think you 'd be a good thrifty wife for a poor 
 man ; but with the Viscount your father, and the young 
 Princess your first cousin, and the devil knows what of your 
 fine brother, I believe the sooner we part good friends the 
 better. Not but if you like my plan for you, I '11 be just as 
 ready as ever to aid you." 
 
 '' I have not heard the plan yet," said Kate, faintly. 
 
 " Just a nunnery, then — no more nor less than that. The 
 ' Sacred Heart ' at Namur, or the Sisters of Mercy here at 
 home in Bagot Street, I believe, if you like better — eh? " 
 
 "It is soon to be able to make up one's mind on such a 
 point. I want a little time for this, godmother." 
 
 " You would not want time if your heart were in a holy 
 work, Kate Kearney. It 's little time you 'd be asking if I 
 said will you have Gorman O'Shea for a husband? " 
 
 "There is such a thing as insult. Miss O'Shea, and no 
 amount of long intimacy can license that." 
 
 " I ask your pardon, godchild. I wish you could know 
 how sorry I feel." 
 
 " Say no more, godmother, say no more, I beseech you," 
 cried Kate ; and her tears now gushed forth, and relieved her 
 almost bursting heart. "I'll take this short path through 
 the shrubbery, and be at the door before you," cried she, 
 rushing away ; while Miss Betty, with a sharp touch of the 
 spur, provoked such a plunge as effectually awoke Paddy, 
 and apprised him that his duties as groom were soon to be 
 in request. 
 
 While earnestly assuring him that some changes in his 
 diet should be speedily adopted against somnolency. Miss 
 Betty rode briskly on, and reached the hall-door. 
 
 " I told you I should be first, godmother," said the girl; 
 and the pleasant ring of her voice showed she had regained 
 her spirits, or at least such self-control as enabled her to 
 suppress her sorrow. 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 A DOMESTIC DISCUSSION. 
 
 It is a not infrequent distress in small households, especially 
 when some miles from a market town, to make adequate 
 preparation for an unexpected guest at dinner; but even 
 this is a very inferior difficulty to that experienced by those 
 who have to order the repast in conformity with certain 
 rigid notions of a guest who will criticise the smallest devia- 
 tion from the most humble standard, and actually rebuke 
 the slightest pretension to delicacy of food or elegance of 
 table equipage. 
 
 No sooner, then, had Kate learned that Miss O'Shea was 
 to remain for dinner, than she immediately set herself to 
 think over all the possible reductions that might be made ui 
 the fare, and all the plainness and simplicity that could be 
 imparted to the service of the meal. * 
 
 Napkins had not been the sole reform suggested by the 
 Greek cousin. She had introduced flowers on the table, and 
 so artfully had she decked out the board with fruit and orna- 
 mental plants, that she had succeeded in effecting by artifice 
 what would have been an egregious failure if more openly 
 attempted, — the service of the dishes one by one to the 
 guests without any being placed on the table. These, with 
 finger-glasses, she had already achieved, nor had she in the 
 recesses of her heart given up the hope of seeing the day 
 that her uncle would rise from the table as she did, give her 
 his arm to the drawing-room, and bow profoundly as he left 
 her. Of the inestimable advantages, social, intellectual, and 
 moral, of this system, she had indeed been cautious to hold 
 forth ; for, like a great reformer, she was satisfied to leave 
 her improvements to the slow test of time, " educating her 
 
A DOMESTIC DISCUSSION. 157 
 
 public," as a great authority has called it, while she bided 
 the result in patience. 
 
 Indeed, as poor Mathew Kearney was not to be indulged 
 with the luxury of whiskey-punch during his dinner, it was 
 not easy to reply to his question, "When am I to have my 
 tumbler?" as though he evidently believed the aforesaid 
 • ' tumbler " was an institution that could not be abrogated 
 or omitted altogether. 
 
 Coffee in the drawing-room was only a half success so 
 long as the gentlemen sat over their wine ; and as for the 
 daily cigarette Nina smoked with it, Kate, in her simplicity, 
 believed it was only done as a sort of protest at being 
 deserted by those unnatural protectors who preferred poteen 
 to ladies. 
 
 It was therefore in no small perturbation of mind that 
 Kate rushed to her cousin's room with the awful tidings that 
 Miss Betty had arrived and intended to remain for dinner. 
 
 " Do you mean that odious woman with the boy and baud- 
 box behind her on horseback ? " asked Nina, superciliously. 
 
 " Yes, she always travels in that fashion ; she is odd and 
 eccentric in scores of things, but a fine-hearted, honest 
 woman, generous to the poor, and true to her friends." 
 
 " I don't care for her moral qualities, but I do bargain for 
 a little outward decency, and some respect for the world's 
 opinion." 
 
 " You will like her, Nina, when you know her." 
 
 "I shall profit by the warning. I'll take care not to 
 know her." 
 
 ' ' She is one of the oldest, I believe the oldest, friend our 
 family has in the world." 
 
 "What a sad confession, child; but I have always 
 deplored longevity." 
 
 " Don't be supercilious or sarcastic, Nina, but help me 
 with your own good sense and wise advice. She has not 
 come over in the best of humors. She has, or fancies she 
 has, some difference to settle with papa. They seldom meet 
 without a quarrel, and I fear this occasion is to be no excep- 
 tion ; so do aid me to get things over pleasantly, if it be 
 possible." 
 
 "She snubbed me the only time I met her. I tried to 
 
158 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 help her off with her bonnet, and, unfortunately, I dis- 
 placed, if I did not actually remove, her wig, and she 
 muttered something ' about a rope-dancer not being a 
 dexterous lady's-maid.' " 
 
 " Oh, Nina, surely you do not mean — " 
 
 "Not that I was exactly a rope-dancer, Kate, but I had 
 on a Greek jacket that morning of blue velvet and gold, 
 and a white skirt, and perhaps these had some memories of 
 the circus for the old lady." 
 
 " You are only jesting now, Nina." 
 
 " Don't you know me well enough to know that I never 
 jest when 1 think, or even suspect, I am injured? " 
 
 "Injured!" 
 
 "It 's not the word I wanted, but it will do ; I used it in 
 its French sense." 
 
 " You bear no malice, I 'm sure? " said the other, caress- 
 ingly. 
 
 "No! " replied she, with a shrug that seemed to depre- 
 cate even having a thought about her. 
 
 " She will stay for dinner, and we must, as far as possible, 
 receive her in the way she has been used to here, — a very 
 homely dinner, served as she has always seen it, — no fruit 
 or flowers on the table, no claret-cup, no finger-glasses." 
 
 ' ' I hope no tablecloth ; could n't we have a tray on a 
 corner table, and every one help himself as he strolled about 
 the room ? " 
 
 " Dear Nina, be reasonable just for this once." 
 
 " I'll come down just as I am, or, better still, I'll take 
 down my hair and cram it into a net ; I 'd oblige her with 
 dirty hands, if I only knew how to do it." 
 
 "I see you only say these things in jest; you really do 
 mean to help me through this difficulty." 
 
 ' ' But why a difficulty ? what reason can you offer for all 
 this absurd submission to the whims of a very tiresome old 
 woman? Is she very rich, and do you expect an heritage? " 
 
 " No, no; nothing of the kind." 
 
 " Does she load you with valuable presents? Is she ever 
 ready to commemorate birthdays and family festivals? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Has she any especial quality or gift beyond riding double 
 
A DOMESTIC DISCUSSION. 159 
 
 and a bad temper ? Oh, I was forgetting ; she is the aunt of 
 her nephew, is n't she ? — the dashing lancer that was to 
 spend his summer over here ? " 
 
 '' You were indeed forgetting when you said this," said 
 Kate, proudly ; and her face grew scarlet as she spoke. 
 
 " Tell me that you like him or that he likes you ; tell me 
 that there is something, anything, between you, child, and 
 I '11 be discreet and mannerly, too ; and more, I '11 behave 
 to the old lady with every regard to one who holds such 
 dear interests in her keeping. But don't bandage my eyes, 
 and tell me at the same time to look out and see." 
 
 "I have no confidences to make you," said Kate, coldly. 
 ''I came here to ask a favor, — a very small favor, after 
 all, — and you might have accorded it, without question or 
 ridicule." 
 
 "But which you never need have asked, Kate," said the 
 other, gravely. "You are the mistress here; I am but a 
 very humble guest. Your orders are obeyed, as they ought 
 to be ; my suggestions may be adopted now and then, — 
 partly in caprice, part compliment, — but I know they have 
 no permanence, no more take root here than — than myself." 
 
 " Do not say that, my dearest Nina," said Kate, as she 
 threw herself on her neck, and kissed her affectionately 
 again and again. " You are one of us, and we are all proud 
 of it. Come along with me, now, and tell me all that you 
 advise. You know what I wish, and you will forgive me 
 even in my stupidity." 
 
 " Where 's your brother? " asked Nina, hastily. 
 
 " Gone out with his gun. He '11 not be back till he is 
 certain Miss Betty has taken her departure. " 
 
 " Why did he not offer to take me with him? " 
 
 " Over the bog, do you mean? " 
 
 "Anywhere; I'd not cavil about the road. Don't you 
 know that I have days when ' don't care ' masters me, — 
 when I 'd do anything, go anywhere — " 
 
 " Marry any one?" said the other, laughing. 
 
 " Yes ; marry any one, as irresponsibly as if I was deal- 
 ing with the destiny of some other that did not regard me. 
 On these days I do not belong to myself, and this is one of 
 them." 
 
160 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " I know nothing of such humors, Nina ; nor do I believe 
 it a healthy mind that has them." 
 
 " I did not boast of my mind's health, nor tell you to trust 
 to it. Come, let us go down to the dinner-room, and talk 
 that pleasant leg-of-mutton talk you know you are fond 
 of." 
 
 "And best fitted for, say that," said Kate, laughing 
 merrily. 
 
 The other did not seem to have heard her words, for she 
 moved slowly away, calling on Kate to follow her. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 A SMALL DINNER-PARTY. 
 
 •It is sad to have to record that all Kate's persuasions with 
 her cousin, all her own earnest attempts at conciliation, and 
 her ably planned schemes to escape a difficulty, were only so 
 much labor lost. A stern message from her father com- 
 manded her to make no change either in the house or the 
 service of the dinner, — an interference with domestic cares 
 so novel on his part as to show that he had prepared himself 
 for hostilities, and was resolved to meet his enemy boldly. 
 
 "It's no use, all I have been telling you, Nina," said 
 Kate, as she re-entered her room, later in the day. "Papa 
 orders me to have everything as usual, and won't even let 
 me give Miss Betty an early dinner, though he knows she 
 has nine miles of a ride to reach home." 
 
 "That explains somewhat a message he has sent myself," 
 replied Nina, "to wear my very prettiest toilette and my 
 Greek cap, which he admired so much the other day." 
 
 ' ' I am almost glad that my wardrobe has nothing attrac- 
 tive," said Kate, half sadly. "I certainly shall never be 
 rebuked for my becomingness." 
 
 "And do you mean to say that the old woman would be 
 rude enough to extend her comments to me.?" 
 
 "I have known her do things quite as hardy, though I 
 hope on the present occasion the other novelties may shelter 
 you." 
 
 "Why isn't your brother here? I should insist on his 
 coming down in discreet black, with a white tie and that 
 look of imposing solemnity young Englishmen assume for 
 dinner." 
 
 " Dick guessed what was coming, and would not encoun- 
 ter it." 
 
 11 
 
162 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ' ' And yet you tell me you submit to all this for no earthly 
 reason. She can leave you no legacy, contribute in no way 
 to your benefit. She has neither family, fortune, nor con- 
 nections ; and, except her atrocious manners and her in- 
 domitable temper, there is not a trait of her that claims to 
 be recorded." 
 
 "Oh, yes; she rides capitally to hounds, and hunts her 
 own harriers to perfection." 
 
 "I am glad she has one quality that deserves your 
 favor." 
 
 " She has others, too, which I like better than what they 
 call accomplishments. She is very kind to the poor, never 
 deterred by any sickness from visiting them, and has the 
 same stout-hearted courage for every casualty in life." 
 
 " A commendable gift for a Squaw, but what does a 
 Gentlewoman want with this same courage?" 
 
 "Look out of the window, Nina, and see where you are 
 living ! Throw your eyes over that great expanse of dark 
 bog, vast as one of the great campagnas you have often 
 described to us, and bethink you how mere loneliness — 
 desolation — needs a stout heart to bear it ; how the simple 
 fact that for the long hours of a summer's day, or the longer 
 hours of a winter's night, a lone woman has to watch and 
 think of all the possible casualties lives of hardship and 
 misery may impel men to. Do you imagine that she does 
 not mark the growing discontent of the people? see their 
 careworn looks dashed with a sullen determination, and 
 hear in their voices the rising of a hoarse defiance that was 
 never heard before? Does she not well know that every 
 kindness she has bestowed, every merciful act she has minis- 
 tered, would weigh for nothing in the balance on the day 
 that she will be arraigned as a landowner, — the receiver of 
 the poor man's rent ! And will you tell me after this she 
 can dispense with courage ? " 
 
 " Bel paese davvero ! " muttered the other. 
 
 "So it is," cried Kate; "with all its faults I'd not ex- 
 change it for the brightest land that ever glittered in a 
 southern siin. But why should I tell you how jarred and 
 disconcerted we are by laws that have no reference to our 
 ways, — conferring rights where we were once contented with 
 
A SMALL DINNER-PARTY. 163 
 
 trustfulness, and teaching men to do everything by contract, 
 and nothing by affection, nothing by good-wilL" 
 
 "No, no, tell me none of all these; but tell me shall I 
 come down in my Suliote jacket of yellow cloth, for I know 
 it becomes me ? " 
 
 " And if we women had not courage," went on Kate, not 
 heeding the question, " what would our men do? Should 
 we see them lead lives of bolder daring than the stoutest 
 wanderer in Africa?" 
 
 "And my jacket and my Theban belt?" 
 
 "Wear them all. Be as beautiful as you like, but don't 
 be late for dinner." And Kate hurried away before the 
 other could speak. 
 
 When Miss O'Shea, arrayed in a scarlet poplin and a 
 yellow gauze turban, — the month being August, — arrived 
 in the drawing-room before dinner, she found no one there, 
 — a circumstance that chagrined her so far that she had 
 hurried her toilette and torn one of her gloves in her haste. 
 " When they say six for the dinner-hour, they might surely 
 be in the drawing-room by that hour," was Miss Betty's 
 reflection, as she turned over some of the magazines and 
 circulating-library books which since Nina's arrival had 
 found their way to Kilgobbin. The contemptuous manner 
 in which she treated Blackwood and Macmillan, and the 
 indignant dash with which she flung TroUope's last novel 
 down, showed that she had not been yet corrupted by the 
 light reading of the age. An unopened country news- 
 paper, addressed to the Viscount Kilgobbin, had however 
 absorbed all her attention, and she was more than half dis- 
 posed to possess herself of the envelope when Mr. Kearney 
 entered. 
 
 His bright blue coat and white waistcoat, a profusion of 
 shirt-frill, and a voluminous cravat proclaimed dinner dress, 
 and a certain pomposity of manner showed how an unusual 
 costume had imposed on himself, and suggested an impor- 
 tant event. 
 
 "I hope I see Miss O'Shea in good health?" said he, 
 advancing. 
 
 ■ "How are you, Mathew?" replied she, dryly. "When 
 I heard that big bell thundering away, I was so afraid to 
 
164 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 be late that I came down with one bracelet, and I have 
 torn my glove too." 
 
 " It was only the first bell, — the dressing-bell," he said. 
 
 " Humph! That's something new since I was here last," 
 said she, tartly. 
 
 " You remind me of how long it is since you dined with 
 us, Miss O'Shea." 
 
 '' Well, indeed, Mathew, I meant to be longer, if I must 
 tell the truth. I saw enough the last day I lunched here to 
 show me Kilgobbin was not what it used to be. You were 
 all of you what my poor father — who was always think- 
 ing of the dogs — used to call 'on your hind legs,' walking 
 about very stately and very miserable. There were three 
 or four covered dishes on the table that nobody tasted ; 
 and an old man in red breeches ran about in half distrac- 
 tion, and said, ' Sherry, my Lord, or Madeira.' Many 's 
 the time I laughed over it since." And, as though to vouch 
 for the truth of the mirthfulness, she lay back in her chair, 
 and shook with hearty laughter. 
 
 Before Kearney could reply — for something like a pass- 
 ing apoplexy had arrested his words — the girls entered, 
 and made their salutations. 
 
 "If I had the honor of knowing you longer. Miss Costi- 
 gan," said Miss O'Shea — for it was thus she translated 
 the name Kostalergi — "I'd ask you why j^ou couldn't 
 dress like your cousin Kate. It may be all very well in 
 the house, and it 's safe enough here, there 's no denying 
 it ; but my name 's not Betty if you 'd walk down Kilbeggin 
 without a crowd yelling after you and calling names too, 
 that a respectable young woman would n't bargain for : eh, 
 Mathew, is that true?" 
 
 "There's the dinner-bell now," said Mathew; "may I 
 offer my arm? " 
 
 " It 's thin enough that arm is getting, Mathew Kearney," 
 said she, as he walked along at her side. "Not but it's 
 time, too. You were born in the September of 1809, 
 though your mother used to deny it; and you're now a 
 year older than your father was when he died." 
 
 "Will you take this place?" said Kearney, placing her 
 chair for her. "We're a small party to-day. I see Dick 
 does not dine with us." 
 
^^^^.d^?97,/7^ K6<-<ny?2^?^ty ^.^.Cl/^^Oyy. 
 
OF rHE 
 
 OF 
 JFOf 
 
A SMALL DINNER-PARTY. 165 
 
 •' Maybe I hunted him away. The young gentlemen of 
 the present day are frank enough to say what they think 
 of old maids. That 's very elegant, and I 'm sure it 's 
 refined," said she, pointing to the mass of fruit and flow- 
 ers so tastefully arranged before her. ''But I was born in 
 a time when people liked to see what they were going 
 to eat, Mathew Kearney, and as I don't intend to break 
 my fast on a stock-gillyflower, or make a repast of raisins, 
 I prefer the old way. Fill up my glass whenever it's 
 empty," said she to the servant, " and don't bother me with 
 the name of it. As long as 1 know the King's County, 
 and that 's more than fifty years, we 've been calling Cape 
 Madeira Sherry 1 " 
 
 " If we know what we are drinking, Miss O'Shea, I don't 
 suppose it matters much." 
 
 " Nothing at all, Mathew. Calling you the Viscount 
 Kilgobbin, as I read awhile ago, won't confuse me about 
 an old neighbor." 
 
 "Won't you try a cutlet, godmother?" asked Kate, 
 hurriedly. 
 
 " Indeed, I will, my dear. I don't know why I was send- 
 ing the man away. I never saw this way of dining before, 
 except at the poorhouse, where each poor creature has his 
 plateful given him, and pockets what he can't eat." And 
 here she laughed long and heartily at the conceit. 
 
 Kearney's good-humor relished the absurdity, and he 
 joined in the laugh, while Nina stared at the old woman as 
 an object of dread and terror. 
 
 "And that boy that wouldn't dine with us. How is he 
 turning out, Mathew ? They tell me he 's a bit of a 
 scamp." 
 
 "He's no such thing, godmother. Dick is as good a 
 fellow and as right-minded as ever lived, and you yourself 
 would be the first to say it, if you saw him," cried Kate, 
 angrily. 
 
 " So would the young lady yonder, if I might judge from 
 her blushes," said Miss Betty, looking at Nina. " Not 
 indeed but it 's only now I 'm remembering that you 're not a 
 boy. That little red cap and that thing you wear round 
 your throat deceived me." 
 
166 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 (( 
 
 It is not the lot of every one to be so fortunate in a 
 head-dress as Miss O'Shea," said Nina, very calmly. 
 
 "If it's my wig you are envying me, my dear," replied 
 she, quietly, "there's nothing easier than to have the own 
 brother of it. It was made by Crimp, of Nassau Street, and 
 box and all cost four pound twelve." 
 
 " Upon my life, Miss Betty," broke in Kearney, " you are 
 tempting me to an extravagance." And he passed his hand 
 over his sparsely covered head as he spoke. 
 
 " And I would not, if I was you, Mathew Kearney," said 
 she, resolutely. " They tell me that in that House of Lords 
 you are going to, more than half of them are bald." 
 
 There was no possible doubt that she meant by this speech 
 to deliver a challenge ; and Kate's look, at once imploring 
 and sorrowful, appealed to her for mercy. 
 
 "No, thank you," said Miss Betty, to the servant who 
 presented a dish, " though indeed, maybe, I'm wrong, for I 
 don't know what's coming." 
 
 " This is the menu^' said Nina, handing a card to her. 
 
 " The bill of fare, godmother," said Kate, hastily. 
 
 "Well, indeed, it's a kindness to tell me, and if there 
 is any more novelties to follow, perhaps you'll be kind 
 enough to inform me, for I never dined in the Greek fashion 
 before." 
 
 "The Russian, I believe, madam, not the Greek," said 
 Nina. 
 
 "With all my heart, my dear. It's about the same, for 
 whatever may happen to Mathew Kearney or myself, I don't 
 suspect either of us will go to live at Moscow." 
 
 ' ' You '11 not refuse a glass of port with your cheese ? '* 
 said Kearney. 
 
 "Indeed I will, then, if there's any beer in the house, 
 though perhaps it's too vulgar a liquor to ask for." 
 
 While the beer was being brought, a solemn silence ensued, 
 and a less comfortable party could not easily be imagined. 
 
 When the interval had been so far prolonged that Kearney 
 himself saw the necessity to do something, he placed his 
 napkin on the table, leaned forward with a half motion of 
 rising, and, addressing Miss Betty, said, " Shall we adjourn 
 to the drawing-room and take our coffee ? " 
 
A SMALL DINNER-PARTY. 167 
 
 *' I'd rather stay where I am, Mathew Kearney, and have 
 that glass of port you offered me awhile ago, for the beer 
 was flat. Not that I '11 detain the young people, nor keep 
 yourself away from them very long." 
 
 When the two girls withdrew, Nina's look of insolent 
 triumph at Kate betrayed the tone she was soon to take in 
 treating of the old lady's good manners. 
 
 "You had a very sorry dinner. Miss Betty, but I can 
 promise you an honest glass of wine," said Kearney, filling 
 her glass. 
 
 "It's very nice," said she, sipping it, "though, maybe, 
 like myself, it's just a trifle too old." 
 
 "A good fault. Miss Betty, a good fault." 
 
 " For the wine, perhaps," said she, dryly, " but maybe it 
 would taste better if I had not bought it so dearly." 
 
 " I don't think I understand you." 
 
 "I was about to say that I have forfeited that young 
 lady's esteem by the way I obtained it. She '11 never forgive 
 me, instead of retiring for my coffee, sitting here like a man 
 — and a man of that old hard-drinking school, JMathew, that 
 has brought all the ruin on Ireland." 
 
 " Here 's to their memory, any way," said Kearney, drink- 
 ing off his glass. 
 
 "I'll drink no toasts nor sentiments, Mathew Kearney, 
 and there 's no artifice or roguery will make me forget I 'm a 
 woman and an O'Shea." 
 
 " Faix, you'll not catch me forgetting either," said 
 Mathew, with a droll twinkle of his eye, which it was just 
 as fortunate escaped her notice. 
 
 " I doubted for a long time, Mathew Kearney, whether I 'd 
 come over myself, or whether I'd write you a letter; not 
 that I'm good at writing, but somehow one can put their 
 ideas more clear, and say things in a way that will fix them 
 more in the mind ; but at last I determined I 'd come, though 
 it 's more than likely it 's the last time Kilgobbin will see me 
 here." 
 
 " I sincerely trust you are mistaken, so far." 
 
 "Well, Mathew, I'm not often mistaken! The woman 
 that has managed an estate for more than forty years, been 
 her own land-steward and her own law-agent, does n't make 
 
168 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 a great many blunders ; and, as I said before, if Mathew has 
 no friend to tell bim the truth among the men of his ac- 
 quaintance, it 's well that there is a woman to the fore, who 
 has courage and good sense to go up and do it." 
 
 She looked fixedly at him, as though expecting some con- 
 currence in the remark, if not some intimation to proceed ; 
 but neither came, and she continued. 
 
 " I suppose you don't read the Dublin newspapers? " said 
 she, civilly. 
 
 '' I do, and every day the post brings them." 
 
 '' You see, therefore, without my telling you, what the 
 world is saying about you. You see how they treat 'the 
 search for arms,' as they head it, and ' the maid of Sara- 
 gossa ' ! Oh, Mathew Kearney ! Mathew Kearney ! whatever 
 happened the old stock of the land, they never made them- 
 selves ridiculous." 
 
 " Have you done. Miss Betty?" asked he, with assumed 
 calm. 
 
 ''Done! Why, it's only beginning I am," cried she. 
 " Not but I 'd bear a deal of blackguarding from the press,. 
 as the old woman said when the soldier threatened to run 
 his bayonet through her : ' Devil thank j'^ou, it 's only your 
 trade.' But when we come to see the head of an old family 
 making ducks and drakes of his family property, threatening 
 the old tenants that have been on the land as long as hi& 
 own people, raising the rent here, evicting there, distressing 
 the people's minds when they 've just as much as they can 
 to bear up with, — then it 's time for an old friend and 
 neighbor to give a timely warning, and cry, ' Stop.' 
 
 " Have you done. Miss Betty? " And now his voice was 
 more stern than before. 
 
 " I have not, nor near done, Mathew Kearney. I've said 
 nothing of the way you 're bringing up your family — that 
 son, in particular — to make him think himself a young man 
 of fortune, when you know, in your heart, you '11 leave him 
 little more than the mortgages on the estate. I have not 
 told you that it 's one of the jokes of the capital to call him 
 the Honorable Dick Kearney, and to ask him after his^ 
 father the Viscount." 
 
 "You haven't done yet. Miss O'Shea?" said he, now 
 with a thickened voice. 
 
A SMALL DINNER-PARTY. 169 
 
 '*No, not yet," replied she, calmly, "not yet; for I'd 
 like to remind you of the way you 're behaving to the best 
 of the whole of you, — the only one, indeed, that 's worth 
 much in the family, — your daughter Kate." 
 
 " Well, what have I done to wrong lier?^' said he, carried 
 beyond his prudence by so astounding a charge. 
 
 "The very worst you could do, Mathew Kearney; the 
 only mischief it was in your power, maybe. Look at the 
 companion- you have given her! Look at the respectable 
 young lady you 've brought home to live with your decent 
 child ! " 
 
 " You '11 not stop? " cried he, almost choking with passion. 
 
 " Not till I've told you why I came here, Mathew Kear- 
 ney ; for I 'd beg you to understand it was no interest about 
 yourself or your doings brought me. I came to tell you 
 that I mean to be free about an old contract we once made, — 
 that I revoke it all. I was fool enough to believe that an 
 alliance between our families would have made me entirely 
 happy, and my nephew Gorman O'Shea was brought up to 
 think the same. I have lived to know better, Mathew Kear- 
 ney ; I have lived to see that we don't suit each other at all, 
 and I have come here to declare to you formally that it 's all 
 off. No nephew of mine shall come here for a wife. The 
 heir to Shea's Barn sha' n't bring the mistress of it out of 
 Kilgobbin Castle." 
 
 " Trust me for that, old lady ! " cried he, forgetting all his 
 good manners in his violent passion. 
 
 "You'll be all the freer to catch a young aide-de-camp 
 from the Castle," said she, sneeringly ; " or maybe, indeed, 
 a young Lord, — a rank equal to your own." 
 
 "Haven't you said enough?" screamed he, wild with 
 rage. 
 
 " No, nor half, or you would n't be standing there, wring- 
 ing your hands with passion and your hair bristling like a 
 porcupine. You 'd be at my feet, Mathew Kearney, — ay, 
 at my feet." 
 
 " So I would, Miss Betty," chimed he in, with a malicious 
 grin, "if I was only sure you'd be as cruel as the last 
 time I knelt there. Oh dear ! oh dear ! and to think that I 
 once wanted to marry that woman ! " 
 
170 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " That you did ! You 'd have put your hand in the fire to 
 win her." 
 
 " By my conscience, I 'd have put myself altogether there, 
 if I had won her." 
 
 ''You understand now, sir," said she, haughtily, "that 
 there's no more between us." 
 
 '' Thank God for the same ! " ejaculated he, fervently. 
 
 ' ' And that no nephew of mine comes courting a daughter 
 of yours? " 
 
 " For his own sake, he 'd better not." 
 
 "It's for his own sake I intend it, Mathew Kearney. 
 It 's of himself I 'm thinking. And now, thanking you 
 for the pleasant evening I 've passed and your charming 
 society, I '11 take my leave." 
 
 " I hope you'll not rob us of your company till you take 
 a dish of tea," said he, with well- feigned politeness. 
 
 " It 's hard to tear one's self away, Mr. Kearney ; but it 's 
 late already." 
 
 " Could n't we induce you to stop the night. Miss Betty? " 
 asked he, in a tone of insinuation. " Well, at least you'll 
 let me ring to order your horse ? " 
 
 " You may do that if it amuses you, Mathew Kearney ; but 
 meanwhile I '11 just do what 1 've always done in the same 
 place, — I '11 just go look for my own beast and see her 
 saddled myself; and as Peter Gill is leaving you to- 
 morrow, I '11 take him back with me to-night." 
 
 " Is he going to you?" cried he, passionately. 
 
 "He's going to me, Mr. Kearney, with your leave, or 
 without it, I don't know which I like best." And with this 
 she swept out of the room, while Kearney closed his eyes 
 and lay back in his chair, stunned and almost stupefied. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 A CONFIDENTIAL TALK. 
 
 Dick Kearney walked the bog from early morning till dark 
 without firing a shot. The snipe rose almost at his feet, and, 
 wheeling in circles through the air, dipped again into some 
 dark crevice of the waste, unnoticed by him ! One thought 
 only possessed, and never left him, as he went. He had 
 overheard Nina's words to his sister, as he made his escape 
 over the fence, and learned how she promised to "spare 
 him ; " and that, if not worried about him, or asked to pledge 
 herself, she should be " merciful," and not entangle the boy 
 in a hopeless passion. 
 
 He would have liked to have scoffed at the insolence 
 of this speech, and treated it as a trait of overweening 
 vanitj^ ; he would have gladly accepted her pity as a sort 
 of challenge, and said, "Be it so; let us see who will 
 come safest out of this encounter," and yet he felt in his 
 heart he could not. 
 
 First of all, her beauty had really dazzled him, and 
 the thousand graces of a manner of which he had known 
 nothing captivated and almost bewildered him. He could 
 not reply to her in the same tone he used to any other. 
 If he fetched her a book or a chair, he gave it with a 
 sort of deference that actually reacted on himself, and 
 made him more gentle and more courteous for the time. 
 ' ' What would this influence end in making me ? " was his 
 question to himself. " Should I gain in sentiment or 
 feeling? Should I have higher and nobler aims? Should 
 I be anything of that she herself described so glowingly, 
 or should I only sink to a weak desire to be her slave, and 
 ask for nothing better than some slight recognition of 
 my devotion? I take it, that she would say the choice 
 
172 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 lay with Aer, and that I should be the one or the other 
 as she willed it, and though I would give much to believe 
 her wrong, my heart tells me that I cannot. I came down 
 here resolved to resist any influence she might attempt to 
 have over me. Her likeness showed me how beautiful she 
 was, but it could not tell me the dangerous fascination of her 
 low liquid voice, her half-playful, half- melancholy smile, and 
 that bewitching walk, with all its stately grace, so that every 
 fold as she moves sends its own thrill of ecstasy. And now 
 that I know all these, see and feel them, I am told that to 
 me they can bring no hope ! That I am too poor, too igno- 
 ble, too undistinguished, to raise my eyes to such attraction. 
 I am nothing, and must live and die nothing. 
 
 " She is candid enough, at all events. There is no rhap- 
 sody about her when she talks of poverty. She chronicles 
 every stage of the misery, as though she had felt them all ; 
 and how unlike it she looks ! There is an almost insolent 
 well-being about her that puzzles me. She will not heed 
 this, or suffer that, because it looks mean. Is this the subtle 
 worship she offers Wealth, and is it thus she offers up her 
 prayer to Fortune? 
 
 "But why should she assume I must be her slave? " cried 
 he aloud, in a sort of defiance. "I have shown her no such 
 preference, nor made any advances that would show I want 
 to win her favor. Without denying that she is beautiful, 
 is it so certain it is the kind of beauty I admire? She has 
 scores of fascinations ; I do not deny it. But should I sa3 
 that I trust her? And if I should trust her and love her 
 too, where must it all end in? I do not believe in her 
 theory that love will transform a fellow of my mould into a 
 hero; not to say that I have my own doubt if she herself 
 believes it. I wonder if Kate reads her more clearly? 
 Girls so often understand each other by traits we have no 
 clew to; and it was Kate who asked her, almost in tone of 
 entreaty, ' to spare me, ' to save me from a hopeless passion, 
 just as though I were some peasant-boy who had set his 
 affection on a princess. Is that the way, then, the world 
 would read our respective conditions? The son of a ruined 
 house or the guest of a beggared family leaves little to 
 choose between ! Kate — the world — would call my lot the 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL TALK. 173 
 
 better of the two. The man's chance is not irretrievable; 
 at least, such is the theory. Those half-dozen fellows, who 
 in a century or so contrive to work their way up to some- 
 thing, make a sort of precedent, and tell the others what 
 they might be if they but knew how. 
 
 '^I 'm not vain enough to suppose I am one of these, and 
 it is quite plain that she does not think me so." He pon- 
 dered long over this thought, and then suddenly cried aloud, 
 " Is it possible she may read Joe Atlee in this fashion ? is 
 that the stuff out of which she hopes to make a hero?" 
 There was more bitterness in this thought than he had first 
 imagined, and there was that of jealousy in it, too, that 
 pained him deeply. 
 
 Had she preferred either of the two Englishmen to him- 
 self, he could have understood and, in a measure, accepted 
 it. They were, as he called them, "swells." They might 
 become, he knew not what. The career of the Saxon in 
 fortune was a thing incommensurable by Irish ideas ; but Joe 
 was like himself, or in reality less than himself, in worldly 
 advantages. 
 
 This pang of jealousy was very bitter ; but still it served 
 to stimulate him and rouse him from a depression that was 
 gaining fast upon him. It is true he remembered she had 
 spoken slightingly of Joe Atlee; called him noisy, preten- 
 tious, even vulgar; snubbed him openly on more than one 
 occasion, and seemed to like to turn the laugh against him ; 
 but with all that she had sung duets with him, corrected 
 some Italian verses he wrote, and actually made a little 
 sketch in his note-book for him as a souvenir. A souvenir! 
 and of what? Not of the ridicule she had turned upon him! 
 not the jest she had made upon his boastfulness. Now, 
 which of these two did this argue ; was this levity, or was it 
 falsehood? Was she so little mindful of honesty that she 
 would show these signs of favor to one she held most 
 cheaply, or was it that her distaste to this man was mere 
 pretence, and only assumed to deceive others? 
 
 After all, Joe Atlee was a nobody ; flattery might call him 
 an adventurer, but he was not even so much. Amongst the 
 men of the dangerous party he mixed with, he was careful 
 never to compromise himself. He might write the songs 
 
174 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 of rebellion, but he was little likely to tamper with treason 
 itself. So much he would tell her when he got back. Not 
 angrily, nor passionately, for that would betray him and 
 disclose his jealousy; but in the tone of a man revealing 
 something he regretted, — confessing to the blemish of one 
 he would have liked better to speak well of. There was not, 
 he thought, anything unfair in this. He was but warning 
 her against a man who was unworthy of her. Unworthy of 
 her! What words could express the disparity between 
 them? Not but if she liked him, — and this he said with a 
 certain bitterness, — or thought she liked him, the dispro- 
 portion already ceased to exist. 
 
 Hour after hour of that long summer day he walked, 
 revolving such thoughts as these; all his conclusions tending 
 to the one point, that he was not the easy victim she thought 
 him, and that, come what might, he should not be offered 
 up as a sacrifice to her worship of Joe Atlee. 
 
 "There is nothing would gratify the fellow's vanity," 
 thought he, "like a successful rivalry of him! Tell him he 
 was preferred to me, and he would be ready to fall down and 
 worship whoever had made the choice." 
 
 By dwelling on all the possible and impossible issues of 
 such an attachment, he had at length convinced himself of 
 its existence; and even more, persuaded himself to fancy it 
 was something to be regretted and grieved over for worldly 
 considerations, but not in any way regarded as personally 
 unpleasant. 
 
 As he came in sight of home and saw^ a light in the small 
 tower where Kate's bedroom lay, he determined he would 
 go up to his sister and tell her so much of his mind as he 
 believed was finally settled, and in such a way as would 
 certainly lead her to repeat it to Nina. 
 
 " Kate shall tell her that if I have left her suddenly and 
 gone back to Trinity to keep my term, I have not fled the 
 field in a moment of faint-heartedness. 1 do not deny her 
 beauty. I do not disparage one of her attractions, and she 
 has scores of them. I will not even say that when I have 
 sat beside her, heard her low soft voice, and watched the 
 tremor of. that lovely mouth vibrating with wit or tremulous 
 with feeling, I have been all indifference; but this 1 will 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL TALK. 175 
 
 say, she shall not number me amongst the victims of her 
 fascinations ; and when she counts the trinkets on her wrist 
 that record the hearts she has broken, — a pastime I once 
 witnessed, — not one of them shall record the initial of Dick 
 Kearney." 
 
 With these brave words he mounted the narrow stair and 
 knocked at his sister's door. No answer coming, he 
 knocked again, and after waiting a few seconds, he slowl}^ 
 opened the door and saw that Kate, still dressed, had 
 thrown herself on her bed, and was sound asleep. The table 
 was covered with account-books and papers. Tax receipts, 
 law notices, and tenants' letters lay littered about, showing 
 what had been the task she was last engaged on ; and her 
 heavy breathing told the exhaustion which it had left be- 
 hind it. 
 
 "I wish I could help her with her work," muttered he to 
 himself, as a pang of self-reproach shot through him. This 
 certainly should have been his own task rather than hers ; 
 the question was, however. Could he have done it? And 
 this doubt increased as he looked over the long column of 
 tenants' names, whose holdings varied in every imaginable 
 quantity of acres, roods, and perches. Besides these there 
 were innumerable small details of allowances for this and 
 compensation for that. This one had given so many days' 
 horse-and-car hire at the bog ; that other had got advances 
 "in seed-potatoes;" such a one had a claim for reduced 
 rent, because the mill-race had overflowed and deluged his 
 wheat crop; such another had fed two pigs of "the Lord's," 
 and fattened them, while himself and his own were nigh 
 starving. 
 
 Through an entire column there was not one case without 
 its complication, either in the shape of argument for in- 
 creased liability, or claim for compensation. It was make- 
 shift everywhere, and Dick could not but ask himself 
 whether any tenant on the estate really knew how far he was 
 hopelessly in debt or a solvent man ? It only needed Peter 
 Gill's peculiar mode of collecting the moneys due, and 
 recording the payment by the notched stick, to make the 
 complication perfect; and there, -indeed, upon the table, 
 amid accounts and bills and sale warrants, lay the memo- 
 
176 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 rable bits of wood themselves, as that worthy steward had 
 deposited them before quitting his master's service. 
 
 Peter's character, too, written out in Kate's hand, and 
 only awaiting her father's signature, was on the table, — the 
 first intimation Dick Kearney had that old Gill had quitted 
 his post. 
 
 "All this must have occurred to-day," thought Dick. 
 "There were no evidences of these changes when I left this 
 morning ! Was it the backwater of my disgrace, I wonder, 
 that has overwhelmed poor Gill?" thought he, "or can I 
 detect Miss Betty's fine Roman hand in this incident?" 
 
 In proportion to the little love he bore Miss O'Shea, were 
 his convictions the stronger that she was the cause of all 
 mischief. She was one of those who took very "utilitarian " 
 notions of his own career, and he bore her small gratitude 
 for the solicitude. There were short sentences in pencil 
 along the margin of the chief book in Kate's handwriting 
 which could not fail to strike him as he read them, indicat- 
 ing, as they did, her diflSculty, if not utter incapacity, to 
 deal with the condition of the estate. Thus: — 
 
 *' There is no warranty for this concession. It cannot be con- 
 tinued." "The notice in this case was duly served, and Gill 
 knows that it was to papa's generosity they were indebted for remain- 
 ing." " These arrears have never been paid, on that point I am 
 positive!" "Malone's holding was not fairly measured; he has 
 a just claim to compensation, and shall have it." " Hannigan's 
 right to tenancy must not be disputed, but cannot be used as 
 a precedent by others on the same part of the estate, and I will state 
 why." "More of Peter Gill's conciliatory policy ! The Regans, for 
 having been twice in jail, and once indicted, and nearly convicted of 
 Ribbonism, have established a claim to live rent-free ! This I will 
 promise to rectify." " I shall make no more allowances for improve- 
 ments without a guarantee, and a penalty besides on non-completion." 
 
 And last of all came these ominous words : — 
 
 " It will thiis be seen that our rent-roll since '64 has been pro- 
 gressively decreasing, and that we have only been able to supply our 
 expenses by sales of property. Dick must be spoken to on this, 
 and at once." 
 
 Several entries had been already rubbed out, and it was 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL TALK. 177 
 
 clear that she had been occupied in the task of erasion on 
 that very night. Poor girl ! her sleep was the heavy repose 
 of one utterly exhausted; and her closely clasped lips and 
 corrugated brow showed in what frame of intense thought 
 she had sunk to rest. He closed the book noiselessly, as he 
 looked at her, replaced the various objects on the table, 
 and rose to steal quietly away. 
 
 The accidental movement of a chair, however, startled 
 her ; she turned, and, leaning on her elbow, she saw him as 
 he tried to move away. "Don't go, Dick; don't go. I 'm 
 awake, and quite fresh again. Is it late?" 
 
 "It's not far from one o'clock," said he, half roughly, 
 to hide his emotion; for her worn and wearied features 
 struck him now more forcibly than when she slept. 
 
 " And are you only returned now ? How hungry 3^ou must 
 be ! Poor fellow, — have you dined to-day ? " 
 
 "Yes; I got to Owen MoUoy's as they were straining the 
 potatoes, and sat down with them, and ate very heartily, 
 too." 
 
 "Weren't they proud of it? Won't they tell how the 
 young Lord shared their meal with them ? " 
 
 "I don't think they are as cordial as they used to be, 
 Kate ; they did not talk so openly, nor seem at their ease, 
 as I once knew them. And they did one thing significant 
 enough in its way, that I did not like. They quoted the 
 county newspaper twice or thrice when we talked of the 
 land." 
 
 "I am aware of that, Dick; they have got other coun- 
 sellors than their landlords now," said she, mournfully, 
 "and it is our own fault if they have." 
 
 "What, are you turning nationalist, Kitty?" said he, 
 laughing. 
 
 "I was always a nationalist in one sense," said she, "and 
 mean to continue so; but let us not get upon this theme. 
 Do you know that Peter Gill has left us ? " 
 
 "What, for America?" 
 
 "No; for ' O'Shea's Barn.' Miss Betty has taken him. 
 She came here to-day to ' have it out ' with papa, as she 
 said; and she has kept her word. Indeed, not alone with 
 him, but with all of us, — even Nina did not escape." 
 
 12 
 
178 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Insufferable old woman! What did she dare to say to 
 Nina?" 
 
 "She got off the cheapest of us all, Dick," said she, 
 laughing. "It was only some stupid remark she made her 
 about looking like a boy, or being dressed like a rope- 
 dancer. A small civility of this sort was her share of the 
 general attention." 
 
 "And how did Nina take the insolence? " 
 
 "With great good temper or good breeding. 1 don't 
 know exactly which covered the indifference she displayed, 
 till Miss Betty, when taking her leave, renewed the imper- 
 tinence in the hall, by saying something about the trium- 
 phant success such a costume would achieve in the circus, 
 when Nina courtesied, and said, ' I am charmed to hear you 
 say so, madam, and shall wear it for my benefit; and if I 
 could only secure the appearance of yourself and your little 
 groom, my triumph would be, indeed, complete.' I did 
 not dare to wait for more, but hurried out to affect to busy 
 myself with the saddle, and pretend that it was not tightly 
 girthed." 
 
 "I'd have given twenty pounds, if I had it, to have 
 seen the old woman's face. No one ever ventured before 
 to pay her back with her own money." 
 
 "But I give you such a wrong version of it, Dick. I 
 only convey the coarseness of the rejoinder, and I can give 
 you no idea of the ineffable grace and delicacy which made 
 her words sound like a humble apology. Her eyelids 
 drooped as she courtesied ; and when she looked up again, in 
 a way that seemed humility itself, to have reproved her 
 would have appeared downright cruelty." 
 
 "She is a finished coquette," said he, bitterly; "a finished 
 coquette. " 
 
 Kate made no answer, though he evidently expected one; 
 and after waiting awhile, he went on: "Not but her high 
 accomplishments are clean thrown away in such a place as 
 this and amongst such people. What chance of fitting 
 exercise have they with my father or myself? Or is it on 
 Joe Atlee she would try the range of her artillery ? " 
 
 "Not so very impossible, this, after all," muttered Kate, 
 quietly. 
 
A CONFIDENTIAL TALK. 179 
 
 " What, and is it to that her high ambitions tend ? Is he 
 the prize she would strive to win? " 
 
 "I can be no guide to you in this matter, Dick. She 
 makes no confidences with me, and of myself I see 
 nothing. " 
 
 "You have, however, some influence over her." 
 
 "No; not much." 
 
 " I did not say much ; but enough to induce her to yield 
 to a strong entreaty, as when, for instance, you implored 
 her to spare your brother, — that poor fellow about to fall 
 so hopelessly in love — " 
 
 "I'm not sure that my request did not come too late, 
 after all," said she, with a laughing malice in her eye. 
 
 "Don't be too sure of that," retorted he, almost fiercely. 
 
 "Oh, I never bargained for what you might do in a 
 moment of passion or resentment." 
 
 "There is neither One nor the other here. I am perfectly 
 cool, calm, and collected ; and I tell you this : that whoever 
 your pretty Greek friend is to make a fool of, it shall not 
 be Dick Kearney." 
 
 "It might be very nice fooling, all the same, Dick." 
 
 "I know — that is, I believe I know — what you mean. 
 You have listened to some of those high heroics she ascends 
 to in showing what the exaltation of a great passion can 
 make of any man who has a breast capable of the emotion, 
 and you want to see the experiment tried in its least favor- 
 able conditions, on a cold, soulless, selfish fellow of my 
 own order; but, take my word for it, Kate, it would prove 
 a sheer loss of time to us both. Whatever she might make 
 of me, it would not be a hero ; and whatever I should strive 
 for, it would not be her love.^' 
 
 "I don't think I 'd say that if I were a man." 
 
 He made no answer to these words, but arose and walked 
 the room with hasty steps. "It was not about these things 
 I came here to talk to you, Kitty," said he, earnestly. "I 
 had my head full of other things, and now I cannot remem- 
 ber them. Only one occurs to me. Have you got any money ? 
 I mean a mere trifle, — enough to pay my fare to town ? " 
 
 " To be sure I have that much, Dick ; but you are surely 
 not going to leave us ? " 
 
180 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''Yes. I suddenly remembered I must be up for the last 
 day of term in Trinity. Knocking about here, — I '11 
 scarcely say amusing myself, — I had forgotten all about it. 
 Atlee used to jog my memory on these things when he was 
 near me ; and now, being away, I have contrived to let the 
 whole escape me. You can help me, however, with a few 
 pounds ? " 
 
 "I have got five of my own, Dick; but if you want 
 more — " 
 
 "No, no; I'll borrow the five of your own, and don't 
 blend it with more, or I may cease to regard it as a debt of 
 honor." 
 
 "And if you should, my poor dear Dick — " 
 
 "I 'd be only pretty much what I have ever been, but 
 scarcely wish to be any longer ; " and he added the last 
 words in a whisper. "It's only to be a brief absence, 
 Kitty," said he, kissing her; " so say good-bye for me to the 
 others, and that I shall be soon back again." 
 
 "Shall I kiss Nina for you, Dick? " 
 
 "Do; and tell her that I gave you the same commission 
 for Miss O'Shea, and was grieved that both should have 
 been done by deputy ! " 
 
 And with this he hurried away. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 A HAPHAZARD VICEROY. 
 
 When the Government came into office, they were sorely * 
 puzzled where to find a Lord Lieutenant for Ireland. It is, 1 
 unhappily, a post that the men most fitted for generally I 
 refuse, while the Cabinet is besieged by a class of appli- I 
 cants whose highest qualification is a taste for mock royalty ( 
 combined with an encumbered estate. 
 
 Another great requisite, beside fortune and a certain : 
 amount of ability, was at this time looked for. The Premier 
 was about, as newspapers call it, "to inaugurate a new 
 policy," and he wanted a man who knew nothing about 
 Ireland! Now, it might be carelessly imagined that here 
 was one of those essentials very easily supplied. Any man 
 frequenting club-life or dining out in town could have safely 
 pledged himself to tell off a score or two of eligible viceroys, 
 so far as this qualification went. The Minister, however, 
 wanted more than mere ignorance. He wanted that sort of 
 indifference on which a character for impartiality could so 
 easily be constructed. Not alone a man unacquainted with 
 Ireland, but actually incapable of being influenced by an 
 Irish motive or affected by an Irish view of anything. 
 
 Good luck would have it that he met such a man at dinner. 
 He was an ambassador at Constantinople, on leave from his 
 post, and so utterly dead to Irish topics as to be uncertain 
 whether O' Donovan Rossa was a Fenian or a Queen's coun- 
 sel, and whether he whom he had read of as the "Lion of 
 Judah " was the king of beasts or the Archbishop of Tuam ! 
 
 The Minister was pleased with his new acquaintance, and 
 talked much to him, and long. He talked well, and not the 
 less well that his listener was a fresh audience, who heard 
 everything for the first time, and with all the interest that 
 
182 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 attaches to a new topic. Lord Danesbury was, indeed, that 
 "sheet of white paper" the head of the Cabinet had long 
 been searching for, and he hastened to inscribe him with 
 the characters he wished. 
 
 "You must go to Ireland for me, my Lord," said the Min- 
 ister. "I have met no one as yet so rightly imbued with 
 the necessities of the situation. You must be our viceroy." 
 
 Now, though a very high post and with great surround- 
 ings, Lord Danesbury had no desire to exchange his posi- 
 tion as an ambassador, even to become a Lord Lieutenant. 
 Like most men who have passed their lives abroad, he grew 
 to like the ways and habits of the Continent. He liked 
 the easy indulgences in many things, he liked the cosmo- 
 politanism that surrounds existence, and even in its little- 
 ness is not devoid of a certain breadth ; and best of all he 
 liked the vast interests at stake, the large questions at issue, 
 the fortunes of states, the fate of dynasties! To come 
 down from the great game, as played by kings and kaisers, 
 to the small traffic of a local government wrangling over a 
 road-bill or disputing over a harbor, seemed too horrible 
 to confront, and he eagerly begged the Minister to allow 
 him to return to his post, and not risk a hard-earned repu- 
 tation on a new and untried career. 
 
 "It is precisely from the fact of its being new and un- 
 tried I need you, " was the reply ; and his denial was not 
 accepted. 
 
 Refusal was impossible; and, with all the reluctance a 
 man consents to what his convictions are more opposed to 
 even than his reasons, Lord Danesbury gave in, and ac- 
 cepted the viceroyalty of Ireland. 
 
 He was deferential to humility in listening to the great 
 aims and noble conceptions of the mighty Minister, and 
 pledged himself — as he could safely do — to become as 
 plastic as wax in the powerful hands which were about to 
 remodel Ireland. 
 
 He was gazetted in due course, went over to Dublin, made 
 a state entrance, received the usual deputations, .compli- 
 mented every one, from the Provost of Trinity College to 
 the Chief Commissioner of Pipewater; praised the coast, 
 the corporation, and the city ; declared that he had at length 
 
A HAPHAZARD VICEROY. 183 
 
 reached the highest goal of his ambition; entertained the 
 high dignitaries at dinner, and the week after retired to 
 his ancestral seat in North Wales, to recruit after his late 
 fatigue, and throw off the effects of that damp, moist climate 
 which already he fancied had affected him. 
 
 He had been sworn in with every solemnity of the occa- 
 sion ; he had sat on the throne of state, named the officers 
 of his household, made a master of the horse, and a state 
 steward, and a grand chamberlain; and, till stopped by 
 hearing that he could not create ladies and maids of honor, 
 he fancied himself every inch a king ; but now that he had 
 got over to the tranquil quietude of his mountain home, his 
 thoughts went away to the old channels, and he began to 
 dream of the Russians in the Balkan, and the Greeks in 
 Thessaly. Of all the precious schemes that had taken him 
 months to weave, what was to come of them now? How 
 and with what would his successor, whoever he should be, 
 oppose the rogueries of Sumayloff or the chicanery of 
 Ignatief ; what would any man not trained to the especial 
 watchfulness of this subtle game know of the steps by 
 which men advanced ? Who was to watch Bulgaris, and see 
 how far Russian gold was embellishing the life of Athens ? 
 There was not a hungry agent that lounged about the Rus- 
 sian embass}^ in Greek petticoats and pistols whose photo- 
 graph the English ambassador did not possess, with a 
 biographical note at the back to tell the fellow's name and 
 birthplace, what he was meant for, and what he cost. Of 
 every interview of his countrymen with the Grand Vizier, 
 he was kept fully informed, and whether a forage magazine 
 was established on the Pruth, or a new frigate laid down at 
 Nickolief, the news reached him by the time it arrived at 
 St. Petersburg. It is true he was aware how hopeless it 
 was to write home about these things. The ambassador 
 who writes disagreeable despatches is a bore or an old 
 woman. He who dares to shake the security by which we 
 daily boast we are surrounded, is an alarmist, if not worse. 
 Notwithstanding this, he held his cards well "up," and 
 played them shrewdly. And now he was to turn from this 
 crafty game, with all its excitement, to pore over constabu- 
 lary reports and snub justices of the peace! 
 
184 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 But there was worse than this. There was an Albanian 
 spy, who had been much employed by him of late, a clever 
 fellow, with access to society, and great facilities for 
 obtaining information. Seeing that Lord Danesbury should 
 not return to the embassy, would this fellow go over to the 
 enemy? If so, there were no words for the mischief he 
 might effect. By a subordinate position in a Greek govern- 
 ment office, he had often been selected to convey despatches 
 to Constantinople, and it was in this way his Lordship 
 first met him ; and as the fellow frankly presented himself 
 with a very momentous piece of news, he at once showed 
 how he trusted to British faith not to betray him. It was 
 not alone the incalculable mischief such a man might do by 
 change of allegiance, but the whole fabric on which Lord 
 Danesbury' s reputation rested was in this man's keeping; 
 and of all that wondrous prescience on which he used to 
 pride himself before the world, all the skill with which he 
 baffled an adversary, and all the tact with which he over- 
 whelmed a colleague, this same "Speridionides" could give 
 the secret and show the trick. 
 
 How much more constantly, then, did his Lordship's 
 thoughts revert to the Bosphorus than the Liffy! a]l this 
 home news was mean, commonplace, and vulgar. The whole 
 drama, — scenery, actors, plot, — all were low and ignoble ; 
 and as for this "something that was to be done for Ireland," 
 it would of course be some slowly germinating policy to 
 take root now, and blossom in another half-century ; one of 
 those blessed parliamentary enactments which men who 
 dealt in heroic remedies like himself regarded as the chronic 
 placebo of the political Quack. 
 
 "I am well aware," cried he, aloud, "for what they are 
 sending me over. I am to ' make a case ' in Ireland for a 
 political legislation, and the bill is already drawn and ready ; 
 and while I am demonstrating to Irish Churchmen that they 
 will be more jdIous without a religion, and" the landlords 
 richer without rent, the Russians will be mounting guard at 
 the Golden Horn, and the last British squadron steaming 
 down the Levant." 
 
 It was in a temper kindled by these reflections he wrote 
 this note : — 
 
A HAPHAZARD VICEROY. 185 
 
 " Plmnuddm Castle, North Wales. 
 
 " Dear Walpole, — I can make nothing out of the papers you 
 have sent me; nor am I able to discriminate between what you 
 admit to be newspaper slander and the attack on the castle with the 
 unspeakable name. At all events your account is far too graphic 
 for the Treasury lords, who have less of the pictorial about them 
 than Mr. Mudie's subscribers. If the Irish peasants are so impatient 
 to assume their rights that they will not wait for the 'Hatt- 
 Houmaiouu,' or Bill in Parliament that is to endow them, I suspect 
 a little further show of energy might save us a debate and a third 
 reading. I am, however, far more eager for news from Therapia. 
 Tolstai has been twice over with despatches ; and Boustikoff, pre- 
 tending to have sprained his ankle, cannot leave Odessa, though I 
 have ascertained that he has laid down new lines of fortification, and 
 walked over twelve miles per day. You may have heard of the 
 great ' Speridionides,' a scoundrel that supplied me with intelligence. 
 I should like much to get him over here while I am on my leave, 
 confer with him, and, if possible, save him from the necessity of other 
 engagements. It is not every one could be trusted to deal with a 
 man of this stamp, nor would the fellow himself easily hold relations 
 with any but a gentleman. Are you sufficiently recovered from your 
 sprained arm to undertake this journey for me ? If so, come over at 
 once, that I may give you all necessary indications as to the man 
 and his whereabouts. 
 
 " Maude has been ' on the sick list,' but is better, and able to ride 
 out to-day. I cannot fill the law appointments till I go over, nor 
 shall I go over till I cannot help it. The Cabinet is scattered over 
 the Scotch lakes; C. alone in town, and preparing for the War 
 Ministry by practising the goose-step. Telegraph, if possible, that 
 you are coming, and believe me yours, 
 
 " Oanesbury." 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 TWO FRIENDS AT BREAKFAST. 
 \ 
 
 Irishmen may reasonably enough travel for climate, they 
 need scarcely go abroad in search of scenery. Within even 
 a very short distance from the capital, there are landscapes 
 which, for form, outline, and color, equal some of the most 
 celebrated spots of Continental beauty. 
 
 One of these is the view from Bray Head over the wide 
 expanse of the Bay of Dublin, with Howth and Lambay in 
 the far distance. . Nearer at hand lies the sweep of that 
 graceful shore to Killiney, with the Dalky Islands dotting 
 the calm sea ; while inland, in wild confusion, are grouped 
 the Wicklow mountains, massive with wood and teeming 
 with a rich luxuriance. 
 
 When sunlight and stillness spread color over the blue 
 mirror of the sea, — as is essential to the scene, — I know 
 of nothing, not even Naples or Amalfi, can surpass this 
 marvellous picture. 
 
 It was on a terrace that commanded this view that Wal- 
 pole and Atlee sat at breakfast on a calm autumnal morn- 
 ing, the white-sailed boats scarcely creeping over their 
 shadows, and the whole scene, in its silence and softened 
 effect, presenting a picture of almost rapturous tranquillity. 
 
 "With half a dozen days like this," said Atlee, as he 
 smoked his cigarette, in a sort of languid grace, "one would 
 not say O' Council was wrong in his glowing admiration for 
 Irish scenery. If I were to awake every day for a week to 
 this, I suspect I should grow somewhat crazy myself about 
 the green island." 
 
 "And dash the description with a little treason too," said 
 the other, superciliously. ''I have always remarked the 
 
TWO FRIENDS AT BREAKFAST. 187 
 
 ingenious connection with which Irishmen bind up a love of 
 the picturesque with a hate of the Saxon." 
 
 " Why not ? they are bound together in the same romance. 
 Can you look on the Parthenon, and not think of the 
 Turk?" 
 
 '^A2?ropos of the Turk," said the other, laying his hand 
 on a folded letter which lay before him, "here's a long 
 letter from Lord Danesbury about that wearisome ' Eastern 
 question, ' as they call the ten thousand issues that await the 
 solution of the Bosphorus. Do you take interest in these 
 things?" 
 
 ''Immensely. After I have blown myself with a sharp 
 burst on Home politics I always take a canter among the 
 Druses and the Lebanites ; and I am such an authority on 
 the ' Grand Idea,' that Rangabe refers to me as * the illus- 
 trious statesman whose writings relieve England from the 
 stain of universal ignorance about Greece.'" 
 
 "And do you know anything on the subject? " 
 
 "About as much as the present Cabinet does of Ireland. 
 I know all the clap-traps; the grand traditions that have 
 sunk down into a present barbarism, — of course, through 
 ill government; the noble instincts depraved by gross usage; 
 I know the inherent love of freedom we cherish, which 
 makes men resent rents as well as laws, and teaches that 
 taxes are as great a tyranny as the rights of property." 
 
 "And do the Greeks take this view of it? " 
 
 " Of course they do ; and it was in experimenting on them 
 that your great ministers learned how to deal with Ire- 
 land. There was but one step from Thebes to Tipperary. 
 Corfu was ' pacified ' — that 's the phrase for it — by abol- 
 ishing the landlords. The peasants were told they might 
 spare a little if they liked to the ancient possessor of the 
 soil ; and so they took the ground, and they gave him the 
 olive-trees. You may imagine how fertile these were, when 
 the soil around them was utilized to the last fraction of 
 productiveness. " 
 
 "Is that a fair statement of the case?" 
 
 "Can you ask the question? I'll show it to you in 
 print." 
 
 "Perhaps written by yourself." 
 
188 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 *'And why not? What convictions have not broken on 
 my mind by reading my own writings ? You smile at this ; 
 but how do you know your face is clean till you look in a 
 glass ? " 
 
 Walpole, however, had ceased to attend to the speaker, 
 and was deeply engaged with the letter before him. 
 
 "I see here," cried he, "his Excellency is good enough to 
 say that some mark of royal favor might be advantageously 
 extended to those Kilgobbin people, in recognition of their 
 heroic defence. What should it be, is the question." 
 
 "Confer on him the peerage, perhaps." 
 
 "That is totally out of the question." 
 
 "It was Kate Kearney made the defence; why not give 
 her a commission in the army? Make it another ' woman's 
 right.'" 
 
 "You are absurd, Mr. Atlee.'* 
 
 *' Suppose you endowed her out of the Consolidated Fund? 
 Give her twenty thousand pounds, and I can almost assure 
 you that a very clever fellow I know will marry her." 
 
 "A strange reward for good conduct." 
 
 "A prize of virtue. They have that sort of thing in 
 France, and they say it gives a great support to puiity of 
 morals." 
 
 "Young Kearney might accept something if we knew what 
 to offer him." 
 
 "I 'd say a pair of black trousers; for I think I 'm now 
 wearing his last in that line." 
 
 "Mr. Atlee," said the other, grimly, "let me remind you 
 once again that the habit of light jesting — persiflage — is 
 so essentially Irish you should keep it for your country- 
 men ; and if you persist in supposing the career of a private 
 secretary suits you, this is an incongruity that will totally 
 unfit you for the walk. " 
 
 "I am sure you know your countrymen, sir, and I am 
 grateful for the rebuke." 
 
 Walpole' s cheek flushed at this, and it was plain that 
 there was a hidden meaning in the words which he felt and 
 resented. 
 
 "I do not know," continued Walpole, "if I am not 
 asking you to curb one of the strongest impulses of your 
 
TWO FRIENDS AT BREAKFAST. 189 
 
 disposition ; but it rests entirely with yourself whether my 
 counsel be worth following." 
 
 "Of course it is, sir. I shall follow your advice to the 
 letter, and keep all my good spirits and my bad manners 
 for my countrymen." 
 
 It was evident that Walpole had to exercise some strong 
 self-control not to reply sharply; but he refrained, and 
 turned once more to Lord Danesbury's letter, in which he 
 was soon deeply occupied. At last he said : " His Excellency 
 wants to send me out to Turkey, to confer with a man with 
 whom he has some confidential relations. It is quite impos- 
 sible that, in my present state of health, I could do this. 
 Would the thing suit you, Atlee — that is, if, on considera- 
 tion, I should opine that you would suit it ? " 
 
 " I suspect," replied Atlee, but with every deference in 
 his manner, " if you would entertain the last part of the 
 contingency first, it would be more convenient to each of us. 
 I mean whether I were fit for the situation." 
 
 ''Well, perhaps so," said the other, carelessly; "it is 
 not at all impossible, it may be one of the things you would 
 acquit yourself well in. It is a sort of exercise for tact 
 and discretion, — an occasion in which that light hand of 
 yours would have a field for employment, and that acute 
 skill in which I know you pride yourself as regards reading 
 character — " 
 
 " You have certainly piqued my curiosity," said Atlee. 
 
 "I don't know that I ought to have said so much: for, 
 after all, it remains to be seen whether Lord Danesbury 
 would estimate these gifts of yours as highly as I do. What 
 I think of doing is this : I shall send you over to his Ex- 
 cellency in your capacity as my own private secretary, to 
 explain how unfit I am in my present disabled condition to 
 undertake a journey. I shall tell my Lord how useful I 
 have found your services with regard to Ireland, how much 
 you know of the country and the people, and how worthy of 
 trust I have found your information and your opinions ; and 
 I shall hint — but only hint, remember — that, for the mis- 
 sion he speaks of, he might possibly do worse than fix upon 
 yourself. As of course, it rests with him to be like-minded 
 with me or not upon this matter — to take, in fact, his own 
 
190 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 estimate of Mr. Atlee from his own experiences of him, you 
 are not to know anything whatever of this project till his 
 Excellency thinks proper to open it to you. You under- 
 stand that?" 
 
 '' Thoroughly." 
 
 ' ' Your mission will be to explain — when asked to ex- 
 plain — certain difficulties of Irish life and habits ; and if his 
 Lordship should direct conversation to topics of the East, to 
 be careful to know nothing of the subject whatever, — mind 
 that." 
 
 " I shall be careful. I have read the 'Arabian Nights,' 
 but that 'sail." 
 
 " And of that tendency to small joking and weak epigram 
 I would also caution you to beware ; they will have no suc- 
 cess in the quarter to which you are going, and they will 
 only damage other qualities which you might possibly rely 
 on." 
 
 Atlee bowed a submissive acquiescence. 
 
 " I don't know that you '11 see Lady Maude Bickerstaffe, 
 his Lordship's niece." He stopped as if he had unwittingly 
 uttered an awkwardness, and then added: "I mean she 
 has not been well, and may not appear while you are at the 
 Castle ; but if you should, and if — which is not at all likely, 
 but still possible — you should be led to talk of Kilgobbin 
 and the incident that has got into the papers, you must be 
 very guarded in all you say. It is a county family of station 
 and repute. We were there as visitors. The ladies — I 
 don't know that I 'd say very much of the ladies." 
 
 " Except that they were exceedingly plain in looks, and 
 somewhat ^assees besides," added Atlee, gravely. 
 
 "I don't see why you should say that, sir," replied the 
 other, stiffly. " If you are not bent on compromising me by 
 an indiscretion, I don't perceive the necessity of involving 
 me in a falsehood." 
 
 " Y^ou shall be perfectly safe in my hands," said Atlee.. 
 
 '' And that I may be so, say as little about me as you can. 
 I know the injunction has its difficulties, Mr. Atlee, but pray 
 try and observe it." 
 
 The conversation had now arrived at a point in which one 
 angry word more must have produced a rupture between 
 
TWO FRIENDS AT BREAKFAST. 191 
 
 them ; and though Atlee took in the whole situation and its 
 consequences at a glance, there was nothing in the easy 
 jauntiness of his manner that gave any clew to a sense of 
 anxiety or discomfort. 
 
 ''Is it likely," asked he, at length, "that his Excellency 
 will advert to the idea of recognizing or rewarding these 
 people for their brave defence ? " 
 
 ''I am coming to that, if you will spare me a little pa- 
 tience ; Saxon slowness is a blemish you '11 have to grow 
 accustomed to. If Lord Danesbury should know that you 
 are an acquaintance of the Kilgobbin family, and ask you 
 what would be a suitable mode of showing how their conduct 
 has been appreciated in a high quarter, you should be pre- 
 pared with an answer." 
 
 Atlee's eyes twinkled with a malicious drollery, and he 
 had to bite his lips to repress an impertinence that seemed 
 almost to master his prudence, and at last he said care- 
 lessly, — 
 
 " Dick Kearney might get something." 
 
 " I suppose you know that his qualifications will be 
 tested. You bear that in mind, I hope — " 
 
 "Yes. I was just turning it over in my head, and 1 
 thought the best thing to do would be to make him a Civil 
 Service Commissioner. They are the only people taken on 
 trust." 
 
 "You are severe, Mr. Atlee. Have these gentlemen 
 earned this dislike on your part ? " 
 
 "Do you mean by having rejected me? No, that they 
 have not. I believe I could have survived that; and if, 
 however, they had come to the point of telling me that they 
 were content with my acquirements, and what is called 
 ' passed me,' I fervently believe I should have been seized 
 with an apoplexy." 
 
 " Mr. Atlee's opinion of himself is not a mean one," said 
 Walpole, with a cold smile. 
 
 " On the contrary, sir, I have occasion to feel pretty often 
 in every twenty-four hours what an ignominious part a man 
 plays in life who has to affect to be taught what he knows 
 already, — to be asking the road where he has travelled every 
 step of the way, — and to feel that a threadbare coat and 
 
192 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 broken boots take more from the value of his opinions than 
 if he were a knave or a blackleg." 
 
 " I don't see the humility of all this." 
 
 '*I feel the shame of it, though," said Atlee ; and as he 
 arose and walked out upon the terrace, the veins in his 
 forehead were swelled and knotted, and his lips trembled 
 with suppressed passion. 
 
 In a tone that showed how thoroughly indifferent he felt 
 to the other's irritation, Walpole went on to say : " You will 
 then make it your business, Mr. Atlee, to ascertain in what 
 way most acceptable to those people at Kilgobbin, his 
 Excellency may be able to show them some mark of royal 
 favor, — bearing in mind not to commit yourself to anything 
 that may raise great expectations. In fact, a recognition is 
 what is intended, not a reward." 
 
 Atlee's eyes fell upon the opal ring, wiiich he always wore 
 since the day Walpole had given it to him, and there was 
 something so significant in the glance that the other flushed 
 as he caught it. 
 
 " I believe I appreciate the distinction," said Atlee, 
 quietly. "It is to be something in which the generosity of 
 the donor is more commemorated than the merits of the 
 person rewarded, and, consequently, a most appropriate 
 recognition of the Celt by the Saxon. Do you think I ought 
 to go down to Kilgobbin Castle, sir? " 
 
 "I am not quite sure about that; I'll turn it over in my 
 mind. Meanwhile I '11 telegraph to my Lord that, if he 
 approves, I shall send you over to Wales ; and you had 
 better make what arrangements you have to make, to be 
 ready to start at a moment." 
 
 "Unfortunately, sir, I have none. I am in the full 
 enjoyment of such complete destitution that I am always 
 ready to go anywhere." 
 
 Walpole did not notice the words, but arose and walked 
 over to a writing-table, to compose his message for the 
 telegraph. 
 
 " There," said he, as he folded it, " have the kindness to 
 despatch this at once, and do not be out of the way about 
 five, or half-past, when I shall expect an answer." 
 
 " Am I free to go into town meanwhile? " asked Atlee. 
 
TWO FRIENDS AT BREAKFAST. 193 
 
 Walpole nodded assent without speaking. 
 
 '' I wonder if this sort of flunkeydom be good for a man," 
 muttered Atlee to himself, as he sprang down the stairs. '* I 
 begin to doubt it. At all events, I understand now the 
 secret of the first lieutenant's being a tyrant : he has once 
 been a middy. And so I say, let me only reach the ward- 
 room, and heaven help the cockpit ! " 
 
 13 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 atlee's embarrassments. 
 
 When Atlee returned to dress for dinner, he was sent for 
 hurriedly by Walpole, who told him that Lord Danesbury's 
 answer had arrived with the. order, '* Send him over at once, 
 and write fully at the same time." 
 
 " There is an eleven o'clock packet, Atlee, to-night," said 
 he: "you must manage to start by that. You'll reach 
 Holyhead by four or thereabouts, and can easily get to the 
 castle by midday." 
 
 " I wish I had had a little more time," muttered the other. 
 "If I am to present myself before his Excellency in such 
 a ' rig ' as this — " 
 
 " I have thought of that. We are nearly of the same 
 size and build ; you are, perhaps, a trifle taller, but noth- 
 ing to signify. Now, Buckmaster has just sent me a mass 
 of things of all sorts from town ; they are in my dressing- 
 room, not yet unpacked. Go up and look at them after 
 dinner : take what suits you — as much — all, if you like 
 — but don't delay now. It only wants a few minutes of 
 seven o'clock." 
 
 Atlee muttered his thanks hastily, and went his way. If 
 there was a thoughtfulness in the generosity of this action, 
 the mode in which it was performed, the measured cold- 
 ness of the words, the look of impassive examination that 
 accompanied them, and the abstention from anything that 
 savored of apology for a liberty, were all deeply felt by 
 the other. 
 
 It was true, Walpole had often heard him tell of the 
 freedom with which he had treated Dick Kearney's ward- 
 robe, and how poor Dick was scarcely sure he could call 
 an article of dress his own, whenever Joe had been the 
 first to go out into the town. The innumerable straits to 
 
ATLEE'S EMBARRASSMENTS. 195 
 
 which he reduced that unlucky chum, who had actually to 
 deposit a dinner-suit at a hotel to save it from Atlee's 
 rapacity, had amused Walpole ; but then these things were 
 all done in the spirit of the honest familiarity that pre- 
 vailed between them, — the tie of true camaraderie that 
 neither suggested a thought of obligation on one side, nor 
 of painful inferiority on the other. Here it was totally 
 different. These men did not live together with that daily 
 interchange of liberties which, with all their passing con- 
 tentions, so accustom people to each other's humors as to 
 establish the soundest and strongest of all friendships. 
 Walpole had adopted Atlee because he found him useful 
 in a variety of ways. He was adroit, ready-witted, and 
 intelligent ; a half-explanation sufficed with him on anything, 
 — a mere hint was enough to give him for an interview or 
 a reply. He read people readily, and rarely failed to profit 
 by the knowledge. Strange as it may seem, the great 
 blemish of his manner, — his snobbery, — Walpole rather 
 liked than disliked it. It was a sort of qualifying element 
 that satisfied him, as though it said, " With all that fellow's 
 cleverness, he is not ' one of us.' He might make a wittier 
 reply, or write a smarter note ; but society has its little 
 tests, — not one of which he could respond to." And this 
 was an inferiority Walpole loved to cherish and was pleased 
 to think over. 
 
 Atlee felt that Walpole might, with very little exercise 
 of courtesy, have dealt more considerately by him. 
 
 " I 'm not exactly a valet," muttered he to himself, "to 
 whom a man flings a waistcoat as he chucks a shilling to 
 a porter. I am more than Mr. Walpole's equal in many 
 things, which are not accidents of fortune." 
 
 He knew scores of things he could do better than him ; 
 indeed, there were very few he could not. 
 
 Poor Joe was not, however, aware that it was in the 
 "not doing " lay Walpole's secret of superiority; that the 
 inborn sense of abstention is the great distinguishing ele- 
 ment of the class Walpole belonged to; and he might 
 harass himself forever, and yet never guess where it was 
 that the distinction evaded him. 
 
 Atlee's manner at dinner was unusually cold and silent. 
 
196 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 He habitually made the chief efforts of conversation ; now he 
 spoke little and seldom. When Walpole talked, it was in 
 that careless discursive way it was his wont to discuss 
 matters with a familiar. He often put questions, and as 
 often went on without waiting for the answers. 
 
 As they sat over the dessert and were alone, he adverted 
 to the other's mission, throwing out little hints, and cau- 
 tions as to manner, w^hich Atlee listened to in perfect 
 silence, and without the slightest sign that could indicate 
 the feeling they produced. 
 
 '' You are going into a new country, Atlee," said he, at 
 last, " and I am sure you will not be sorry to learn some- 
 thing of the geography." 
 
 " Though it may mar a little of the adventure," said the 
 other, smiling. 
 
 " Ah, that 's exactly what I want to warn you against. 
 With us in England, there are none of those social vicissi- 
 tudes you are used to here. The game of life is played 
 gravely, quietly, and calmly. There are no brilliant suc- 
 cesses of bold talkers, no coups-de-thedtre of amusing racon- 
 teurs : no one tries to push himself into any position of 
 eminence." 
 
 A ■ half movement of impatience, as Atlee pushed his 
 wine-glass before him, arrested the speaker. 
 
 "I perceive," said he, stiffly, ''you regard my counsels 
 as unnecessary." 
 
 "Not that, sir, so much as hopeless," rejoined the other, 
 coldly. 
 
 "His Excellency will ask you, probably, some questions 
 about this country : let me warn you not to give him Irish 
 answers." 
 
 " I don't think I understand you, sir." 
 
 " I mean, don't deal in any exaggerations, avoid extrava- 
 gance, and never be slap-dash." 
 
 " Oh, these are Irish, then? " 
 
 Without deigning reply to this, Walpole went on. 
 
 "Of course you have your remedy for all the evils of 
 Ireland. I never met an Irishman who had not. But I 
 beg you spare his Lordship your theory, whatever it is, and 
 simply answer the questions he will ask you." 
 
ATLEE'S EMBARRASSMENTS. 197 
 
 *' I will try, sir," was the meek reply. 
 
 ''Above all things, let me warn you against a favorite > 
 blunder of your countrymen. Don't endeavor to explain 'j 
 peculiarities of action in this country by singularities of/ 
 race or origin ; don't try to make out that there are special 
 points of view held that are unknown on the other side of 
 the channel, or that there are other differences between 
 the two peoples, except such as more rags and greater 
 wretchedness produce. We have got over that very ven- 
 erable and time-honored blunder, and do not endeavor to 
 revive it." 
 
 ''Indeed!" 
 
 " Fact, I assure you. It is possible in some remote 
 country-house to chance upon some antiquated Tory who 
 still cherishes these notions ; but you '11 not find them 
 amongst men of mind or intelligence, nor amongst any 
 class of our people." 
 
 It was on Atlee's lip to ask, " Who were our people? " but 
 he forebore by a mighty effort, and was silent. 
 
 " I don't know if I have any other cautions to give you. 
 Do you?" 
 
 " No, sir. I could not even have reminded you of these, 
 if you had not yourself remembered them." 
 
 " Oh, I had almost forgotten it. If his Excellency should 
 give you anything to write out or to copy, don't smoke while 
 you are over it ; he abhors tobacco. I should have given you 
 a warning to be equally careful as regards Lady Maude's 
 sensibilities ; but, on the whole, I suspect you '11 scarcely 
 see her." 
 
 "Is that all, sir?" said the other, rising. 
 
 "Well, I think so. I shall be curious to hear how you 
 acquit yourself, — how you get on with his Excellency, and 
 how he takes you ; and you must write it all to me. Ain't 
 you much too early? it's scarcely ten o'clock." 
 
 " A quarter past ten ! and I have some miles to drive to 
 Kingstown." 
 
 " And not yet packed, perhaps? " said the other, listlessly. 
 
 "No, sir; nothing ready." 
 
 " Oh ! you'll be in ample time ; I '11 vouch for it. You are 
 one of the rough-and-ready order who are never late. Not 
 
198 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 but in this same flurry of yours you have made me forget 
 something I know I had to say ; and you tell me you can't 
 remember it? " 
 
 "No, sir." 
 
 " And yet," said the other, sententiously, " the crowning 
 merit of a private secretary is exactly that sort of memory. 
 Your intellects, if properly trained, should be the comple- 
 ment of your chief's. The infinite number of things that 
 are too small and too insignificant for him are to have 
 their place, duly docketed and dated. In your brain; and 
 the very expression of his face should be an indication 
 to you of what he is looking for and yet cannot remember. 
 Do you mark me? " 
 
 "Half-past ten," cried Atlee, as the clock chimed on the 
 mantelpiece ; and he hurried away without another word. 
 
 It was only as he saw the pitiable penury of his own scanty 
 wardrobe that he could persuade himself to accept of Wal- 
 pole's offer. 
 
 " After all," he said, " the loan of a dress-coat may be the 
 turning-point of a whole destiny. Junot sold all he had to 
 buy a sword, to make his first campaign ; all I have is my 
 shame, and here it goes for a suit of clothes ! " And, with 
 these words, he rushed down to Walpole's dressing-room, 
 and, not taking time to inspect and select the contents, 
 carried off the box, as it was, with him. "I'll tell him 
 all when I write," muttered he, as he drove away. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 DICK Kearney's chambers. 
 
 When Dick Kearney quitted Kilgobbin Castle for Dublin, he 
 was very far from having any projects in his head, excepting 
 to show his cousin Nina that he could live without her. 
 
 '^ I believe," muttered he to himself, '' she counts upon me 
 as another ' victim.' These coquettish damsels have a theory 
 that the ' whole drama of life ' is the game of their fascina- 
 tions and the consequences that come of them, and that we 
 men make it our highest ambition to win them, and subor- 
 dinate all we do in life to their favor. I should like to show 
 her that one man at least refuses to yield this allegiance, and 
 that whatever her blandishments do with others, with him 
 they are powerless." 
 
 These thoughts were his travelling-companions for nigh 
 fifty miles of travel, and, like most travelling-companions, 
 grew to be tiresome enough towards the end of the journey. 
 
 When he arrived in Dublin, he was in no hurry to repair to 
 his quarters in Trinity ; they were not particularly cheery in 
 the best of times, and now it was long vacation, with few 
 men in town and everything sad and spiritless ; besides this, 
 he was in no mood to meet Atlee, whose free-and-easy jocu- 
 larity he knew he would not endure, even with his ordinary 
 patience. Joe had never condescended to write one line 
 since he had left Kilgobbin, and Dick, who felt that in pre- 
 senting him to his family he had done him immense honor, 
 was proportionately indignant at this show of indifference. 
 But, by the same easy formula with which he could account 
 for anything in Nina's conduct, by her " coquetry," he was 
 able to explain every deviation from decorum of Joe Atlee's, 
 by his " snobbery." And it is astonishing how comfortable 
 
200 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 the thought made him, that this man, in all his smartness 
 and ready wit, in his prompt power to acquire, and his still 
 greater quickness to apply knowledge, was after all a most 
 consummate snob. 
 
 He had no taste for a dinner at commons, so he ate his 
 mutton-chop at a tavern, and went to the play. Ineffably 
 bored, he sauntered along the almost deserted streets of the 
 city, and just as midnight was striking, he turned under the 
 arched portal of the College. Secretly hoping that Atlee 
 might be absent, he inserted the key and entered his 
 quarters. 
 
 The grim old coal-bunker in the passage, the silent corri- 
 dor, and the dreary room at the end of it, never looked more 
 dismal than as he surveyed them now by the light of a little 
 wax match he had lighted to guide his way. There stood 
 the massive old table in the middle, with its litter of books 
 and papers, — memories of many a headache ; and there was 
 the paper of coarse Cavendish, against which he had so often 
 protested, as well as a pewter-pot, — a new infraction against 
 propriety since he had been away. Worse, however, than 
 all assaults on decency, were a pair of coarse highlows, 
 which had been placed within the fender, and had evidently 
 enjoyed the fire so long as it lingered in the grate. 
 
 ''So like the fellow! so like him!" was all that Dick 
 could mutter, and he turned away in disgust. 
 
 As Atlee never went to bed till daybreak, it was quite 
 clear that he was from home ; and as the College gates could 
 not reopen till morning, Dick was not sorry to feel that he 
 was safe from all intrusion for some hours. With this con- 
 solation, he betook him to his bedroom, and proceeded to 
 undress. Scarcely, however, had he thrown off his coat 
 than a heavy, long-drawn respiration startled him. He 
 stopped and listened : it came again, and from the bed. He 
 drew nigh, and there, to his amazement, on his own pillow, 
 lay a massive head of a coarse-looking, vulgar man, of about 
 thirty, with a silk handkerchief fastened over it as nightcap. 
 A brawny arm lay outside the bed-clothes, with an enormous 
 hand of very questionable cleanness, though one of the 
 fingers wore a heavy gold ring. 
 
 Wishing to gain what knowledge he might of his guest 
 
-DICK KEARNEY'S CHAMBERS. 201 
 
 before awaking him, Dick turned to inspect his clothes, 
 which, in a wild disorder, lay scattered through the room. 
 They were of the very poorest ; but such still as might have 
 belonged to a very humble clerk, or a messenger in a count- 
 ing-house. A large black leather pocket-book fell from a. 
 pocket of the coat, and, in replacing it, Dick perceived it 
 was filled with letters. On one of these, as he closed the 
 clasp, he read the name " Mr. Daniel Donogan, Dartmouth 
 Jail." 
 
 " What! " cried he, " is this the great head centre, Dono- 
 gan, I have read so much of? and how is he here?" 
 
 Though Dick Kearney was not usually quick of appre- 
 hension, he was not long here in guessing what the situation 
 meant; it was clear enough that Donogan, being a friend of 
 Joe Atlee, had been harbored here as a safe refuge. Of all 
 places in the capital, none were so secure from the visits of 
 the police as the College ; indeed it would have been no 
 small hazard for the public force to have invaded these pre- 
 cincts. Calculating therefore that Kearney was little likely 
 to leave Kilgobbin at present, Atlee had installed his friend 
 in Dick's quarters. The indiscretion was a grave one ; in 
 fact, there was nothing — even to expulsion itself — might 
 not have followed on discovery. 
 
 '' So like him ! so like him ! " was all he could mutter, as 
 he arose and walked about the room. 
 
 While he thus mused, he turned into Atlee's bedroom, and 
 at once it appeared why Mr. Donogan had been accommo- 
 dated in his room. Atlee's was perfectly destitute of ever}'- 
 thing : bed, chest of drawers, dressing-table, chair, and bath 
 were all gone. The sole object in the chamber was a coarse 
 print of a well-known informer of the year '98, "Jemmy 
 O'Brien," under whose portrait was written, in Atlee's hand, 
 "Bought in at fourpence-half penny, at the general sale, in 
 affectionate remembrance of his virtues, by one who feels 
 himself to be a relative. — J. A." Kearney tore down the 
 picture in passion, and stamped upon it; indeed, his indig- 
 nation with his chum had now passed all bounds of restraint. 
 
 "So like him in everything!" again burst from him in 
 utter bitterness. 
 
 Having thus satisfied himself that he had read the incident 
 
202 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 aright, he returned to the sitting-room, and at once decided 
 that he would leave Donogan to his rest till morning. 
 
 "It will be time enough then to decide what is to be 
 done," thought he. 
 
 He then proceeded to relight the fire, and, drawing a sofa 
 near, he wrapped himself in a railway-rug, and lay down to 
 sleep. For a long time he could not compose himself to 
 slumber. He thought of Nina ; and her wiles, — ay, they 
 were wiles, — he saw them plainly enough. It was true he 
 was no prize — no "catch," as they call it — to angle for; 
 and such a girl as she was could easily look higher; but 
 still he might swell the list of those followers she seemed to 
 like to behold at her feet offering up every homage to her 
 beauty, even to their actual despair. And he thought of 
 his own condition, — very hopeless and purposeless as it 
 was. 
 
 "What a journey to be sure was life, without a goal to 
 strive for ! Kilgobbin would be his one day ; but by that 
 time would it be able to pay off the mortgages that were 
 raised upon it? It was true Atlee was no richer ; but Atlee 
 was a shifty, artful fellow, with scores of contrivances to go 
 windward of fortune in even the very worst of weather. 
 Atlee would do many a thing he would not stoop to." 
 
 And as Kearney said this to himself, he was cautious in 
 the use of his verb, and never said "could," but always 
 "would" do; and, oh dear! is it not in this fashion that so 
 many of us keep up our courage in life, and attribute to the 
 want of will what we well know lies in the want of 
 power ? 
 
 Last of all he bethought himself of this man Donogan, a 
 dangerous fellow in a certain way, and one whose com- 
 panionship must be got rid of at any price. Plotting over 
 in his mind how this should be done in the morning, he at 
 last fell fast asleep. 
 
 So overcome was he by slumber that he never awoke 
 when that venerable institution called the College woman — 
 the hag whom the virtue of unerring dons insists on impos- 
 ing as a servant on resident students — entered, made up 
 the fire, swept up the room, and arranged the breakfast- 
 table. It was only as she jogged his arm to ask him for an 
 
DICK KEARNEY'S CHAMBERS. 203 
 
 additional penny to buy more milk, that he awoke and 
 remembered where he was. 
 
 " Will I get yer honer a bit of bacon?" asked she, in a 
 tone intended to be insinuating. 
 
 " Whatever you like," said he, drowsily. 
 
 "It's himself there likes a rasher, — when he can get it," 
 said she, with a leer, and a motion of her thumb towards the 
 adjoining room. 
 
 " Whom do you mean?" asked he, half to learn what and 
 how much she knew of his neighbor. 
 
 "Oh! don't 1 know him well? — Dan Donogan," replied 
 she, with a grin. " Did n't I see him in the dock with Smith 
 O'Brien in '48, and was n't he in trouble again after he got 
 his pardon ; and won't he always be in trouble?" 
 
 " Hush ! don't talk so loud," cried Dick, warningly. 
 
 " He 'd not hear me now if I was screechin' ; it 's the only 
 time he sleeps hard ; for he gets up about three or half-past 
 — before it 's day — and he squeezes through the bars of the 
 window, and gets out into the Park, and he takes his exer- 
 cise there for two hours, most of the time running full speed 
 and keeping himself in fine wind. Do you know what he 
 said to me the other day? ' Molly,' says he, ' when I know 
 I can get between those bars there, and run round the Col- 
 lege Park in three minutes and twelve seconds, I feel that 
 there 's not many a jail in Ireland can howld, and the divil a 
 policeman in the island could catch, me.' " And she had to 
 lean over the back of a chair to steady herself while she 
 laughed at the conceit. 
 
 "I think, after all," said Kearney, "I'd rather keep out 
 of the scrape than trust to that way of escaping it." 
 
 '^ He wouldn't," said she. "He'd rather be seducin' 
 soldiers in Barrack Street, or swearing in a new Fenian, or 
 nailing a death-warnin' on a hall-door, than he 'd be lord 
 mayor ! If he was n't in mischief, he 'd like to be in his 
 grave." 
 
 "And what comes of it all?" said Kearney, scarcely 
 giving any exact meaning to his words. 
 
 "That's what I do be saying myself," cried the hag. 
 "When they can transport you for singing a ballad, and 
 send you to pick oakum for a green cravat, it 's time to take 
 
204 I.ORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 to some other trade than patriotism ! " And with this re- 
 flection she shuffled away, to procure the materials for 
 breakfast. 
 
 The fresh rolls, the watercress, a couple of red herrings 
 devilled as those ancient damsels are expert in doing, and a 
 smoking dish of rashers and eggs, flanked by a hissing tea- 
 kettle, soon made their appearance, the hag assuring Kear- 
 ney that a stout knock with the poker on the back of the 
 grate would summon Mr. Donogan almost instantaneously^ ; 
 so rapidly, indeed, and with such indifference as to raiment, 
 that, as she modestly declared, "I have to take to my heels 
 the moment I call him ; " and the modest avowal was con- 
 firmed by her hasty departure. 
 
 The assurance was so far correct that scarcely had Kear- 
 ney replaced the poker when the door opened, and one of 
 the strangest figures he had ever beheld presented itself in 
 the room. He was a short thick-set man with a profusion 
 of yellowish hair, which, divided in the middle of the head, 
 hung down on either side to his neck ; beard and moustache 
 of the same hue left little of the face to be seen but a pair 
 of lustrous blue eyes, deep-sunken in their orbits, and a short 
 wide-nostrilled nose which bore the closest resemblance to 
 a lion's. Indeed, a most absurd likeness to the king of 
 beasts was the impression produced on Kearney as this 
 wild-looking fellow bounded forward, and stood there 
 amazed at finding a stranger to confront him. 
 
 His dress was a flannel shirt and trousers, and a pair of 
 old slippers which had once been Kearney's own. 
 
 "I was told by the College woman how I was to summon 
 you, Mr. Donogan," said Kearney, good-naturedly. "You 
 are not offended with the liberty?" 
 
 "Are you Dick?" asked the other, coming forward. 
 
 "Yes. I think most of my friends know me by that 
 name." 
 
 "And the old devil has told you mine?" asked he, 
 quickly. 
 
 " No, I believe I discovered that for myself. I tumbled 
 over some of your things last night, and saw a letter 
 addressed to you." 
 
 "You didn't read it?" 
 
DICK KEARNEY'S CHAMBERS. 205 
 
 "Certainly not. It fell out of your pocket-book, and I 
 put it back there." 
 
 "So the old hag did n't blab on me? I 'm anxious about 
 this, because it 's got out somehow that I 'm back again. I 
 landed at Kenmare in a fishing-boat from the New York 
 packet, the ' Osprey,' on Tuesday fortnight, and three of the 
 newspapers had it before I was a week on shore." 
 
 "Our breakfast is getting cold; sit down here and let me 
 help you. Will you begin with a rasher?" 
 
 Not replying to the invitation, Donogan covered his plate 
 with bacon, and leaning his arm on the table, stared fixedly 
 at Kearney. 
 
 "I 'm as glad as fifty pounds of it," muttered he slowly 
 to himself. 
 
 "Glad of what?" 
 
 "Glad that you're not a swell, Mr. Kearney," said he, 
 gravely. " ' The Honorable Richard Kearney,' — whenever 
 I repeated that to myself it gave me a cold sweat. I 
 thought of velvet collars and a cravat with a grand pin in it, 
 and a stuck-up creature behind both that would n't conde- 
 scend to sit down with me." 
 
 "I'm sure Joe Atlee gave you no such impression of 
 me." 
 
 A short grunt that might mean anything was all the 
 reply. 
 
 "He was my chum, and knew me better," reiterated the 
 other. 
 
 "He knows many a thing he doesn't say, and he says 
 plenty that he does n't know. ' Kearney will be a swell,' 
 said I, ' and he '11 turn upon me just out of contempt for my 
 condition.' " 
 
 "That was judging me hardly, Mr. Donogan." 
 
 "No, it wasn't; it's the treatment the mangy dogs meet 
 all the world over. Why is England insolent to us, but 
 because we 're poor? — answer me that. Are we mangy? 
 Don't you feel mangy? — I know i do! " 
 
 Dick smiled a sort of mild contradiction, but said 
 nothing. 
 
 "Now that I see you, Mr. Kearney," said the other, "I 'm 
 as glad as a ten-pound note about a letter I wrote you — " 
 
 "I never received a letter from you." 
 
206 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Sure I know you didn't! haven't I got it here? " And 
 he drew forth a square-shaped packet and held it up before 
 him. "I never said that I sent it, nor I won't send it now. 
 Here 's its present address," added he, as he threw it on the 
 fire and pressed it down with his foot. 
 
 ''Why not have given it to me now? " asked the other. 
 
 "Because three minutes will tell you all that was in it, 
 and better than writing ; for I can reply to anything that 
 wants an explanation, and that 's what a letter cannot. 
 First of all, do you know that Mr. Claude Barry, your 
 county member, has asked for the Chiltern, and is going 
 to resign ? " 
 
 "No, I have not heard it." 
 
 "Well, it 's a fact. They are going to make him a 
 second secretary somewhere, and pension him off. He has 
 done his work. He voted an Arms Bill and an Insurrection 
 Act, and he had the influenza when the amnesty petition 
 was presented; and sure no more could be expected from 
 any man." 
 
 "The question scarcely concerns me; our interest in the 
 county is so small now, we count for very little." 
 
 "And don't you know how to make your influence 
 greater?" 
 
 "I cannot say that I do." 
 
 "Go to the poll yourself, Richard Kearney, and be the 
 member." 
 
 "You are talking of an impossibility, Mr. Donogan. 
 First of all, we have no fortune, no large estates in the 
 county, with a wide tenantry and plenty of votes ; secondly, 
 we have no place amongst the county families, as our old 
 name and good blood might have given us ; thirdly, we are 
 of the wrong religion, and, I take it, with as wrong politics , 
 and, lastly, we should not know what to do with the prize 
 if we had won it." 
 
 "Wrong in every one of your propositions; wholly 
 wrong," cried the other. "The party that will send you in 
 won't want to be bribed, and they'll be proud of a man 
 who does n't overtop them with his money. You don't need 
 the big families, for you '11 beat them. Your religion is 
 the right one, for it will give you the Priests; and your 
 politics shall be Repeal, and it will give you the Peasants ; 
 
DICK KEARNEY'S CHAMBERS. 207 
 
 and as to not knowing what to do when you 're elected, are 
 you so mighty well off in life that you 've nothing to wish 
 for?" 
 
 "I can scarcely say that," said Dick, smiling. 
 
 "Give me a few minutes' attention," said Donogan, ''and 
 I think I '11 show you that I 've thought this matter out and 
 out; indeed, before I sat down to write to you, I went into 
 all the details." 
 
 And now, with a clearness and a fairness that astonished 
 Kearney, this strange-looking fellow proceeded to prove 
 how he had weighed the whole difficulty, and saw how in 
 the nice balance of the two great parties who would contest 
 the seat, the Repealer would step in and steal votes from 
 both. 
 
 He showed not only that he knew every barony of the 
 county, and every estate and property, but that he had a 
 clear insight into the different localities where discontent 
 prevailed, and places where there was something more than 
 discontent. 
 
 "It is down there," said he, significantly, "that 1 can be 
 useful. The man that has had his foot in the dock, and 
 only escaped having his head in the noose, is never discred- 
 ited in Ireland. Talk parliament and parliamentary tac- 
 tics to the small shopkeepers in Moate, and leave me to talk 
 treason to the people in the bog." 
 
 "But I mistake you and your friends greatly," said Kear- 
 ney, "if these were the tactics you always followed; I 
 thought that you were the physical force party, who sneered 
 at constitutionalism, and only believed in the pike." 
 
 " So we did, so long as we saw O'Connell and the lawyers 
 working the game of that grievance for their own advantage, 
 and teaching the English Government how to rule Ireland 
 by a system of concession to them and to their friends. 
 Now, however, we begin to perceive that to assault that 
 heavy bastion of Saxon intolerance we must have spies in 
 the enemy's fortress, and for this we send in so many mem- 
 bers to the Whig party. There are scores of men who will 
 aid us by their vote who would not risk a bone in our 
 cause. Theirs is a sort of subacute patriotism; but it 
 has its use. It smashes an Established Church, breaks 
 
208 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 down Protestant ascendency, destroys the prestige of landed 
 property, and will in time abrogate entail and primogeni- 
 ture, and many another fine thing; and in this way it clears 
 the ground for our operations, just as soldiers fell trees and 
 level houses, lest they interfere ivith the range of heavy 
 artillery." 
 
 " So that the place you would assign me is that very hon- 
 orable one you have just called a ' spy in the camp ' ? " 
 
 "By a figure I said that, Mr. Kearney; but you know well 
 enough what I meant was, that there 's many a man will help 
 us on the Treasury benches, that would not turn out on 
 Tallaght; and we want both. I won't say," added he, after 
 a pause, " I 'd not rather see you a leader in our ranks than 
 a Parliament man. I was bred a doctor, Mr. Kearney, and 
 I must take an illustration from my own art. To make a 
 man susceptible of certain remedies, you are often obliged 
 to reduce his strength and weaken his constitution. So it 
 is here. To bring Ireland into a condition to be bettered 
 by Repeal, you must crush the Church and smash the bitter 
 Protestants. The Whigs will do these for us ; but we must 
 help them. Do you understand me now? " 
 
 ''I believe I do. In the case you speak of, then, the 
 Government will support my election." 
 
 "Against a Tory, yes; but not against a pure Whig, — 
 a thorough-going supporter who would bargain for nothing 
 for his country, only something for his own relations." 
 
 " If your project has an immense fascination for me at 
 one moment, and excites my ambition beyond all bounds, 
 the moment I turn my mind to the cost, and remember my 
 own poverty, I see nothing but hopelessness." 
 
 "That 's not my view of it; nor when you listen to me 
 patiently will it, I believe, be yours. Can we have another 
 talk over this in the evening? " 
 
 "To be sure! we '11 dine here together at six." 
 
 "Oh, never mind me; think of yourself, Mr. Kearney, 
 and your own engagements. As to the matter of dining, a 
 crust of bread and a couple of apples are fully as much as 
 I want or care for." 
 
 "We '11 dine together to-day at six," said Dick; "and bear 
 in mind, I am more interested in this than you are." 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 A CRAFTY COUNSELLOR. 
 
 As they were about to sit down to dinner on that day, a 
 telegram, re-directed from Kilgobbin, reached Kearney's 
 hand. It bore the date of that morning from Plmnuddm 
 Castle, and was signed "Atlee." Its contents were these: 
 *'H. E. wants to mark the Kilgobbin defence with some sign 
 of approval. What shall it be? Reply by wire." 
 
 "Read that, and tell us what you think of it." 
 
 "Joe Atlee at the Viceroy's castle in Wales!" cried the 
 other. '' We 're going up the ladder hand over head, Mr. 
 Kearney! A week ago his ambition was bounded on the 
 south by Ship Street, and on the east by the Lower Castle 
 Yard." 
 
 " How do you understand the despatch? " asked Kearney, 
 quickly. 
 
 "Easily enough. His Excellency wants to know what 
 you '11 have for shooting down three — I think they were 
 three — Irishmen." 
 
 "The fellows came to demand arms, and with loaded guns 
 in their hands." 
 
 "And if they did! Is not the first right of a man the 
 weapon that defends him ? He that cannot use it or does 
 not possess it is a slave. By what prerogative has Kilgob- 
 bin Castle, within its walls, what can take the life of any, 
 the meanest, tenant on the estate ? " 
 
 "I am not going to discuss this with you; I think I have 
 heard most of it before, and was not impressed when I did 
 so. What I asked was, what sort of a recognition one might 
 safely ask for and reasonably expect?" 
 
 "That 's not long to look for. Let them support you in 
 the county. Telegraph back, ' I 'm going to stand, and, if 
 
210 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 I get in, will be a Whig whenever I am not a nationalist. 
 Will the party stand by me ? ' " 
 
 " Scarcely with that programme." 
 
 "And do you think that the priests' nominees, who are 
 three- fourths of the Irish members, offer better terms ? Do 
 you imagine that the men that crowd the Whig lobby have 
 not reserved their freedom of action about the Pope, and 
 the Fenian prisoners, and the Orange processionists? If 
 they were not free so far, I 'd ask you, with the old Duke, 
 How is her Majesty's Government to be carried on? " 
 
 Kearney shook his head in dissent. 
 
 "And that 's not all," continued the other; "but you must 
 write to the papers a flat contradiction of that shooting 
 story. You must either declare that it never occurred at all, 
 or was done by that young scamp from the Castle, who, 
 happily, got as much as he gave." 
 
 "That I could not do," said Kearney, firmly. 
 
 "And it is that precisely that you must do," rejoined the 
 other. "If you go into the House to represent the popular 
 feeling of Irishmen, the hand that signs the roll must not be 
 stained with Irish blood." 
 
 "You forget; I was not within fifty miles of the place." 
 
 "And another reason to disavow it. Look here, Mr. 
 Kearney; if a man in a battle was to say to himself, I '11 
 never give any but a fair blow, he 'd make a mighty bad 
 soldier. Now, public life is a battle, and worse than a 
 battle in all that touches treachery and falsehood. If you 
 mean to do any good in the world, to yourself and your 
 country, take my word for it, you '11 have to do plenty 
 of things that you don't like, and, what's worse, can't 
 defend." 
 
 "The soup is getting cold all this time. Shall we sit 
 down ? " 
 
 "No, not till we answer the telegram. Sit down and say 
 what I told you." 
 
 "Atlee will say I'm mad. He knows that I have not a 
 shilling in the world." 
 
 "Riches is not the badge of the representation," said the 
 other. 
 
 "They can, at least, pay the cost of the elections." 
 
A CRAFTY COUNSELLOR. 211 
 
 "Well, we'll pay ours, too, — not all at once, but later on ; 
 don't fret yourself about that." 
 
 "They '11 refuse me flatly." 
 
 " No, we have a lien on the fine gentleman with the broken 
 arm. What would the Tories give for that story, told as I 
 could tell it to them? At all events, whatever you do in 
 life, remember this, — that if asked your price for anything 
 you have done, name the highest, and take nothing if it 's 
 refused you. It's a waiting race, but I never knew it fail 
 in the end." 
 
 Kearney despatched his message, and sat down to t 
 table, far too much flurried and excited to care for his 
 dinner. Not so his guest, who ate voraciously, seldom 
 raising his head, and never uttering a word. "Here 's to 
 the new member for King's County," said he at last, and he 
 drained off his glass; "and I don't know a pleasanter way 
 of wishing a man prosperity than in a bumper. Has your 
 father any politics, Mr. Kearney?" 
 
 "He thinks he's a Whig; but, except hating the Estab- 
 lished Church and having a print of Lord Russell over the 
 fireplace, I don't know he has other reason for the opinion." 
 
 "All right; there 's nothing finer for a young man enter- 
 ing public life than to be able to sneer at his father for a 
 noodle. That 's the practical way to show contempt for the 
 wisdom of our ancestors. There 's no appeal the public 
 respond to with the same certainty as that of the man who 
 quarrels with his relations for the sake of his principles; 
 and whether it be a change in your politics or your religion, 
 they 're sure to uphold you." 
 
 "If differing with my father will insure my success, I 
 can afford to be confident," said Dick, smiling. 
 
 "Your sister has her notions about Ireland, hasn't she? " 
 
 " Yes, I believe she has ; but she fancies that laws and 
 acts of Parliament are not the things in fault, but ourselves 
 and our modes of dealing with the people, that were not 
 often just, and were always capricious. I am not sure how 
 she works out her problem, but I believe we ought to edu- 
 cate each other; and that in turn, for teaching the people to 
 read and write, there are scores of things to be learned from 
 them." 
 
212 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''And the Greek girl?" 
 
 "The Greek girl — "began Dick, haughtily, and with a 
 manner that betokened rebuke, and which suddenly changed 
 as he saw that nothing in the other's manner gave any 
 indication of intended freedom or insolence, — "the Greek 
 is my first cousin, Mr. Donogan," said he, calmly; "but I 
 am anxious to know how you have heard of her, or, indeed, 
 of any of us." 
 
 "From Joe, — Joe Atlee! I believe we have talked you 
 over — every one of you — till I know you all as well as if I 
 lived in the castle and called you by your Christian names. 
 Do you know, Mr. Kearney," — and his voice trembled now 
 as he spoke, — "that to a lone and desolate man like myself, 
 who has no home and scarcely a country, there is some- 
 thing indescribably touching in the mere picture of the fire- 
 side, and the family gathered round it, talking over little 
 homely cares and canvassing the changes of each day's 
 fortune. I could sit here half the night and listen to Atlee 
 telling how you lived, and the sort of things that interested 
 you." 
 
 "So that you 'd actually like to look at us?" 
 
 Donogan' s eyes grew glassy, and his lips trembled, but 
 he could not utter a word. 
 
 "So you shall, then," cried Dick, resolutely. "We'll 
 start to-morrow by the early train. You '11 not object to a 
 ten-miles' walk, and we '11 arrive for dinner." 
 
 "Do you know who it is you are inviting to your father's 
 house ? Do you know that I am an escaped convict, with a 
 price on my head this minute ? Do you know the penalty 
 of giving me shelter, or even what the law calls comfort? " 
 
 "I know this, that in the heart of the Bog of Allen, 
 you'll be far safer than in the city of Dublin; that none 
 shall ever learn who you are ; nor, if they did, is there one 
 — the poorest in the place — would betray you." 
 
 "It is of you, sir, I 'm thinking, not of me," said Dono- 
 gan, calmly. 
 
 " Don't fret yourself about us. We are well known in 
 our county, and above suspicion. Whenever you yourself 
 should feel that your presence was like to be a danger, I am 
 quite willing to believe you 'd take yourself off." 
 
A CRAFTY COUNSELLOR. 213 
 
 *'You judge me rightly, sir, and I am proud to see it; 
 but how are you to present me to your friends ? " 
 
 "As a College acquaintance, — a friend of Atlee's and of 
 mine, — a gentleman who occupied the room next me. I 
 can surely say that with truth." 
 
 "And dined w4th you every day since you knew him. 
 Why not add that?" 
 
 He laughed merrily over this conceit, and at last Donogan 
 said: "I've a little kit of clothes — something decenter 
 than these — up in Thomas Street, No. 13, Mr. Kearney; the 
 old house Lord Edward was shot in, and the safest place in 
 Dublin now, because it is so notorious. I '11 step up for 
 them this evening, and I '11 be ready to start when you 
 like." 
 
 "Here 's good fortune to us, whatever we do next," said 
 Kearney, filling both their glasses; and they touched the 
 brims together, and clinked them before they drained 
 them. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 ON THE LEADS. 
 
 Kate Kearney's room was on the top of the castle, and 
 "gave " by a window over the leads of a large square tower. 
 On this space she had made a little garden of a few flowers, 
 to tend which was one of what she called her "dissipations." 
 
 Some old packing-cases, filled with mould, sufficed to 
 nourish a few stocks and carnations, a rose or two, and a 
 mass of mignonette, which possibly, like the children of 
 the poor, grew up sturdy and healthy from some of the 
 adverse circumstances of their condition. It was a very 
 favorite spot with her ; and if she came hither in her hap- 
 piest moments, it was here also her saddest hours were 
 passed, sure that in the cares and employments of her loved 
 plants she would find solace and consolation. It was at this 
 window Kate now sat with Nina, looking over the vast 
 plain, on which a rich moonlight was streaming, the shadows 
 of fast-flitting clouds throwing strange and fanciful effects 
 over a space almost wide enough to be a prairie. 
 
 "What a deal have mere names to do with our imagina- 
 tions, Nina!" said Kate. "Is not that boundless sweep 
 before us as fine as your boasted Campagna? Does not 
 the night wind career over it as joyfully, and is not the 
 moonlight as picturesque in its breaks by turf-clamp and 
 hillock as by ruined wall and tottering temple? In a 
 word, are not we as well here, to drink in all this delicious 
 silence, as if we were sitting on your loved Pincian? " 
 
 "Don't ask me to share such heresies. I see nothing 
 out there but bleak desolation. I don't know if it ever had 
 a past ; I can almost swear it will have no future. Let us 
 not talk of it." 
 
 "What shall we talk of ? " asked Kate, with an arch smile. 
 
"ON THE LEADS." 215 
 
 " You know well enough what led me up here. I want to 
 hear what you know of that strange man Dick brought here 
 to-day to dinner." 
 
 "I never saw him before; never even heard of him." 
 
 "Do you like him? " 
 
 "I have scarcely seen him." 
 
 "Don't be so guarded and reserved. Tell me frankly the 
 impression he makes on you. Is he not vulgar, — very 
 vulgar?" 
 
 "How should I say, Nina? Of all the people you ever 
 met, who knows so little of the habits of society as myself? 
 Those fine gentlemen who were here the other day shocked 
 my ignorance by numberless little displays of indifference. 
 Yet I can feel that they must have been paragons of good 
 breeding, and that what I believed to be a very cool self- 
 sufficiency was in reality the very latest London version 
 of good manners." 
 
 " Oh, you did not like that charming carelessness of Eng- 
 lishmen that goes where it likes and when it likes, that does 
 not wait to be answered when it questions, and only insists 
 on one thing, which is, — ' not to be bored. ' Jf you knew, 
 dearest Kate, how foreigners school themselves, and strive 
 to catch up that insouciance, and never succeed — never! " 
 
 "My brother's friend certainly is no adept in it." 
 
 "He is insufferable. I don't know that the man ever 
 dined in the company of ladies before ; did you remark that 
 he did not open the door as we left the dinner-room? and 
 if your brother had not come over, I should have had to 
 open it for myself. I declare I 'm not sure he stood up as 
 we passed." 
 
 "Oh, yes; I saw him rise from his chair." 
 
 " I '11 tell you what you did not see. You did not see 
 him open his napkin at dinner. He stole his roll of bread 
 very slyly from the folds, and then placed the napkin, care- 
 fully folded, beside him." 
 
 "You seem to have obsers^ed him closely, Nina." 
 
 "I did so, because I saw enough in his manner to excite 
 suspicion of his class, and I want to know what Dick means 
 by introducing him here." 
 
 " Papa liked him; at least he said that after we left the 
 
216 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 room a good deal of his shyness wore off, and that he con- 
 versed pleasantly and well. Above all, he seems to know 
 Ireland perfectly." 
 
 " Indeed ! " said she, half disdainfully. 
 
 '' So much so that I was heartily sorry to leave the room 
 when I heard them begin the topic ; but I saw papa wished 
 to have some talk with him, and I went." 
 
 ''They were gallant enough not to join us afterwards, 
 though I think we waited tea till ten." 
 
 "Till nigh eleven, Nina; so that I am sure they must 
 have been interested in their conversation." 
 
 " I hope the explanation excuses them." 
 
 " I don't know that they are aware they needed an 
 apology. Perhaps they were affecting a little of that British 
 insouciance you spoke of — " 
 
 " They had better not. It will sit most awkwardly on 
 their Irish habits." 
 
 '' Some day or other I'll give you a formal battle on this 
 score, Nina, and I warn you you '11 not come so well out 
 of it." 
 
 '' Whenever you like. I accept the challenge. Make 
 this brilliant companion of your brother's the type, and it 
 will test your cleverness, I promise you. Do you even 
 know his name ? " 
 
 " Mr. Daniel, my brother called him ; but I know nothing 
 of his country or of his belongings." 
 
 " Daniel is a Christian name, not a family name, is it 
 not? We have scores of people like that — Tommasina, 
 Riccardi, and such like — in Italy, but they mean nothing." 
 
 "Our friend below stairs looks as if that was not his 
 failing. I should say that he means a good deal." 
 
 " Oh, I know you are laughing at my stupid phrase — no 
 matter; you understand me, at all events. I don't like 
 that man." 
 
 "Dick's friends are not fortunate with you. I remem- 
 ber how unfavorably you judged of Mr. Atlee from his 
 portrait." 
 
 "Well, he looked rather better than his picture, — less 
 false, I mean ; or perhaps it was that he had a certain levity 
 of manner that carried off the perfidy." 
 
"ON THE LEADS." 217 
 
 *' What an amiable sort of levity ! " 
 
 " You are too critical on me by half this evening," said 
 Nina, pettishly ; and she arose and strolled out upon the 
 leads. 
 
 For some time Kate was scarcely aware she had gone. 
 Her head was full of cares, and she sat trying to think 
 some of them "out," and see her w^ay to deal with them. 
 At last the door of the room slowly and noiselessly opened, 
 and Dick put in his head. 
 
 " I was afraid you might be asleep, Kate," said he, enter- 
 ing, " finding all so still and quiet here." 
 
 "No. Nina and I were chatting here, — squabbling, I 
 believe, if I were to tell the truth ; and I can't tell when 
 she left me." 
 
 " What could you be quarrelling about?" asked he, as he 
 sat down beside her. 
 
 " I think it was with that strange friend of yours. We 
 were not quite agreed whether his manners were perfect, or 
 his habits those of the w^ell-bred world. Then we wanted 
 to know more of him, and each was dissatisfied that the 
 other was so ignorant ; and, lastly, we were canvassing that 
 very peculiar taste you appear to have in friends, and were 
 wondering where you find your odd people." 
 
 " So then you don't like Donogan? " said he, hurriedly. 
 
 " Like whom? And you call him Donogan ! " 
 
 "The mischief is out," said he. "Not that I wanted to 
 have secrets from you ; but all the same, I am a precious 
 bungler. His name is Donogan, and what 's more, it 's 
 Daniel Donogan. He was the same who figured in the dock 
 at, I believe, sixteen years of age, with Smith O'Brien and 
 the others, and was afterwards seen in England in '59, 
 known as a head-centre, and apprehended on suspicion in '60, 
 and made his escape from Dartmoor the same year. There 's 
 a very pretty biography in skeleton, is it not? " 
 
 " But, my dear Dick, how are you connected with him? " 
 
 "Not very seriously. Don't be afraid. I'm not com- 
 promised in any way, nor does he desire that I should be. 
 Here is the whole story of our acquaintance." 
 
 And now he told what the reader already knows of their 
 first meeting and the intimacy that followed it. 
 
218 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "All that will take nothing from the danger of harboring 
 a man charged as he is," said she, gravely. 
 
 " That is to say, if he be tracked and discovered." 
 
 " It is what I mean." 
 
 " Well, one has only to look out of that window and see 
 where we are, and what lies around us on every side, to be 
 tolerably easy on that score." 
 
 And as he spoke, he arose, and walked out upon the 
 terrace. 
 
 "What! were you here all this time?" asked he, as he 
 saw Nina seated on the battlement, and throwing dried 
 leaves carelessly to the wind. 
 
 "Yes; I have been here this half-hour, perhaps longer." 
 
 " And heard what we have been saying within there? " 
 
 " Some chance words reached me, but I did not follow 
 them." 
 
 "Oh, it was here you were then, Nina! " cried Kate. 
 " I am ashamed to say I did not know it." 
 
 "We got so warm in discussing your friend's merits or 
 demerits that we parted in a sort of huff," said Nina. "I 
 wonder was he worth quarrelling for ? " 
 
 "What should you say?" asked Dick, inquiringly, as he 
 scanned her face. 
 
 " In any other land I might say he was, — that is, that 
 some interest might attach to him ; but here, in Ireland, 
 you all look so much brighter and wittier and more im- 
 petuous and more out of the common than you really are, 
 that I give up all divination of you, and own I cannot read 
 you at all." 
 
 '.' I hope you like the explanation," said Kate to her 
 brother, laughing. 
 
 "I'll tell my friend of it in the morning," said Dick; 
 " and as he is a great national champion, perhaps he '11 
 accept it as a defiance." 
 
 "You do not frighten me by the threat," said Nina, 
 calmly. 
 
 Dick looked from her face to his sister's and back again 
 to hers, to discern if he might how much she had over- 
 heard ; but he could read nothing in her cold and impas- 
 sive bearing, and he went his way in doubt and confusion. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 ON A VISIT AT KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Before Kearney had risen from his bed the next morning, 
 Donogan was in his room, his look elated and his cheek 
 glowing with recent exercise. " I have had a burst of two 
 hours' sharp walking over the bog," cried he; "and it has 
 put me in such spirits as I have not known for many a 
 year. Do you know, Mr. Kearney, that what with the 
 fantastic effects of the morning mists, as they lift them- 
 selves over these vast wastes, — the glorious patches of blue 
 heather and purple anemone that the sun displays through 
 the fog, — and, better than all, the springiness of a soil 
 that sends a thrill to the heart, like a throb of youth it- 
 self, — there is no walking in the world can compare with a 
 bog at sunrise ! There 's a sentiment to open a paper on 
 nationalities ! I came up with the postboy, and took his 
 letters to save him a couple of miles. Here's one for you, 
 I think from Atlee ; and this is also to your address, from 
 Dublin ; and here 's the last number of the ' Pike,' and 
 you'll see they have lost no time. There's a few lines 
 about you : ' Our readers will be grateful to us for the tid- 
 ings we announce to-day, with authority, — that Richard 
 Kearney, Esq., son of Mathew Kearney, of Kilgobbin 
 Castle, will contest his native county at the approaching 
 election. It will be a proud day for Ireland when she shall 
 see her representation in the names of those who dignify 
 the exalted station they hold in virtue of their birth and 
 blood, by claims of admitted talent and recognized ability. 
 Mr. Kearney, junior, has swept the University of its prizes, 
 and the College gate has long seen his name at the head 
 of her prizemen. He contests the seat in the national 
 interest. It is needless to say all our sympathies and 
 hopes and best wishes go with him.'" 
 
220 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Dick shook with laughing while the other read out the 
 paragraph in a high-sounding and pretentious tone. 
 
 " I hope," said Kearney, at last, " that the information 
 as to my College successes is not vouched for on authority." 
 
 "Who cares a fig about them? The phrase rounds off 
 a sentence, and nobody treats it like an affidavit." 
 
 " But some one may take the trouble to remind the 
 readers that my victories have been defeats, and that in 
 my last examination but one I got 'cautioned.'" 
 
 "Do you imagine, Mr. Kearney, the House of Commons 
 in any way reflects college distinction? Do you look for 
 senior- wranglers and double-firsts on the Treasury bench? 
 and are not the men who carry away distinction the men 
 of breadth, not depth? Is it not the wide acquaintance with 
 a large field of knowledge, and the subtle power to know 
 how other men regard these topics, that make the popu- 
 lar leader of the present day? And remember, it is talk, 
 and not oratory, is the mode. You must be commonplace, 
 and even vulgar, practical, dashed with a small morality, 
 so as not to be classed with the low Radical ; and if then 
 you have a bit of high falutin for the peroration, you 'U 
 do. The morning papers will call you a young man of 
 great promise, and the whip will never pass you without 
 a shake-hands." 
 
 " But there are good speakers." 
 
 " There is Bright, — I don't think I know another, — and 
 he only at times. Take my word for it, the secret of success 
 with ' the collective wisdom ' is reiteration. Tell them the 
 same thing, not once or twice or even ten, but fifty times, 
 and don't vary very much even the way you tell it. Go on 
 repeating your platitudes, and by the time you find you are 
 cursing your own stupid persistence, you may swear 3^ou 
 have made a convert to your opinions. If you are bent on 
 variety, and must indulge it, ring your changes on the man 
 who brought these views before them, — yourself, but beyond 
 these never soar. O'Connell, who had a variety at will for 
 his own countrymen, never tried it in England : he knew 
 better. The chawbacons that we sneer at are not always in 
 smock-frocks, take my word for it ; they many of them wear 
 wide-brimmed hats and broadcloth, and sit above the gang- 
 
ON A VISIT AT KILGOBBIN. 221 
 
 way. Ay, sir," cried he, warming with the theme, "once I 
 can get my countrymen fully awakened to the fact of who 
 and what are the men who rule them, I '11 ask for no Catholic 
 Associations, or Repeal Committees, or Nationalist Clubs, — 
 the card-house of British supremacy will tumble of itself ; 
 there will be no conflict, but simply submission." 
 
 ' ' We 're a long day's journey from these convictions, I 
 suspect," said Kearney, doubtfully. 
 
 " Not so far, perhaps, as you think. Do you remark how 
 little the English press deal in abuse of us to what was once 
 their custom ? They have not, I admit, come down to civility ; 
 but they don't deride us in the old fashion, nor tell us, as T 
 once saw, that we are intellectually and physically stamped 
 with inferiority. If it was true, Mr. Kearney, it was stupid 
 to tell it to us." 
 
 " I think we could do better than dwell upon these things." 
 
 " I deny that: deny it in toto. The moment you forget, 
 in your dealings with the Englishman, the cheap estimate he 
 entertains, not alone of your brains and your skill, but of 
 your resolution, your persistence, your strong will, ay, your 
 very integrity, that moment, I say, places him in a position 
 to treat you as something below him. Bear in mind, how- 
 ever, how he is striving to regard you, and it's your own 
 fault if you're not his equal, and something more perhaps. 
 There was a man more than the master of them all, and his 
 name was Edmund Burke; and how did they treat him? 
 How insolently did they behave to O'Connell in the House 
 till he put his heel on them? Were they generous to Shell? 
 Were they just to Plunkett ? No, no. The element that they 
 decry in our people they know they have not got, and they 'd 
 like to crush the race, when they cannot extinguish the 
 quality." 
 
 Donogan had so excited himself now that he walked up 
 and down the room, his voice ringing with emotion, and 
 his arms wildly tossing in all the extravagance of passion. 
 "This is from Joe Atlee," said Kearney, as he tore open 
 the envelope : — 
 
 " ' Dear Dick, — I cannot account for the madness that seems 
 to have seized you, except that Dan Donogan, the most rabid dog I 
 know, has bitten you. If so, for heaven's sake have the piece cut 
 
222 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 out at once, and use the strongest cautery of common sense, if you 
 know of any one who has a little to spare. I only remembered 
 yesterday that I ought to have told you I had sheltered Dan in our 
 rooms, but I can already detect that you have made his acquaint- 
 ance. He is not a bad fellow. He is sincere in his opinions, and 
 incorruptible, if that be the name for a man who, if bought to-mor- 
 row, would not be worth sixpence to his owner. 
 
 " ' Though I resigned all respect for my own good sense in telling 
 it, I was obliged to let H. E. know the contents of your despatch, 
 and then, as 1 saw he had never heard of Kilgobbin, or the great 
 Kearney family, I told more lies of your estated property, your 
 county station, your influence generally, and your abilities individu- 
 ally, than the fee-simple of your property, converted into masses, 
 will see me safe through purgatory ; and I have consequently baited 
 the trap that has caught myself ; for, persuaded by my eloquent ad- 
 vocacy of you all, H. E. has written to Walpole to make certain 
 inquiries concerning you, which, if satisfactory, he, Walpole, will 
 put himself in communication with you, as to the extent and the 
 mode to which the Government will support you. I think T can see 
 Dan Donogan's fine hand in that part of your note which fore- 
 shadows a threat, and hints that the Walpole story would, if pub- 
 lished abroad, do enormous damage to the Ministry. This, let me 
 assure you, is a fatal error, and a blunder which could only be com- 
 mitted by an outsider in political life. The days are long past since 
 a scandal could smash an administration ; and we are so strong now 
 that arson or forgery could not hurt, and I don't think that infanti- 
 cide would affect us. 
 
 " ' If you are really bent on this wild exploit, you should see Wal- 
 pole, and confer with him. You don't talk well, but you write 
 worse ; so avoid correspondence, and do all your indiscretions ver- 
 bally. Be angry if you like with my candor, but follow my counsel. 
 
 " ' See him, and show him, if you are able, that, all questions of 
 nationality apart, he may count upon your vote ; that there are 
 certain impracticable and impossible conceits in politics, — like re- 
 peal, subdivision of land, restoration of the confiscated estates, and 
 such like, — on which Irishmen insist on being free to talk balder- 
 dash, and air their patriotism ; but that, rightfully considered, they 
 are as harmless and mean just as little as a discussion on the 
 Digamma, or a debate on perpetual motion. The stupid Tories 
 could never be brought to see this. Like genuine dolts, they would 
 have an army of supporters one-minded with them in everything. 
 We know better, and hence we buy the Radical vote by a little 
 coquetting with communism, and the model working-man and the 
 rebel by an occasional jail- delivery, and the Papist by a sop to the 
 Holy Father. Bear in mind, Dick, — and it is the grand secret of 
 
ON A VISIT AT KILGOBBIN. 223 
 
 political life, — it takes all sorts of people to make a " party." When 
 you have thoroughly digested this aphorism, you are fit to start in 
 the world. 
 
 " * If you were not so full of what I am sure you would call your 
 " legitimate ambitions," I 'd like to tell you the glorious life we lead 
 in this place. Disraeli talks of " the well-sustained splendor of their 
 stately lives," and it is just the phrase for an existence in which all 
 the appliances to ease and enjoyment are supplied by a sort of 
 magic, that never shows its machinery, nor lets you hear the sound 
 of its working. The saddle-horses know when I want to ride by the 
 same instinct that makes the butler give me the exact wine I wish 
 at my dinner. And so on throughout the day, " the sustained splen- 
 dor" being an ever-present luxuriousness that I drink in with a 
 thirst that knows no slaking. 
 
 '''I have made a hit with H. E., and, from copying some rather 
 muddle-headed despatches, I am now promoted to writing short 
 skeleton sermons on politics, which, duly filled out and fattened with 
 official nutriment, will one day astonish the Irish Office, and make 
 one of the Nestors of bureaucracy exclaim, " See how Danesbury 
 has got up the Irish question." 
 
 " ' I have a charming coUaborateur, my Lord's niece, who was 
 acting as his private secretary up to the time of my arrival, and 
 whose explanation of a variety of things I found to be so essential 
 that, from being at first in the continual necessity of seeking her out, 
 I have now arrived at a point at which we write in the same room, 
 and pass our mornings in the library till luncheon. She is stun- 
 ningly handsome, as tall as the Greek cousin, and with a stately 
 grace of manner and a cold dignity of demeanor I 'd give my heart's 
 blood to subdue to a mood of womanly tenderness and dependence. 
 Up to this, my position is that of a very humble courtier in the 
 presence of a queen, and she takes care that by no momentary 
 forgetfulness shall I lose sight of the " situation." 
 
 " ' She is engaged, they say, to be married to Walpole ; but as I 
 have not heard that he is heir- apparent, or has even the reversion 
 to the crown of Spain, I cannot perceive what the contract means. 
 
 " ' I rode out with her to-day by special invitation, or permission, 
 — which was it? — and in the few words that passed between us, 
 she asked me if I had long known Mr. Walpole, and put her horse 
 into a canter without waiting for my answer. 
 
 " ' With H. E. I can talk away freely and without constraint. 
 I am never very sure that he does not know the things he questions 
 me on better than myself, — a practice some of his order rather cul- 
 tivate ; but, on the whole, our intercourse is easy. I know he is 
 not a little puzzled about me, and I intend that he should remain so. 
 
 " * When you have seen and spoken with Walpole, write me what 
 
224 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 has taken place between you ; and though I am fully convinced that 
 what you intend is unmitigated folly, I see so many difficulties in the 
 way, such obstacles, and such almost impossibilities to be overcome, 
 that I think Fate will be more merciful to you than your ambitions, 
 and spare you, by an early defeat, from a crushing disappointment. 
 
 " ' Had you ambitioned to be a governor of a colony, a bishop, 
 or a Queen's messenger, — they are the only irresponsible people I 
 can think of, — I might have helped you; but this conceit to be a 
 Parliament man is such irredeemable folly, one is powerless to deal 
 with it. 
 
 " ' At all events, your time is not worth much, nor is your public 
 character of a very grave importance. Give them both, then, freely 
 to the effort, but do not let it cost you money, nor let Donogan per- 
 suade you that you are one of those men who can make patriotism 
 self-supporting. 
 
 " ' H. E. hints at a very confidential mission on which he desires 
 to employ me ; and though I should leave this place now, with much 
 regret, and a more tender sorrow than I could teach you to compre- 
 hend, I shall hold myself at his orders for Japan if he wants me. 
 Meanwhile, write to me what takes place with Walpole, and put 
 your faith firmly in the good-will and efficiency of 
 " ' Yours truly, 
 
 " ' Joe Atlee." 
 
 " * If you think of taking Donogan down with you to Kilgobbin, I 
 ought to tell you that it would be a mistake. Women invariably 
 dislike him, and he would do you no credit.' " 
 
 Dick Kearney, who had begun to read this letter aloud, 
 saw himself constrained to continue, and went on boldly, 
 without stop or hesitation, to the last word. 
 
 "I am very grateful to you, Mr. Kearney, for this mark 
 of trustfulness, and I 'm not in the least sore about 'all Joe 
 has said of me." 
 
 "He is not over complimentary to myself," said Kearney ; 
 and the irritation he felt was not to be concealed. 
 
 "There's one passage in his letter," said the other, 
 thoughtfully, " well worth all the stress he lays on it. He 
 tells you never to forget it ' takes all sorts of men to make 
 a party.' Nothing can more painfully prove the fact than 
 that we need Joe Atlee amongst ourselves ! And it is true, 
 Mr. Kearney," said he, sternly, "treason must now, to have 
 any chance at all, be many-handed. We want not only all 
 sorts of men, but in all sorts of places ; and at tables where 
 
ON A VISIT AT KILGOBBIN. 225 
 
 rebel opinions dared not be boldly announced and defended, 
 we want people who can coquet with felony, and get men to 
 talk over treason with little if any ceremony. Joe can do 
 this, — he can write, and, what is better, sing you a Fenian 
 ballad, and if he sees he has made a mistake, he can quiz 
 himself and his song as cavalierly as he has sung it ! And 
 now, on my solemn oath, I say it, I don't know that any- 
 thing worse has befallen us than the fact that there are such 
 men as Joe Atlee amongst us, and that we need them, — ay, 
 sir, we need them ! " 
 
 "This is brief enough, at any rate," said Kearney, as he 
 broke open the second letter : — 
 
 " * Dublin Castle, Wednesday Evening. 
 " * Dear Sir, — Would you do me the great favor to call on me 
 here at your earliest convenient moment ? I am still an invalid, and 
 confined to a sofa, or would ask for permission to meet you at your 
 chambers. 
 
 " ' Believe me, yours faithfully, 
 
 " ' Cecil Walpole.'" 
 
 "That cannot be delayed, I suppose?" said Kearney, in 
 the tone of a question. 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 " I '11 go up by the night mail. You '11 remain where you 
 are, and where I hope you feel you are with a welcome." 
 
 "I feel it, sir, — I feel it more than I can say." And 
 his face was blood-red as he spoke. 
 
 " There are scores of things you can do while I am away. 
 You '11 have to study the county in all its baronies and sub- 
 divisions. There my sister can help you ; and you '11 have 
 to learn the names and places of our great county swells, 
 and mark such as may be likely to assist us. You '11 have 
 to stroll about in our own neighborhood, and learn what 
 the people near home say of the intention, and pick up 
 what you can of public opinion in our towns of Moate and 
 Kilbeggan." 
 
 "I have bethought me of all that — " He paused here, 
 and seemed to hesitate if he should say more ; and, after an 
 effort, he went on: "You'll not take amiss what I'm 
 going to say, Mr. Kearney. You'll make full allowance 
 
 15 
 
226 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 for a man placed as I am; but I want, before you go, to 
 learn from you in what way, or as what, you have presented 
 me to your family. Am I a poor sizar of Trinity, whose 
 hard struggle with poverty has caught your sympathy ? Am 
 I a chance acquaintance, whose only claim on you is being 
 known to Joe Atlee? I'm sure I need not ask you, have 
 you called me by my real name and given me my real 
 character ? " 
 
 Kearney flushed up to the eyes, and laying his hand on 
 the other's shoulder, ' ' This is exactly what I have done. 
 1 have told my sister that you are the noted Daniel Donogan, 
 United Irishman and. rebel." 
 
 "But only to your sister? " 
 
 *' To none other." 
 
 '* jShe'W not betray me, I know that." 
 
 '' You are right there, Donogan. Here 's how it happened, 
 for it was not intended." And now he related how the name 
 had escaped him. 
 
 " So that the cousin knows nothing? " 
 
 ''Nothing whatever. My sister Kate is not one to make 
 rash confidences, and you may rely on it she has not told 
 her." 
 
 ''I hope and trust that this mistake will serve you for a 
 lesson, Mr. Kearney, and show you that to keep a secret it 
 is not enough to have an honest intention, but a man must 
 have a watch over his thoughts and a padlock on his tongue. 
 And now to something of more importance. In your meet- 
 ing with Walpole, mind one thing : no modesty, no humility ; 
 make your demands boldly, and declare that your price is 
 well worth the paying ; let him feel that, as he must make 
 a choice between the priests and the nationalists, that we 
 are the easier of the two to deal with, — first of all, we 
 don't press for prompt payment; and secondly, we'll not 
 shock Exeter Hall ! Show him that strongly, and tell him 
 that there are clever fellows amongst us who '11 not compro- 
 mise him or his party, and" will never desert him on a close 
 division. Oh, dear me, how I wish I was going in your 
 place!" 
 
 "So do I, with all my heart; but there 's ten striking, and 
 we shall be late for breakfast." 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 THE MOATE STATION. 
 
 The train by which Miss Betty O'Shea expected her nephew 
 was late in its arrival at Moate; and Peter Gill, who had 
 been sent with the car to fetch him over, was busily dis- 
 cussing his second supper when the passengers arrived. 
 
 "Are you Mr. Gorman O'Shea, sir?" asked Peter, of a 
 well-dressed and well-looking young man who had just 
 taken his luggage from the train. 
 
 "No; here he is," replied he, pointing to a tall, powerful 
 young fellow, whose tweed suit and billycock hat could not 
 completely conceal a soldierlike bearing and a sort of com- 
 pactness that comes of "drill." 
 
 " That 's my name. What do you want with me? " cried 
 he, in a loud but pleasant voice. 
 
 "Only that Miss Betty has sent me over with the car for 
 your honor, if it 's plazing to you to drive across." 
 
 "What about this broiled bone. Miller?" asked O'Shea. 
 "I rather think I like the notion better than when you 
 proposed it." 
 
 "I suspect you do," said the other; "but we '11 have to 
 step over to the ' Blue Goat.' It 's only a few yards off, 
 and they '11 be ready; for I telegraphed them from town to 
 be prepared as the train came in." 
 
 "You seem to know the place well." 
 
 "Yes. I may say I know something about it. I can- 
 vassed this part of the county once for one of the Idlers, and 
 I secretly determined if I ever thought of trying for a seat 
 in the House, I 'd make the attempt here. They are a most 
 pretentious set of beggars, these small townsfolk, and they 'd 
 rather hear themselves talk politics, and give their notions 
 of what they think ' good for Ireland,' than actually pocket 
 
228 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 bank-notes; and that, my clear friend, is a virtue in a con- 
 stituency never to be ignored or forgotten. The moment, 
 
 then, I heard of M 's retirement, I sent off a confidential 
 
 emissary down here to get up what is called a requisition, 
 asking me to stand for the county. Here it is, and the 
 answer, in this morning's ' Freeman.' You can read it at 
 your leisure. Here we are now at the ' Blue Goat ; ' and 
 I see they are expecting us." 
 
 Not only was there a capital fire in the grate, and the table 
 ready laid for supper, but a half-dozen or more of the 
 notabilities of Moate were in waiting to receive the new 
 candidate, and confer with him over the coming contest. 
 
 "My companion is the nephew of an old neighbor of 
 yours, gentlemen," said Miller, — "Captain Gorman O'Shea, 
 of the Imperial Lancers of Austria. 1 know you have heard 
 of, if you have not seen him." 
 
 A round of very hearty and demonstrative salutations 
 followed, and Gorman was well pleased at the friendly 
 reception accorded him. 
 
 Austria was a great country, one of the company observed. 
 They had got liberal institutions and a free press, and they 
 were good Catholics, who would give those heretical Prus- 
 sians a fine lesson one of these days; and Gorman O'Shea's 
 health, coupled with these sentiments, was drank with all 
 the honors. 
 
 "There 's a jolly old face that I ought to remember well," 
 said Gorman, as he looked up at the portrait of Lord Kil- 
 gobbin over the chimney. "When I entered the service, 
 and came back here on leave, he gave me the first sword I 
 ever wore, and treated me as kindly as if I was his son." 
 
 The hearty speech elicited no response from the hearers, 
 who only exchanged significant looks with each other; while 
 Miller, apparently less under restraint, broke in with, "That 
 stupid adventure the English newspapers called ' The gal- 
 lant resistance of Kilgobbin Castle ' has lost that man the 
 esteem of Irishmen." 
 
 A perfect burst of approval followed these words; and 
 while young O'Shea eagerly pressed for an explanation of 
 an incident of which he heard for the first time, they one 
 and all proceeded to give their versions of what had occurred; 
 
THE MOATE STATION. 229 
 
 but with such contradictions, corrections, and emendations 
 that the young man might be pardoned if he comprehended 
 little of the event. 
 
 "They say his son will contest the county with you, Mr. 
 Miller," cried one. 
 
 "Let me have no weightier rival, and I ask no more." 
 
 "Faix, if he 's going to stand," said another, "his father 
 might have taken the trouble to ask us for our votes. 
 Would you believe it, sir, it 's going on six months since he 
 put his foot in this room?" 
 
 "And do the ' Goats ' stand that? " asked Miller. 
 
 "I don't wonder he does n't care to come into Moate. 
 There 's not a shop in the town he does n't owe money to." 
 
 "And we never refused him credit — " 
 
 "For anything but his principles," chimed in an old 
 fellow, whose oratory was heartily relished. 
 
 "He's going to stand in the national interest," said one. 
 
 "That's the safe ticket when you have no money," said 
 another. 
 
 "Gentlemen," said Miller, who rose to his legs to give 
 greater importance to his address, "if we want to make 
 Ireland a country to live in, the only party to support is the 
 Whig Government! The nationalist may open the jails, 
 give license to the press, hunt down the Orangemen, and 
 make the place generally too hot for the English. But are 
 these the things that you and I want or strive for? We want 
 order and quietness in the land, and the best places in it for 
 ourselves to enjoy these blessings. Is Mr. Casey down 
 there satisfied to keep the post-office in Moate when he 
 knows he could be the first secretary in Dublin, at the head 
 office, with two thousand a year? Will my friend Mr. 
 McGloin say that he 'd rather pass his life here than be a 
 Commissioner of Customs, and live in Merrion Square? 
 Ain't we men? Ain't we fathers and husbands? Have 
 we not sons to advance and daughters to marry in the world ? 
 and how much will nationalism do for these? 
 
 "I will not tell you that the Whigs love us or have any 
 strong regard for us ; but they need us, gentlemen, and they 
 know well that, without the Radicals, and Scotland, and 
 our party here, they could n't keep power for three weeks. 
 
230 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Now, why is Scotland a great and prosperous country? I '11 
 tell you. Scotland has no sentimental politics. Scotland 
 says, in her own homely adage, ' Ca' me and I'll ca' thee.* 
 Scotland insists that there should be Scotchmen everywhere, 
 — in the Post-Office, in the Privy Council, in the Pipewater, 
 and in the Punjaub ! Does Scotland go on vaporing about 
 an extinct nationality or the right of the Stuarts? Not a 
 bit of it. She says. Burn Scotch coal in the navy, though 
 the smoke may blind you and you never get up steam! 
 She has no national absurdities ; she neither asks for a flag 
 nor a Parliament. She demands only what will pay. And 
 it is by supporting the Whigs, you will make Ireland as 
 prosperous as Scotland. Literally, the Fenians, gentlemen, 
 will never make my friend yonder a baronet, nor put me on 
 the Bench; and now that we are met here in secret com- 
 mittee, I can say all this to you, and none of it get abroad. 
 "Mind, I never told you the Whigs love us, or said that 
 we love the Whigs ; but we can each of us help the other. 
 When they smash the Protestant party, they are doing a 
 fine stroke of work for Liberalism in pulling down a cruel 
 ascendancy and righting the Romanists. And when ive 
 crush the Protestants, we are opening the best places in the 
 land to ourselves by getting rid of our only rivals. Look 
 at the Bench, gentlemen, and the high offices of the courts. 
 Have not we Papists, as they call us, our share in both? 
 And this is only the beginning, let me tell you. There is 
 a university in College Green due to us, and a number of 
 fine palaces that their bishops once lived in, and grand old 
 cathedrals whose very names show the rightful ownership ; 
 and when we have got all these, — as the W^higs will give 
 them one day, — even then we are only beginning. And 
 now turn the other side, and see what you have to expect 
 from the nationalists. Some very hard fighting and a great 
 number of broken heads. I give in that you '11 drive the 
 English out, take the Pigeon House Fort, capture the 
 Magazine, and carry away the Lord Lieutenant in chains. 
 And what will you have for it, after all, but another scrim- 
 mage amongst yourselves for the spoils? Mr. Mullen, of 
 the ' Pike, ' will want something that Mr. Darby McKeown 
 of the ' Convicted Felon ' has just appropriated ; Tom 
 
THE MOATE STATION. 231 
 
 Casidy, that burned the Grand Master of the Orangemen, 
 finds that he is not to be pensioned for life ; and Phil Cos- 
 tigan, that blew up the Lodge in the Park, discovers that he 
 is not even to get the ruins as building materials. I tell 
 you, my friends, it's not in such convulsions as these that 
 you and I, and other sensible men like us, want to pass our 
 lives. We look for a comfortable berth and quarter-day ; 
 that *s what we compound for, — quarter-day, — and I give 
 it to you as a toast with all the honors." 
 
 And certainly the rich volume of cheers that greeted the 
 sentiment vouched for a hearty and sincere recognition of 
 the toast. 
 
 "The chaise is ready at the door. Councillor," cried the 
 landlord, addressing Mr. Miller; and after a friendly shake- 
 hands all round. Miller slipped his arm through O' Shea's 
 and drew him apart. 
 
 "I '11 be back this way in about ten days or so, and I '11 
 ask you to present me to your aunt. She has got above a 
 hundred votes on her property, and I think I can count 
 upon you to stand by me." 
 
 "I can, perhaps, promise you a welcome at the Barn," 
 muttered the young fellow, in some confusion; ''but when 
 you have seen my aunt, you '11 understand why I give you 
 no pledges on the score of political support." 
 
 "Oh, is that the way?" asked Miller, with a knowing 
 laugh. 
 
 "Yes, that 's the way, and no mistake about it," replied 
 O'Shea; and they parted. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 HOW THE "goats" REVOLTED. 
 
 In less than a week after the events last related, the members 
 of the "Goat Club " were summoned to an extraordinary and 
 general meeting, by an invitation from the vice-president, 
 Mr. McGloin, the chief grocer and hardware-dealer of Kil- 
 beggan. The terms of this circular seemed to indicate 
 importance, for it said, "To take into consideration a 
 matter of vital interest to the society." 
 
 Though only the denizen of a very humble country town, 
 McGloin possessed certain gifts and qualities which might 
 have graced a higher station. He was the most self- 
 contained and secret of men ; he detected mysterious mean- 
 ings in every — the smallest — event of life ; and as he 
 divulged none of his discoveries, and only pointed vaguely 
 and dimly to the consequences, he got credit for the correct- 
 ness of his unuttered predictions as completely as though 
 he had registered his prophecies as copyright at Stationers' 
 Hall. It is needless to say that on every question, religious, 
 social, or political, he was the paramount authority of the 
 town. It was but rarely, indeed, that a rebellious spirit 
 dared to set up an opinion in opposition to his ; but if such 
 an hazardous event were to occur, he would suppress it with 
 a dignity of manner which derived no small aid from the 
 resources of a mind rich in historical parallel ; and it was 
 really curious for those who believe that history is always 
 repeating itself, to remark how frequently John McGloin 
 represented the mind and character of Lycurgus, and how 
 often poor old, dreary, and bog-surrounded Moate recalled 
 the image of Sparta and its "sunny slopes." 
 
 Now, there is one feature of Ireland which I am not quite 
 sure is very generally known or appreciated on the other 
 
HOW THE "GOATS" REVOLTED. 233 
 
 side of St. George's Channel, and this is the fierce spirit 
 of indignation called up in a county habitually quiet, when 
 the newspapers bring it to public notice as the scene of 
 some lawless violence. For once there is union amongst 
 Irishmen. Every class, from the estated proprietor to the 
 humblest peasant, is loud in asserting that the story is an 
 infamous falsehood. Magistrates, priests, agents, middle- 
 men, tax-gatherers, and tax-payers, rush into print to abuse 
 the ''blackguard" — he is always the blackguard — who 
 invented the lie ; and men upwards of ninety are quoted to 
 show that so long as they could remember, there never was 
 a man injured, nor a rick burned, nor a heifer hamstrung in 
 the six baronies round! Old newspapers are adduced to 
 show how often the going judge of assize has complimented 
 the grand jury on the catalogue of crime; in a word, the 
 whole population is ready to make oath that the county is 
 little short of a terrestrial paradise, and that it is a district 
 teeming with gentle landlords, pious priests, and industrious 
 peasants, without a plague-spot on the face of the county 
 except it be the police barrack, and the company of lazy 
 vagabonds with cross-belts and carbines, that lounge before 
 it. When, therefore, the press of Dublin at first, and after- 
 wards of the empire at large, related the night attack for 
 arms at Kilgobbin Castle, the first impulse of the county at 
 large was to rise up in the face of the nation and deny the 
 slander! Magistrates consulted together whether the high- 
 sheriff should not convene a meeting of the county. Priests 
 took counsel with the bishop, whether notice should not be 
 taken of the calumny from the altar. The small shop- 
 keepers of the small towns, assuming that their trade would 
 be impaired by these rumors of disturbance, — just as 
 Parisians used to declaim against barricades in the streets, 
 — are violent in denouncing the malignant falsehoods upon 
 a quiet and harmless community; so that, in fact, every 
 rank and condition vied with its neighbor in declaring that 
 the whole story was a base tissue of lies, and which could 
 only impose upon those who knew nothing of the county, 
 nor of the peaceful, happy, and brother- like creatures who 
 inhabited it. 
 
 It was not to be supposed that, at such a crisis, Mr. John 
 
234 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 McGloin would be inactive or indifferent. As a man of 
 considerable influence at elections, he had his weight with 
 a county member, Mr. Price; and to him he wrote, demand- 
 ing that he should ask in the House what correspondence 
 had passed between Mr. Kearney and the Castle authorities 
 with reference to this supposed outrage, and whether the law 
 officers of the Crown, or the adviser of the Viceroy, or the 
 chiefs of the local police, or — to quote the exact words — 
 '' any sane or respectable man in the county " believed one 
 word of the story. Lastly, that he would also ask whether 
 any and what correspondence had passed between Mr. Kear- 
 ney and the Chief Secretary with respect to a small house 
 on the Kilgobbin property which Mr. Kearney had suggested 
 as a convenient police-station, and for which he asked a 
 rent of twenty-five pounds per annum; and if such corre- 
 spondence existed, whether it had any or what relation to 
 the rumored attack on Kilgobbin Castle? 
 
 If it should seem strange that a leading member of the 
 " Goat Club " should assail its president, the explanation is 
 soon made; Mr. McGloin had long desired to be the chief 
 himself. He and many others had seen, with some irrita- 
 tion and displeasure, the growing indifference of Mr. Kear- 
 ney for the " Goats." For many months he had never called 
 them together, and several members had resigned, and many 
 more threatened resignation. It was time, then, that some 
 energetic steps should be taken. The opportunity for this 
 was highly favorable. Anything unpatriotic, anything even 
 unpopular in Kearney's conduct, would, in the then temper 
 of the club, be sufficient to rouse them to actual rebellion; 
 and it was to test this sentiment, and, if necessary, to stim- 
 ulate it, Mr. McGloin convened a meeting which a by-law 
 of the society enabled him to do at any period when, for the 
 three preceding months, the president had not assembled 
 the club. 
 
 Though the members generally were not a little proud of 
 their president, and deemed it considerable glory to them 
 to have a viscount for their chief, and though it gave great , 
 dignity to their debates that the rising speaker should begin 
 "My Lord and Buck Goat," yet they were not without 
 dissatisfaction at seeing how cavalierlv he treated them, 
 
HOW THE " GOATS'' REVOLTED. 235 
 
 what slight value he appeared to attach to their companion- 
 ship, and how perfectly indifferent he seemed to their 
 opinions, their wishes, or their wants. 
 
 There were various theories in circulation to explain this 
 change of temper in their chief. Some ascribed it to 
 young Kearney, who was a "stuck-up" young fellow, and 
 wanted his father to give himself greater airs and preten- 
 sions. Others opinioned it was the daughter, who, though 
 she played Lady Bountiful among the poor cottiers, and 
 affected interest in the people, was in reality the proudest 
 of them all. And last of all, there were some who, in open 
 defiance of chronology, attributed the change to a post- 
 dated event, and said that the swells from the Castle were 
 the ruin of Mathew Kearney, and that he was never the 
 same man since the day he saw them. 
 
 Whether any of these were the true solution of the diffi- 
 culty or not, Kearney's popularity was on the decline at the 
 moment when this unfortunate narrative of the attack on 
 his castle aroused the whole county and excited their feel- 
 ings against him. Mr. McGloin took every step of his 
 proceeding with due measure and caution; and having 
 secured a certain number of promises of attendance at the 
 meeting, he next notified to his Lordship, how, in virtue of 
 a certain section of a certain law, he had exercised his 
 right of calling the members together; and that he now 
 begged respectfully to submit to the chief, that some of the 
 matters which would be submitted to the collective wisdom 
 would have reference to the " Buck Goat " himself, and that 
 it would be an act of great courtesy on his part if he should 
 condescend to be present and afford some explanation. 
 
 That the bare possibility of being called to account by 
 the "Goats" would drive Kearney into a ferocious passion, 
 if not a fit of the gout, McGloin knew well ; and that the 
 very last thing on his mind would be to come amongst them, 
 he was equally sure of : so that in giving his invitation there 
 was no risk whatever. Mathew Kearney's temper was no 
 secret; and whenever the necessity should arise that a burst 
 of indiscreet anger should be sufficient to injure a cause or 
 damage a situation, " the Lord " could be calculated on with 
 a perfect security. McGloin understood this thoroughly; 
 
236 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 nor was it matter of surprise to him that a verbal reply of 
 " There is no answer " was returned to his note ; while the 
 old servant, instead of stopping the ass-cart as usual for the 
 weekly supply of groceries at McGloin's, repaired to a small 
 shop over the way, where colonial products were rudely 
 jostled out of their proper places by coils of rope, sacks of 
 rapeseed, glue, glass, and leather, amid which the proprietor 
 felt far more at home than amidst mixed pickles and mocha. 
 
 Mr. McGloin, however, had counted the cost of his policy; 
 he knew well that for the ambition to succeed his Lordship 
 as chief of the club, he should have to pay by the loss of 
 the Kilgobbin custom ; and whether it was that the great- 
 ness in prospect was too tempting to resist, or that the 
 sacrifice was smaller than it might have seemed, he was 
 prepared to risk the venture. 
 
 The meeting was in so far a success that it was fully 
 attended. Such a flock of "Goats " had not been seen by 
 them since the memory of man, nor was the unanimity less 
 remarkable than the number; and every paragraph of Mr. 
 McGloin's speech was hailed with vociferous cheers and 
 applause, the sentiment of the assembly being evidently 
 highly national, and the feeling that the shame which the 
 Lord of Kilgobbin had brought down upon their county was 
 a disgrace that attached personally to each man there pres- 
 ent; and that if now their once happy and peaceful district 
 was to be proclaimed under some tyranny of English law, 
 or, worse still, made a mark for the insult and sarcasm of 
 the "Times " newspaper, they owed the disaster and the 
 shame to no other than Mathew Kearney himself. 
 
 "I will now conclude with a resolution," said McGloin, 
 who, having filled the measure of allegation, proceeded to 
 the application. "I shall move that it is the sentiment of 
 this meeting that Lord Kilgobbin be called on to disavow, 
 in the newspapers, the whole narrative which has been circu- 
 lated of the attack on his house ; that he declare openly that 
 the supposed incident was a mistake caused by the timorous 
 fears of his household, during his own absence from home ; 
 terrors aggravated by the unwarrantable anxiety of an Eng- 
 lish visitor, whose ignorance of Ireland had worked upon an 
 excited imagination ; and that a copy of the resolution be 
 
HOW THE "GOATS" REVOLTED. 237 
 
 presented to his Lordship, either in letter or by a deputa- 
 tion, as the meeting shall decide." 
 
 While the discussion was proceeding as to the mode in 
 which this bold resolution should be most becomingly 
 brought under Lord Kilgobbin's notice, a messenger on 
 horseback arrived with a letter for Mr. McGloin. The 
 bearer was in the Kilgobbin livery ; and a massive seal, with 
 the noble Lord's arms, attested the despatch to be from 
 himself. 
 
 "Shall I put the resolution to the vote, or read this letter 
 first, gentlemen?" said the chairman. 
 
 *'Read! read!" was the cry, and he broke the seal. It 
 ran thus : — 
 
 "Mr. McGloin, — Will you please to inform the members ofi 
 the ' Goat Club ' at Moate, that I retire from the presidency, and j 
 cease to be a member of that society ? I was vain enough to be- i 
 lieve at one time that the humanizing element of even one gentleman I 
 in the vulgar circle of a little obscure town might have elevated the \ 
 tone of manners and the spirit of social intercourse. I have lived to 
 discover my great mistake, and that the leadership of a man like 
 yourself is far more likely to suit the instincts and chime in with 
 the sentiments of such a body. 
 
 " Your obedient and faithful servant, 
 
 " Kilgobbin." 
 
 The cry which followed the reading of this document can 
 only be described as a howl. It was like the enraged roar 
 of wild animals, rather than the union of human voices; and 
 it was not till after a considerable interval that McGloin 
 could obtain a hearing. He spoke with great vigor and 
 fluency. He denounced the letter as an outrage which 
 should be proclaimed from one end of Europe to the other; 
 that it was not their town, or their club, or themselves had 
 been insulted, but Ireland! that this mock Lord (cheers) 
 this sham Viscount (greater cheers), this Brummagem 
 peer, whose nobility their native courtesy and natural 
 urbanity had so long deigned to accept as real, should now 
 be taught that his pretensions only existed on sufferance, 
 and had no claim beyond the polite condescension of men 
 whom it was no stretch of imagination to call the equals of 
 
238 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Mathew Kearney. The cries that received this were almost 
 deafening, and lasted for some minutes. 
 
 " Send the ould humbug his picture there," cried a voice 
 from the crowd, and the sentiment was backed by a roar of 
 voices ; and it was at once decreed the portrait should 
 accompany the letter which the indignant "Goats" now 
 commissioned their chairman to compose. 
 
 That same evening saw the gold-framed picture on its way 
 to Kilgobbin Castle, with an ample-looking document, whose 
 contents we have no curiosity to transcribe, — nor, indeed, 
 is the whole incident one which we should have cared to 
 obtrude upon our readers, save as a feeble illustration of 
 the way in which the smaller rills of public opinion swell 
 the great streams of life, and how the little events of 
 existence serve now as impulses, now obstacles to the larger 
 interests that sway fortune. So long as Mathew Kearney 
 drank his punch at the "Blue Goat" he was a patriot and 
 a nationalist ; but when he quarrelled with his flock, he 
 renounced his Irishry, and came out a Whig. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR PLEASURE. 
 
 When Dick Kearney waited on Cecil Walpole at his quarters 
 in the Castle, he was somewhat surprised to find that gentle- 
 man more reserved in manner, and in general more distant, 
 than when he had seen him as his father's guest. 
 
 Though he extended two fingers of his hand on entering, 
 and begged him to be seated, Walpole did not take a chair 
 himself, but stood with his back to the fire, — the showy 
 skirts of a very gorgeous dressing-gown displayed over his 
 arms, — where he looked like some enormous bird exulting 
 in the full effulgence of his bright plumage. 
 
 '' You got my note, Mr. Kearney? " began he, almost 
 before the other had sat down, with the air of a man whose 
 time was too precious for mere politeness. 
 
 " It is the reason of my present visit," said Dick, dryly. 
 
 " Just so. His Excellency instructed me to ascertain in 
 what shape most acceptable to your family he might show 
 the sense entertained by the Government of that gallant 
 defence of Kilgobbin ; and believing that the best way to 
 meet a man's wishes is first of all to learn what the wishes 
 are, I wrote you the few lines of yesterday." 
 
 '^ I suspect there must be a mistake somewhere," began 
 Kearney, with difficulty. "At least, I intimated to Atlee 
 the shape in which the Viceroy's favor would be most agree- 
 able to us, and I came here prepared to find you equally 
 informed on the matter." 
 
 " Ah, indeed ! I know nothing, — positively nothing. 
 Atlee telegraphed me : ' See Kearney, and hear what he has 
 to say. I write by post. — Atlee.' There's the whole 
 of it." 
 
240 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "And the letter — " 
 
 "The letter is there. It came by the late mail, and I 
 have not opened it." 
 
 "Would it not be better to glance over it now?" said 
 Dick, mildly. 
 
 "Not if you can give me the substance by word of 
 mouth. Time, they tell us, is money ; and as I have got 
 very little of either, I am obliged to be parsimonious. What 
 is it you want? I mean the sort of thing we could help you 
 to obtain. I see," said he, smiling, "you had rather I 
 should read Atlee's letter. Well, here goes." He broke 
 the envelope, and began : — 
 
 "'My dear Mr. Walpole, — I hoped by this time to have 
 had a report to make you of what I had done, heard, seen, and 
 imagined since my arrival, and yet here I am now towards the close 
 of my second week, and I have nothing to tell ; and beyond a sort 
 of confused sense of being immensely delighted with my mode of life, 
 I am totally unconscious of the flight of time. 
 
 " ' His Excellency received me once for ten minutes, and later on, 
 after some days, for half an hour; for he is confined to bed with 
 gout, and forbidden by his doctor all mental labor. He was kind 
 and courteous to a degree, hoped I should endeavor to make myself 
 at home, — giving orders at the same time that my dinner should be 
 served at my own hour, and the stables placed at my disposal for 
 riding or driving. For occupation, he suggested I should see what 
 the newspapers were saying, and make a note or two if anything 
 struck me as remarkable. 
 
 "'Lady Maude is charming — and I use the epithet in all the 
 significance of its sorcery. She conveys to me each morning his 
 Excellency's instructions for my day's work ; and it is only by a 
 mighty effort I can tear myself from the magic thrill of her voice, 
 and the captivation of her manner, to follow what I have to reply to, 
 investigate, and remark on. 
 
 " ' I meet her each day at luncheon, and she says she will join 
 me " some day at dinner." When that glorious occasion arrives, I 
 shall call it the event of my life, for her mere presence stimulates me 
 to such effort in conversation that I feel in the very lassitude after- 
 wards what a strain my faculties have undergone.' " 
 
 "What an insufferable coxcomb, and an idiot, to boot!" 
 cried Walpole. " I could not do him a more spiteful turn 
 than to tell my cousin of her conquest. There is another 
 
AN UNLOOKED-FOR PLEASURE. 241 
 
 page, I see, of the same sort. But here you are, -»— this is all 
 about you : I '11 read it. ' In re Kearney. The Irish are 
 always logical ; and as Miss Kearney once shot some of her 
 countrymen, when on a mission they deemed national, her 
 brother opines that he ought to represent the principles thus 
 involved in Parliament.'" 
 
 "Is this the way in which he states my claims! " broke 
 in Dick, with ill-suppressed passion. 
 
 " Bear in mind, Mr. Kearney, this jest, and a very poor 
 one it is, was meant for me alone. The communication is 
 essentially private, and it is only through my indiscretion 
 you know anything of it whatever." 
 
 ' ' I am not aware that any confidence should entitle him 
 to write such an impertinence." 
 
 "In that case I shall read no more," said Walpole, as he 
 slowly refolded the letter. "The fault is all on my side, 
 Mr. Kearney," he continued; "but I own I thought you 
 knew your friend so thoroughly that extravagance on his 
 part could have neither astonished nor provoked you." 
 
 "You are perfectly right, Mr. Walpole; I apologize for 
 my impatience. It was, perhaps, in hearing his words read 
 aloud by another that I forgot myself, and if you will kindly 
 continue the reading, I will promise to behave more suitably 
 in future." 
 
 Walpole re-opened the letter, but, whether indisposed to 
 trust the pledge thus given or to prolong the interview, ran 
 his eyes over one side and then turned to the last page. " I 
 see," said he, " he augurs ill as to your chances of success ; he 
 opines that you have not well calculated the great cost of the 
 venture, and that in all probability it has been suggested by 
 some friend of questionable discretion. 'At all events,'" 
 and here he read aloud, — " 'at all events, his Excellency 
 says, " We should like to mark the Kilgobbin affair by some 
 show of approbation ; and though supporting young K. in a 
 contest for his county is a ' higher figure ' than we meant to 
 pay, see him, and hear what he has to say of his prospects, — 
 what he can do to obtain a seat, and what he will do if 
 he gets one. We need not caution him against'" — hum, 
 hum, hum ! " muttered he, slurring over the words, and 
 endeavoring to pass on to something else. 
 
 16 
 
242 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 '' May I ask against what I am supposed to be so 
 secure ? " 
 
 "Oh, nothiug, nothing. Avery small impertinence, but 
 which Mr. Atlee found irresistible." 
 
 " Pray let me hear it. It shall not irritate me." 
 
 " He says, ' There will be no more a fear of bribery in 
 your case than of a debauch at Father Mathew's.' " 
 
 "He is right there," said Kearney, with great temper. 
 " The only difference is that our forbearance will be founded 
 on something stronger than a pledge." 
 
 Walpole looked at the speaker, and was evidently struck 
 by the calm command he had displayed of his passion. 
 
 "If we could forget Joe Atlee for a few minutes, Mr. 
 Walpole, we might possibly gain something. I, at least, 
 would be glad to know how far I might count on the 
 Government aid in my project." 
 
 "Ah, you want to — in fact, you would like that we 
 should give you something like a regular — eh? — that is 
 to say, that you could declare to certain people — naturally 
 enough, I admit; but here is how we are, Kearney. Of 
 course what I say now is literally between ourselves, and 
 strictly confidential." 
 
 " I shall so understand it," said the other, gravely. 
 
 " Well, now, here it is. The Irish vote, as the Yankees 
 would call it, is of undoubted value to us, but it is con- 
 foundedly dear ! With Paul Cullen on one side and Fenian- 
 ism on the other, we have no peace. Time was when you 
 all pulled the one way, and a sop to the Pope pleased you 
 all. Now that will suffice no longer. The ' Sovereign Pon- 
 tiff dodge ' is the surest of all ways to offend the nationals ; 
 so that, in reality, what we want in the House is a number 
 of liberal Irishmen who will trust the Government to do as 
 much for the Catholic Church as English bigotry will permit, 
 and as much for the Irish peasant as will not endanger the 
 rights of property over the Channel." 
 
 " There 's a wide field there, certainly," said Dick, smiling. 
 
 " Is there not?" cried the other, exultingly. " Not only 
 does it bowl over the Established Church and Protestant 
 ascendency, but it inverts the position of landlord and 
 tenant. To unsettle everything in Ireland, so that anybody 
 
AN UNLOOKED-FOR PLEASURE. 243 
 
 might hope to be anything, or to own heaven knows what, 
 
 — to legalize gambling for existence to a people who delight 
 in high play, and yet not involve us in a civil war, — was 
 a grand policy, Kearney, a very grand policy. Not that I 
 expect a young, ardent spirit like yourself, fresh from col- 
 lege ambitions and high-flown hopes, will take this view." 
 
 Dick only smiled, and shook his head. 
 
 " Just so," resumed Walpole. "I could not expect you 
 to like this programme, and I know already all that you 
 allege against it; but, as B. says, Kearney, the man who 
 rules Ireland must know how to take command of a ship in 
 a state of mutiny, and yet never suppress the revolt. There 's 
 the problem, — as much discipline as you can, as much in- 
 discipline as you can bear. The brutal old Tories used to 
 master the crew, and hang the ringleaders ; and for that 
 matter, they might have hanged the whole ship's company. 
 We know better, Kearney ; and we have so confused and 
 addled them by our policy, that, if a fellow were to strike 
 his captain, he would never be quite sure whether he was to 
 be strung up at the gangway or made a petty officer. Do 
 you see it now?" 
 
 " I can scarcely say that I do see it, — I mean, that I see 
 it as you do." 
 
 "I scarcely could hope that you should, or, at least, that 
 you should do so at once ; but now, as to this seat for King's 
 County, I believe we have already found our man. I '11 not 
 be sure, nor will I ask you to regard the matter as fixed on, 
 but I suspect we are in relations — you know what I mean 
 
 — with an old supporter, who has been beaten half a dozen 
 times in our interest, but is coming up once more. I '11 
 ascertain about this positively, and let you know. And 
 then," — here he drew breath freely, and talked more at ease, 
 
 — "if we should find our hands free, and that we see our 
 way clearly to support you, what assurance could you give 
 us that you would go through with the contest, and fight the 
 battle out?" 
 
 " I believe, if I engage in the struggle, I shall continue to 
 the end," said Dick, half doggedly. 
 
 " Your personal pluck and determination I do not question 
 for a moment. Now, let us see," — here he seemed to rumi- 
 
244 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 nate for some seconds, and looked like one debating a matter 
 with himself. " Yes," cried he, at last, " I believe that will 
 be the best way. I am sure it will. When do you go back, 
 Mr. Kearney, — to Kilgobbin, I mean ? " 
 
 '' My intention was to go down the day after to-morrow." 
 
 " That will be Friday. Let us see, what is Friday? 
 Friday is the loth, is it not?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Friday," muttered the other, — " Friday? There 's the 
 Education Board, and the Harbor Commissioners, and some- 
 thing else at — to be sure, a visit to the Popish schools with 
 Dean O'Mahony. You couldn't make it Saturday, could 
 you?" 
 
 "Not conveniently. I had already arranged a plan for 
 Saturday. But why should I delay here, — to what end ? " 
 
 "Only that, if you could say Saturday, I would like to 
 go down with you." 
 
 From the mode in which he said* these words, it was clear 
 that he looked for an almost rapturous acceptance of his 
 gracious proposal; but Dick did not regard the project 
 in that light, nor was he overjoyed in the least at the 
 proposal. 
 
 " I mean," said Walpole, hastening to relieve the awk- 
 wardness of silence, — "I mean that I could talk over this 
 affair with your father in a practical business fashion, that 
 you could scarcely enter into. Still, if Saturday could not 
 be managed, I'll try if I could not run down with you on 
 Friday. Only for a day, remember. I must return by the 
 evening train. We shall arrive by what hour? " 
 
 " By breakfast- time," said Dick, but still not over- 
 graciously. 
 
 "Nothing could be better; that will give us a long day, 
 and I should like a full discussion with your father. You '11 
 manage to send me on to — what 's the name? " 
 
 " Moate." 
 
 " Moate. Yes ; that 's the place. The up-train leaves at 
 midnight, I remember. Now that 's all settled. You '11 take 
 me up then here on Friday morping, Kearney, on your way 
 to the station, and meanwhile I '11 set to work, and put off 
 these deputations and circulars till Saturday, when, I remem- 
 
AN UNLOOKED-FOR PLEASURE. 245 
 
 ber, I have a dinner with the Provost. Is there anything 
 more to be thought of ? " 
 
 " I believe not,'* muttered Dick, still sullenly. 
 
 *'By-by, then, till Friday morning," said he, as he turned 
 towards his desk, and began arranging a mass of papers 
 before him. 
 
 " Here's a jolly mess with a vengeance," muttered Kear- 
 ney, as he descended the stair. "The Viceroy's private 
 secretary to be domesticated with a ' Head-Centre * and an 
 escaped convict. There 's not even the doubtful comfort 
 of being able to make my family assist me through the 
 difficulty." 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 PLMNUDDM CASTLE, NORTH WALES. 
 
 Among the articles of that wardrobe of Cecil Walpole's of 
 which Atlee had possessed himself so unceremoniously, 
 there was a very gorgeous blue dress-coat, with the royal 
 button and a lining of sky-blue silk, which formed the 
 appropriate costume of the gentlemen of the viceregal 
 household. This, with a waistcoat to match, Atlee had 
 carried off with him in the indiscriminating haste of a last 
 moment, and although thoroughly understanding that he 
 could not avail himself of a costume so distinctively the 
 mark of a condition, yet, by one of the contrarieties of 
 his strange nature, in which the desire for an assumption 
 of any kind was a passion, he had tried on that coat 
 fully a dozen times, and while admiring how well it became 
 him, and how perfectly it seemed to suit his face and 
 figure, he had dramatized to himself the part of an aide- 
 de-camp in waiting, rehearsing the little speeches in which 
 he presented this or that imaginary person to his Excellency, 
 and coining the small money of epigram in which he related 
 the news of the day. 
 
 " How I should cut out those dreary subalterns with their 
 mess-room drolleries, how I should shame those tiresome cor- 
 nets, whose only glitter is on their sabretaches ! " muttered 
 he, as he surveyed himself in his courtly attire. "It is all 
 nonsense to say that the dress a man wears can only impress 
 the surrounders. It is on himself — on his own nature and 
 temper, his mind, his faculties, his very ambition — there is 
 a transformation effected ; and I, Joe Atlee, feel myself, as I 
 move about in this costume, a very different man from that 
 humble creature in gray tweed, whose very coat reminds him 
 he is a ^ cad,' and who has but to look in the glass to read his 
 condition." 
 
PLMNUDDM CASTLE, NORTH WALES. 247 
 
 On the morning that he learned that Lady Maude would 
 join him that day at dinner, Atlee conceived the idea of 
 appearmg in this costume. It was not only that she knew 
 nothing of the Irish court and its habits, but she made an 
 almost ostentatious show of her indifference to all about it ; 
 and in the few questions she asked, the tone of interrogation 
 might have suited Africa as much as Ireland. It was true, 
 she was evidently puzzled to know what place or condition 
 Atlee occupied ; his name was not familiar to her, and yet he 
 seemed to know everything and everybody, enjoyed a large 
 share of his Excellency's confidence, and appeared conversant 
 with every detail placed before him. 
 
 That she would not directly ask him what place he occu- 
 pied in the household he well knew, and Le felt at the 
 same time what a standing and position that costume 
 would give him, what self-confidence and ease it would 
 also confer, and how for once in his life, free from the 
 necessity of asserting a station, he could devote all his 
 energies to the exercise of agreeability and those resources 
 of small-talk in which he knew he was a master. 
 
 Besides all this, it was to be his last day at the Castle, — 
 he was to start the next morning for Constantinople, with all 
 instructions regarding the spy Speridionides, and he desired 
 to make a favorable impression on Lady Maude before 
 he left. Though intensely, even absurdly vain, Atlee was 
 one of those men who are so eager for success in life that 
 they are ever on the watch lest any weakness of disposition 
 or temper should serve to compromise their chances, and in 
 this way he was led to distrust what he would in his puppyism 
 have liked to have thought a favorable effect produced by 
 him on her Ladyship. She was intensely cold in manner, 
 and yet he had made her more than once listen to him with 
 interest. She rarely smiled, and he had made her actually 
 laugh. Her apathy appeared complete, and yet he had so 
 piqued her curiosity that she could not forbear a question. 
 
 Acting as her uncle's secretary, and in constant commu- 
 nication with him, it was her affectation to imagine herself a 
 political character, and she did not scruple to avow the hearty 
 contempt she felt for the usual occupation of women's lives. 
 Atlee's knowledge therefore actually amazed her ; his hardi- 
 
248 - LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 hood, which Dever forsook hnn, enabled him to give her the 
 most positive assurances on anything he spoke ; and as he 
 had ah'eady fathomed the chief prejudices of his Excellency, 
 and knew exactly where and to what his political wishes 
 tended, she heard nothing from her uncle but expressions of 
 admiration for the just views, the clear and definite ideas, 
 and the consummate skill with which that "young fellow" 
 distinguished himself. 
 
 "We shall have him in the House one of these days," 
 he would say; "and I am much mistaken if he will not 
 make a remarkable figure there." • 
 
 When Lady Maude sailed proudly into the library before 
 dinner, Atlee was actually stunned by amazement at her 
 beauty. Though not m actual evening dress, her costume 
 was that sort of demi-toilette compromise which occasion- 
 ally is most becoming ; and the tasteful lappet of Brussels 
 lace, which, interwoven with her hair, fell down on either 
 side so as to frame her face, softened its expression to a 
 degree of loveliness he was not prepared for. 
 
 It was her pleasure — her caprice, perhaps — to be on 
 this occasion unusually amiable and agreeable. Except by 
 a sort of quiet dignity, there was no coldness, and she 
 spoke of her uncle's health and hopes just as she might 
 have discussed them with an old friend of the house. 
 
 When the butler flung wide the folding-doors into the 
 dining-room and announced dinner, she was about to move 
 on, when she suddenly stopped, and said, with a faint smile, 
 "Will you give me your arm?" Very simple words, and 
 commonplace too, but enough to throw Atlee's whole nature 
 into a convulsion of delight. And as he walked at her 
 side it was in the very ecstasy of pride and exultation. 
 
 Dinner passed off with the decorous solemnity of that 
 meal, at which the most emphatic utterances were the but- 
 ler's " Marcobrunner " or " Johannisberg." The guests, in- 
 deed, spoke little, and the strangeness of their situation 
 rather disposed to thought than conversation. 
 
 "You are going to Constantinople to-morrow, Mr. 
 Atlee, my uncle tells me," said she, after a longer silence 
 than usual. 
 
 "Yes; his Excellency has charged me with a message^ 
 
PLMNUDDM CASTLE, NORTH WALES. 249 
 
 of which I hope to acquit myself well, though I own to 
 my misgivings about it now." 
 
 " You are too diffident, perhaps, of your powers," said 
 she ; and there was a faint curl of the lip that made the 
 words sound equivocally. 
 
 "I do not know if great modesty be amongst my fail- 
 ings," said he, laughingly. "My friends would say not." 
 
 " You mean, perhaps, that you are not without ambi- 
 tions ? " 
 
 "That is true. I confess to very bold ones." And as 
 he spoke he stole a glance towards her ; but her pale face 
 never changed. 
 
 " I wish, before you had gone, that you had settled that 
 stupid muddle about the attack on — I forget the place." 
 
 "Kilgobbin?" 
 
 " Yes, Kil-gobbin — horrid name ! — for the Premier still 
 persists in thinking there was something in it, and worry- 
 ing my uncle for explanations ; and as somebody is to ask 
 something when Parliament meets, it would be as well to 
 have a letter to read to the House." 
 
 "In what sense, pray?" asked Atlee, mildly. 
 
 "Disavowing all; stating the story had no foundation: 
 that there was no attack, no resistance, no member of the 
 viceregal household present at any time." 
 
 "That would be going too far; for then we should next 
 have to deny Walpole's broken arm and his long confine- 
 ment to house." 
 
 " You may serve coffee in a quarter of an hour, Marcom," 
 said she, dismissing the butler; and then, as he left the 
 room, " And you tell me seriously there was a broken 
 arm in this case?" 
 
 "I can hide nothing from you, though I have taken an 
 oath to silence," said he, with an energy that seemed to 
 defy repression. "I will tell you everything, though it*s 
 little short of a perjury, only premising this much, that I 
 know nothing from Walpole himself." 
 
 "With this much of preface, he went on to describe Wal- 
 pole's visit to Kilgobbin as one of those adventurous ex- 
 ploits which young Englishmen fancy they have a sort of 
 right to perform in the less civilized country. " He ima- 
 
250 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 gined, I have no doubt," said he, " that he was studying the 
 condition of Ireland, and investigating the land question, 
 when he carried on a fierce flirtation with a pretty Irish 
 girl." 
 
 "And there was a flirtation?" 
 
 "Yes, but nothing more. Nothing really serious at any 
 time. So far he behaved frankly and well, for even at the 
 outset of the affair he owned to — a what shall I call it? 
 — an entanglement was, I believe, his own word, — an en- 
 tanglement in England — " , 
 
 "Did he not state more of this entanglement, — with 
 whom it was, or how, or where ? " 
 
 " I should think not. At all events, they who told me 
 knew nothing of these details. They only knew, as he 
 said, that he was in a certain sense tied up, and that till 
 fate unbound him he was a prisoner." 
 
 "Poor fellow! it was hard." 
 
 "So he said, and so they believed him. Not that I 
 myself believe he was ever seriously in love with the Irish 
 girl." 
 
 "And why not? " 
 
 "I may be wrong in my reading of him; but my impres- 
 sion is that he regards marriage as one of those solemn 
 events which should contribute to a man's worldly fortune. 
 Now, an Irish connection could scarcely be the road to 
 this." 
 
 "What an ungallant admission! " said she, with a smile. 
 "I hope Mr. Walpole is not of your mind." After a pause 
 she said, "And how was it that in your intimacy he told 
 you nothing of this ? " 
 
 He shook his head in dissent. 
 
 " Not even of the ' entanglement ' ? " 
 
 "Not even of that. He would speak freely enough of his 
 ' egregious blunder, ' as he called it, in quitting his career 
 and coming to Ireland ; that it was a gross mistake for any 
 man to take up Irish politics as a line in life; that they were 
 puzzles in the present and led to nothing in the future, and, 
 in fact, that he wished himself back again in Italy every 
 day he lived." 
 
 "Was there any ' entanglement ' there also?" 
 
PLMNUDDM CASTLE, NORTH WALES. 251 
 
 *'I cannot say. On these he made me no confidences." 
 . "Coffee, my Lady!" said the butler, entering at this 
 moment. Nor was Atlee grieved at the interruption. 
 
 "I am enough of a Turk," said she, laughingly, ''to like 
 that muddy, strong coffee they give you in the East, and 
 where the very smallness of the cups suggests its strength. 
 You, I know, are impatient for your cigarette, Mr. Atlee, 
 and I am about to liberate you." While Atlee was mutter- 
 ing his assurances of how much he prized her presence, she 
 broke in: "Besides, I promised my uncle a visit before tea- 
 time; and as I shall not see you again, I will wish you 
 now a pleasant journey and a safe return." 
 
 "Wish me success in my expedition," said he, eagerly. 
 
 "Yes, I will wish that also. One word more. I am very 
 short-sighted, as you may see, but you wear a ring of 
 great beauty. May I look at it? " 
 
 "It is pretty, certainly. It was a present Walpole made 
 me. I am not sure that there is not a story attached to it, 
 though I don't know it." 
 
 "Perhaps it may be linked with the ' entanglement,' " said 
 she, laughing softly. 
 
 "For aught I know, so it may. Do you admire it? " 
 
 "Immensely," said she, as she held it to the light. 
 
 "You can add immensely to its value if you will," said 
 he, diffidently. 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "By keeping it. Lady Maude," said he; and for once his 
 cheek colored with the shame of his own boldness. 
 
 "May I purchase it with one of my own? Will you have 
 this, or this ? " said she, hurriedly. 
 
 "Anything that once was yours," said he, in a mere 
 whisper. 
 
 "Good-bye, Mr. Atlee." 
 
 And he was alone! 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 AT TEA-TIME. 
 
 The family at Kilgobbin Castle were seated at tea when 
 Dick Kearney's telegram arrived. It bore the address, 
 "Lord Kilgobbin," and ran thus; "Walpole wishes to speak 
 with you, and will come down with me on Friday; his stay 
 cannot be beyond one day. — Richard Kearney. " 
 
 " What can he want with me ? " cried Kearney, as he 
 tossed over the despatch to his daughter. "If he wants to 
 talk over the election, I could tell him per post that I think 
 it a folly and an absurdity. Indeed, if he is not coming to 
 propose for either my niece or my daughter, he might spare 
 himself the journey." 
 
 "Who is to say that such is not his intention, papa?" 
 said Kate, merrily. "Old Catty had a dream about a pie- 
 bald horse and a haystack on fire, and something about a 
 creel of duck eggs; and I trust that every educated person 
 knows what they mean." 
 
 "I do not," cried Nina, boldly. 
 
 "Marriage, my dear. One is marriage by special license, 
 with a bishop or a dean to tie the knot ; another is a run- 
 away match. I forget what the eggs signify." 
 
 "An unbroken engagement," interposed Donogan, gravely, 
 "so long as none of them are smashed." 
 
 "On the whole, then, it is very promising tidings," 
 said Kate. 
 
 "It may be easy to be more promising than the election," 
 said the old man. 
 
 "I 'm not flattered, uncle, to hear that I am easier to win 
 than a seat in Parliament." 
 
 "That does not imply you are not worth a great deal 
 more," said Kearney, with an air of gallantry. "I know 
 
AT TEA-TIME. 253 
 
 if I was a young fellow which I 'd strive most for. Eh, Mr. 
 Daniel? I 3ee you agree with me." 
 
 Donogan's face, slightly flushed before, became now 
 crimson as he sipped his tea in confusion, unable to utter 
 a word. 
 
 "And so," resumed Kearney, "he '11 only give us a day to 
 make up our minds! It 's lucky, girls, that you have the 
 telegram there to tell you what's coming." 
 
 " It would have been more piquant, papa, if he had made 
 his message say, ' I propose for Nina. Reply by wire. ' " 
 
 "Or, ' May I marry your daughter? ' " chimed in Nina, 
 quickly. 
 
 "There it is, now," broke in Kearney, laughing, "you're 
 fighting for him already ! Take my word for it, Mr. Daniel, 
 there 's no so sure way to get a girl for a wife, as to make 
 her believe there 's another only waiting to be asked. It 's 
 the threat of the opposition coach on the road keeps down 
 the fares." 
 
 "Papa is all wrong," said Kate. "There is no such con- 
 ceivable pleasure as saying No to a man that another 
 woman is ready to accept. It is about the most refined sort 
 of self-flattery imaginable." • 
 
 " Not to say that men are utterly ignorant of that free- 
 masonry among women which gives us all an interest in thfe 
 man who marries one of us," said Nina. "It is only your 
 confirmed old bachelor that we all agree in detesting." 
 
 "Faith, I give you up altogether. You 're a puzzle clean 
 beyond me," said Kearney, with a sigh. 
 
 "I think it is Balzac tells us," said Donogan, "that 
 women and politics are the only two exciting pursuits in 
 life; for you never can tell where either of them will lead 
 you." 
 
 "And who is Balzac?" asked Kearney. 
 
 "Oh, uncle, don't let me hear you ask who is the greatest 
 novelist that ever lived." 
 
 "Faith, my dear, except 'Tristram Shandy' and 'Tom 
 Jones, ' and maybe ' Robinson Crusoe, ' — if that be a novel, 
 — my experience goes a short way. When I am not read- 
 ing what's useful, — as in the 'Farmer's Chronicle' or 
 ' Purcell's Rotation of Crops,' — I like the ' Accidents ' In 
 
254 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 the newspapers, where they give you the name of the gentle* 
 man that was smashed in the train, and tell you how his 
 wife was within ten days of her third confinement ; how it 
 was only last week he got a step as a clerk in Somerset 
 House. Haven't you more materials for a sensation novel 
 there than any of your three-volume fellows will give 
 you?" 
 
 "The times we are living in give most of us excitement 
 enough," said Donogan. "The man who wants to gamble 
 for life itself need not be balked now." 
 
 "You mean that a man can take a shot at an emperor? " 
 said Kearney, inquiringly. 
 
 "No, not that exactly; though there are stakes of that 
 kind some men would not shrink from. What are called 
 ' arms of precision ' have had a great influence on modern 
 politics. When there 's no time for a plebiscite, there 's 
 always time for a pistol." 
 
 "Bad morality, Mr. Daniel," said Kearney, gravely. 
 
 "I suspect we do not fairly measure what Mr. Daniel 
 says," broke in Kate. "He may mean to indicate a revolu- 
 tion, and not justify it." 
 
 "I mean both! " said Donogan. "I mean that the mere 
 permission to live under a bad government is too high a 
 price to pay for life at all. I 'd rather go ' down into the 
 streets, ' as they call it, and have it out, than I 'd drudge on, 
 dogged by policemen, and sent to jail on suspicion." 
 
 "He is right," cried Nina. "If I were a man, I 'd think 
 as he does." 
 
 "Then I 'm very glad you 're not," said Kearney; 
 "though, for the matter of rebellion, I believe you would 
 be a more dangerous Fenian as you are. Am I right, Mr. 
 Daniel?" 
 
 "I am disposed to say you are, sir," was his mild reply. 
 
 "Ain't we important people this evening!" cried Kear- 
 ney, as the servant entered with another telegram. " This 
 is for you, Mr. Daniel. I hope we 're to hear that the 
 Cabinet wants you in Downing Street." 
 
 "I 'd rather it did not," said he, with a very peculiar 
 smile, which did not escape Kate's keen glance across the 
 table, as he said, "May I read my despatch?" 
 
AT TEA-TIME. 255 
 
 "By all means," said Kearney; while, to leave him more 
 undisturbed, he turned to Nina, with some quizzical remark 
 about her turn for the telegraph coming next. "What news 
 would you wish it should bring you, Nina? " asked he. 
 
 "I scarcely know. I have so many things to wish for, I 
 should be puzzled which to place first." 
 
 "Should you like to be Queen of Greece?" asked Kate. 
 
 "First tell me if there is to be a King, and who is he?" 
 
 "Maybe it 's Mr. Daniel, there; for I see he has gone off 
 in a great hurry to say he accepts the crown." 
 
 "What should you ask for, Kate," cried Nina, "if for 
 tune were civil enough to give you a chance ? " 
 
 "Two days' rain for my turnips," said Kate, quickly. 
 "I don't remember wishing for anything so much in all my 
 life." 
 
 "Your turnips! " cried Nina, contemptuously. 
 
 "Why not? If you were a queen, would you not have to 
 think of those who depended on you for support and protec- 
 tion? And how should I forget my poor heifers and my 
 calves, — calves of very tender years some of them, — and 
 all with as great desire to fatten themselves as any of us 
 have to do what will as probably lead to our destruction ? " 
 
 "You 're not going to have the rain, anyhow," said Kear- 
 ney; "and you'll not be sorry, Nina, for you wanted a 
 fine day to finish your sketch of Croghan Castle." 
 
 "Oh, by the way, has old Bob recovered from his lame- 
 ness yet, to be fit to be driven ? " 
 
 "Ask Kitty there; she can tell you, perhaps." 
 
 "Well, I don't think I 'd harness him yet. The smith 
 has pinched him in the off fore-foot, and he goes tender 
 still." 
 
 "So do I when I go afoot, for I hate it," cried Nina; 
 "and I want a day in the open air, and I want to finish my 
 old Castle of Croghan. And last of all," whispered she in 
 Kate's ear, "I want to show my distinguished friend Mr. 
 Walpole that the prospect of a visit from him does not in- 
 duce me to keep the house. So that, from all the wants put 
 together, I shall take an early breakfast, and start to- 
 morrow for Cruhan, — is not that the name of the little 
 village in the bog ? " 
 
256 LORD KILGOBBIK 
 
 "That 's Miss Betty's own townland ; though I don't know 
 she 's much the richer of her tenants," said Kearney, laugh- 
 ing. "The oldest inhabitants never remember a rent-day/' 
 
 "What a happy set of people! " 
 
 "Just the reverse. You never saw misery till you saw 
 them. There is not a cabin fit for a human being, nor is 
 there one creature in the place with enough rags to cover 
 him." 
 
 "They were very civil as I drove through. I remember 
 how a little basket had fallen out, and a girl followed me 
 ten miles of the road to restore it," said Nina. 
 
 "That they would; and if it were a purse of gold they 'd 
 have done the same," cried Kate. 
 
 "Won't you say that they 'd shoot you for half-a-crown, 
 though ? " said Kearney, " and that the worst ' Whiteboys * 
 of Ireland come out of the same village? " 
 
 "I do like a people so unlike all the rest of the world," 
 cried Nina; "whose motives none can guess at, none fore- 
 cast. I'll go there to-morrow." 
 
 These words were said as Daniel had just re-entered the 
 room, and he stopped and asked, " Where to ? " 
 
 "To a Whiteboy village called Cruhan, some ten miles 
 off, close to an old castle I have been sketching." 
 
 "Do you mean to go there to-morrow?" asked he, half 
 carelessly ; but, not waiting for her answer, and as if fully 
 preoccupied, he turned and left the room. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV. 
 
 A DRIVE AT SUNRISE. 
 
 The little basket-carriage in which Nina made her excur- 
 sions, and which courtesy called a phaeton, would scarcely 
 have been taken as a model at Long Acre. A massive old 
 wicker-cradle constituted the body, which, from a slight in- 
 equality in the wheels, had got an uncomfortable "lurch to 
 port," while the rumble was supplied by a narrow shelf, on 
 which her foot-page sat dos-a-dos to herself, — a position 
 not rendered more dignified by his invariable habit of play- 
 ing pitch-and-toss with himself, as a means of distraction 
 in travel. 
 
 Except Bob, the sturdy little pony in the shafts, nothing 
 oould be less schooled or disciplined than Larry himself. 
 At sight of a party at marbles or hop-scotch, he was sure to 
 desert his post, trusting to short cuts and speed to catch up 
 his mistress later on. 
 
 As for Bob, a tuft of clover or fresh grass on the road- 
 side were temptations to the full as great to him, and no 
 amount of whipping could induce him to continue his road 
 leaving these dainties untasted. As in Mr. Gill's time he 
 had carried that important personage, he had contracted the 
 habit of stopping at every cabin by the way, giving to each 
 halt the amount of time he believed the colloquy should 
 have occupied, and then, without any admonition, resuming 
 his journey. In fact, as an index to the refractory tenants 
 on the estate, his mode of progression with its interruptions 
 might have been employed, and the sturdy fashion in which 
 he would " draw up " at certain doors might be taken as the 
 forerunner of an ejectment. 
 
 The blessed change by which the county saw the beast now 
 driven by a beautiful young lady, instead of bestrode by an 
 
 17 
 
258 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 inimical bailiff, added to a popularity which Ireland in her 
 poorest and darkest hour always accords to beauty; and 
 they, indeed, who trace points of resemblance between two 
 distant peoples, have not failed to remark that the Irish, 
 like the Italians, invariably refer all female loveliness to 
 that type of surpassing excellence, the Madonna. 
 
 Nina had too much of the South in her blood not to like 
 the heartfelt, outspoken admiration which greeted her as she 
 went; and the "God bless you, but you are a lovely cray- 
 ture ! " delighted, while it amused her in the way the quali- 
 fication was expressed. 
 
 It was soon after sunrise on this Friday morning that she 
 drove down the approach, and made her way across the bog 
 towards Cruhan. Though pretending to her uncle to be only 
 eager to finish her sketch of Croghan Castle, her journey 
 was really prompted by very different considerations. By 
 Dick's telegram she learned that Walpole was to arrive that 
 day at Kilgobbin ; and as his stay could not be prolonged 
 beyond the evening, she secretly determined she would 
 absent herself so much as she could from home, — only 
 returning to a late dinner, — and thus show her distin- 
 guished friend how cheaply she held the occasion of his 
 visit, and what value she attached to the pleasure of seeing 
 him at the castle. 
 
 She knew Walpole thoroughly ; she understood the work- 
 ing of such a nature to perfection, and she could calculate 
 to a nicety the mortification, and even anger, such a man 
 would experience at being thus slighted. "These men," 
 thought she, "only feel for what is done to them before 
 the world ; it is the insult that is passed upon them in pub- 
 lic, the soufflet that is given in the street, that alone can 
 wound them to the quick. " A woman may grow tired of 
 their attentions, become capricious and change; she may 
 be piqued by jealousy, or, what is worse, by indifference; 
 but, while she makes no open manifestation of these, they 
 can be borne. The really insupportable thing is that a 
 woman should be able to exhibit a man as a creature that 
 had no possible concern or interest for her; one who might 
 come or go, or stay on, utterly unregarded or uncared for. 
 To have played this game during the long hours of a long 
 
A DRIVE AT SUNRISE. 259 
 
 day was a burden she did not fancy to encounter; whereas, 
 to fill the part for the short space of a dinner, and an hour 
 or so in the drawing-room, she looked forward to rather as 
 an exciting amusement. 
 
 ''He has had a day to throw away," said she to herself, 
 "and he will give it to the Greek girl. I almost hear him 
 as he says it. How one learns to know these men in every 
 nook and crevice of their natures, and how by never relax- 
 ing a hold on the one clew of their vanity, one can trace 
 every emotion of their lives ! " 
 
 In her old life of Rome these small jealousies, these petty 
 passions of spite, defiance, and wounded sensibility, filled 
 a considerable space of her existence. Her position in 
 society, dependent as she was, exposed her to small mortir 
 fications, — the cold semi-contemptuous notice of women 
 who saw she was prettier than themselves, and the half- 
 swaggering carelessness of the men who felt that a bit of 
 flirtation with the Titian girl was as irresponsible a thing 
 as might be. 
 
 "But here," thought she, "I am the niece of a man of 
 recognized station ; I am treated in his family with a more 
 than ordinary deference and respect, — his very daughter 
 would cede the place of honor to me, and my will is never 
 questioned. It is time to teach this pretentious fine gentle- 
 man that our positions are not what they once were. If I 
 were a man, I should never cease till I had fastened a quar- 
 rel on him; and being a woman, I could give my love to 
 the man who would avenge me. Avenge me of what? a 
 mere slight, a mood of impertinent forgetfulness, — nothing 
 more; as if anything could be more to a woman's heart! A 
 downright wrong can be forgiven, an absolute injury par- 
 doned, — one is raised to self-esteem by such an act of for- 
 giveness; but there is no elevation in submitting patiently 
 to a slight. It is simply the confession that the liberty 
 taken with you was justifiable, was even natural." 
 
 These were the sum of her thoughts, as she went, ever 
 recurring to the point how Walpole would feel offended by 
 her absence, and how such a mark of her indifference would 
 pique his vanity, even to insult. 
 
 Then she pictured to her mind how this fine gentleman 
 
260 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 would feel the boredom of that dreary day. True, it would 
 be but a day ; but these men were not tolerant of the people 
 who made time pass heavily with them, and they revenged 
 their own ennui on all around them. How he would snub 
 the old man for the son's pretensions, and sneer at the 
 young man for his disproportioned ambition; and, last of 
 all, how he would mystify poor Kate, till she never knew 
 whether he cared to fatten calves and turkeys, or was simply 
 drawing her on to little details, which he was to dramatize 
 one day in an after-dinner story. 
 
 She thought of the closed pianoforte, and her music on 
 the top, — the songs he loved best ; she had actually left 
 Mendelssohn there to be seen, — a very bait to awaken his 
 passion. She thought she actually saw the fretful impa- 
 tience with which he threw the music aside and walked to 
 the window to hide his anger. 
 
 "This excursion of Mademoiselle Nina was then a sudden 
 thought, you tell me; only planned last night? And is 
 the country considered safe enough for a young lady to go 
 off in this fashion? Is it secure? is it decent? I know he 
 will ask, 'Is it decent?' Kate will not feel, she will not 
 see the impertinence with which he will assure her that she 
 herself may be privileged to do these things, that her 
 * Irishry ' was itself a safeguard ; but Dick will notice the 
 sneer. Oh, if he would but resent it! How little hope 
 there is of that! These young Irishmen get so overlaid by 
 the English in early life, they never resist their dominance; 
 they accept everything in a sort of natural submission. I 
 wonder does the rebel sentiment make them any bolder?" 
 
 And then she bethought her of some of those national 
 songs Mr. Daniel had been teaching her, and which seemed 
 to have such an overwhelming influence over his passionate 
 nature. She had even seen the tears in his eyes, and twice 
 he could not speak to her with emotion. What a triumph 
 it would have been to have made the high-bred Mr. Walpole 
 feel in this wise! Possibly, at the moment, the, vulgar 
 Fenian seemed the finer fellow. Scarcely had the thought 
 struck her, than there, about fifty yards in advance, and 
 walking at a tremendous pace, was the very man himself. 
 
 "Is not that Mr. Daniel, Larry?" asked she, quickly. 
 
A DRIVE AT SUNRISE. 261 
 
 But Larry had already struck off on a short cut across the 
 bog, and was miles away. 
 
 Yes, it could be none other than Mr. Daniel. The coat 
 thrown back, the loose-stepping stride, and the occasional 
 flourish of the stick as he went, all proclaimed the man. 
 The noise of the wheels on the hard road made him turn his 
 head ; and now, seeing who it was, he stood uncovered till 
 she drove up beside him. 
 
 "Who would have thought to see you here at this hour? '* 
 said he, saluting her with deep respect. 
 
 "No one is more surprised at it than myself," said she, 
 laughing; "but I have a partly done sketch of an old castle, 
 and I thought in this fine autumn weather I should like to 
 throw in the color. And, besides, there are now and then 
 with me unsocial moments when I fancy I like to be alone. 
 Do you know what these are? " 
 
 "Do I know? — too well." 
 
 "These motives, then, not to think of others, led me to 
 plan this excursion; and now will you be as candid, and say 
 what is your project? " 
 
 "I am bound for a little village called Cruhan, — a very 
 poor, unenticing spot ; but I want to see the people there, 
 and hear what they say of these rumors of new laws about 
 the land." 
 
 " And can they tell you anything that would be likely to 
 Interest you ? " 
 
 "Yes, their very mistakes would convey their hopes; and 
 hopes have come to mean a great deal in Ireland." 
 
 " Our roads are then the same. I am on my way to Cro- 
 ghan Castle." 
 
 "Croghan is but a mile from my village of Cruhan," 
 said he. 
 
 " I am aware of that, and it was in your village of Cruhan, 
 as you call it, I meant to stable my pony till I had finished 
 my sketch ; but my gentle page, Larry, 1 see, has deserted 
 me, I don't know if I shall find him again." 
 
 "Will you let me be your groom ? I shall be at the village 
 almost as soon as yourself, and I'll look after your pony." 
 
 "Do you think you could manage to seat yourself on that 
 shelf at the back ? " 
 
262 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "It is a great temptation you offer me, if I were not 
 ashamed to be a burden." 
 
 '^Not to me, certainly; and as for the pony, I scarcely 
 think he'll mind it." 
 
 "At all events I shall walk the hills." 
 
 ''I believe there are none. If I remember aright it is all 
 through a level bog." 
 
 '^You were at tea last night when a certain telegram 
 
 came 
 
 '*To be sure I was. I was there, too, when one came for 
 you, and saw you leave the room immediately after." 
 
 ''In evident confusion?" added he, smiling. 
 
 "Yes, I should say, in evident confusion. At least, 
 you looked like one who had got some very unexpected 
 tidings." 
 
 "So it was. There is the message." And he drew from 
 his pocket a slip of paper, with the words, "Walpole is 
 coming for a day. Take care to be out of the way till he 
 is gone." 
 
 "Which means that he is no friend of yours." 
 
 "He is neither friend nor enemy. I never saw him; but 
 he is the private secretary, and, I believe, the nephew of 
 the Viceroy, and would find it very strange company to 
 be domiciled with a rebel." 
 
 "And you are a rebel? " 
 
 "At your service. Mademoiselle Kostalergi." 
 
 "And a Fenian and Head-Centre?" 
 
 "A Fenian and a Head-Centre." 
 
 "And probably ought to be in prison?" 
 
 " I have been already, and as far as the sentence of Eng- 
 lish law goes, should be still there." 
 
 \ "How delighted I am to know that! I mean, what a 
 thrilling sensation it is to be driving along with a man so 
 dangerous that the whole country would be up and in pur- 
 suit of him at a mere word." 
 
 " That is true. I believe I should be worth some hundred 
 pounds to any one who would capture me. I suspect it is 
 the only way I could turn to valuable account." 
 
 "What if I were to drive you into Moate and give you 
 up?" 
 
A DRIVE AT SUNRISE. 263 
 
 11^ 
 
 'You might. 1 '11 not run away." 
 
 " I should go straight to the Podesta, or whatever he is, 
 and say, ' Here is the notorious Daniel Donogan, the rebel 
 you are all afraid of. ' " 
 
 "How came you by my name? " asked he, curtly. 
 
 "By accident. I overheard Dick telling it to his sister. 
 It dropped from him unawares, and I was on the terrace and 
 caught the words." 
 
 "I am in your hands completely," said he, in the same 
 calm voice; "but I repeat my words: I '11 not run away." 
 
 "That is, because you trust to my honor." 
 
 "It is exactly so, — because I trust to your honor." 
 
 "But how if I were to have strong convictions in opposi- 
 tion to all you were doing, — how if I were to believe that all 
 you intended was a gross wrong and a fearful cruelty ? " 
 
 " Still you would not betray me. You would say, ' This 
 man is an enthusiast; he imagines scores of impossible 
 things, but, at least, he is not a self-seeker, — a fool, pos- 
 sibly, but not a knave. It would be hard to hang him.' " 
 
 "So it would. I have just thought that.' 
 
 "And then you might reason thus: ' How will it serve 
 the other cause to send one poor wretch to the scaffold where 
 there are so many just as deserving of it? ' " 
 
 "And are there many? " 
 
 "I should say close on two millions at home here, and 
 some hundred thousand in America." 
 
 "And if you be as strong as you say, what craven crea- 
 tures you must be not to assert your own convictions ! " 
 
 "So we are, — I '11 not deny it, — craven creatures; but 
 remember this. Mademoiselle, we are not all like-minded. 
 Some of us would be satisfied with small cpncessions, some 
 ask for more, some demand all; and as the Government 
 higgles with some, and hangs the others, they mystify us 
 all, and end by confounding us." 
 
 "That is to say, you are terrified." 
 
 "Well, if you like that word better, I '11 not quarrel 
 about it." 
 
 "I wonder how men as irresolute ever turn to rebellion. 
 When our people set out for Crete, they went in another 
 spirit to meet the enemy." 
 
264 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''Don't be too sure of that. The boldest fellows in that 
 exploit were the liberated felons. They fought with des- 
 peration, for they had left the hangman behind." 
 
 "How dare you defame a great people!" cried she, 
 angrily. 
 
 "I was with them. Mademoiselle. I saw them and fought 
 amongst them ; and to prove it, I will speak modern Greek 
 with you, if you like it." 
 
 "Oh, do! " said she. "Let me hear those noble sounds 
 again ; though I shall be sadly at a loss to answer you. I 
 have been years and years away from Athens." 
 
 "I know that. I know your story from one who loved to 
 talk of you, all unworthy as he was of such a theme." 
 
 "And who was this?" 
 
 " Atlee, — Joe Atlee, whom you saw here some months 
 ago." 
 
 "I remember him," said she, thoughtfully. 
 
 "He was here, if I mistake not, with that other friend of 
 yours you have so strangely escaped from to-day." 
 
 "Mr. Walpole?" 
 
 "Yes, Mr. Walpole; to meet whom would not have 
 Involved yoii^ at least, in any contrariety." 
 
 "Is this a question, sir? Am I to suppose your curiosity. 
 asks an answer here ? " 
 
 '* I am not so bold; but I own my suspicions have 
 mastered my discretion, and, seeing you here this morning, 
 I did think you did not care to meet him." 
 
 "Well, sir, you were right. I am not sure that mtj 
 reasons for avoiding him were exactly as strong as yours^ 
 but they sufficed for me." 
 
 There was something so like reproof in the way these 
 words were uttered that Donogan had not courage to speak 
 for some time after. At last he said : "In one thing your 
 Greeks have an immense advantage over us here. In your 
 popular songs you could employ your own language, and 
 deal with your own wrongs in the accents that became them. 
 We had to take the tongue of the conqueror, which was as 
 little suited to our traditions as to our feelings, and traves- 
 tied both. Only fancy the Greek vaunting his triumphs or 
 bewailing his defeats in Turkish ! " 
 
A DRIVE AT SUNRISE. 265 
 
 ''What do you know of Mr. "Walpole?" asked she, 
 abruptly. 
 
 " Very little beyond the fact that he is an agent of the 
 Government, who believes that he understands the Irish 
 people." 
 
 " Which you are disposed to doubt? " 
 
 " I only know that I am an Irishman, and I do not under- 
 stand them. An organ, however, is not less an organ that 
 it has many ' stops.' " 
 
 '* I am not sure Cecil Walpole does not read you aright. 
 He thinks that you have a love of intrigue and plot, but 
 without the conspirator element that Southern people possess ; 
 and that your native courage grows impatient at the delays 
 of mere knavery, and always betrays you." 
 
 " That distinction was never te, — that was your own." 
 
 *' So it was ; but he adopted it when he heard it." 
 
 *'That is the way the rising politician is educated," cried 
 Donogan. "It is out of these petty thefts he makes all his 
 capital, and the poor people never suspect how small a 
 creature can be their millionnaire." 
 
 '' Is not that our village yonder, where I see the smoke? " 
 
 *' Yes; and there on the stile sits your little groom await- 
 ing you. I shall get down here." 
 
 " Stay where you are, sir. It is by your blunder, not by 
 your presence, that you might compromise me." And this 
 time her voice caught a tone of sharp severity that sup- 
 pressed reply. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVI. 
 
 THE EXCURSION. 
 
 The little village of Cruhan-bawn, into which they now 
 drove, was, in every detail of wretchedness, dirt, ruin, and 
 desolation, intensely Irish. A small branch of the well- 
 known bog-stream, the " Brusna," divided one part of the 
 village from the other, and between these two settlements 
 so separated there raged a most rancorous hatred and 
 jealousy, and Cruhan-beg, as the smaller collection of hovels 
 was called, detested Cruhan-bawn with an intensity of dis- 
 like that might have sufficed for a national antipathy, where 
 race, language, and traditions had contributed their aids 
 to the animosity. 
 
 There was, however, one real and valid reason for this 
 inveterate jealousy. The inhabitants of Cruhan-beg — who 
 lived, as they said themselves, "beyond the river" — 
 strenuously refused to pay any rent for their hovels ; while 
 "the cis-Brusnaites," as they may be termed, demeaned 
 themselves to the condition of tenants in so far as to ac- 
 knowledge the obligation of rent, though the oldest inhabi- 
 tant vowed he had never seen a receipt in his life, nor had 
 the very least conception of a gale-day. 
 
 If, therefore, actually there was not much to separate 
 them on the score of principle, they were widely apart in 
 theory, and the sturdy denizens of the smaller village looked 
 down upon the others as the ignoble slaves of a Saxon 
 tyranny. The village in its entirety — for the division was 
 a purely local and arbitrary one — belonged to Miss Betty 
 O'Shea, forming the extreme edge of her estate as it merged 
 into the vast bog ; and, with the habitual fate of frontier 
 populations, it contained more people of lawless lives and 
 
THE EXCURSION. 267 
 
 reckless habits than were to be found for miles around. 
 There was not a resource of her ingenuity she had not 
 employed for years back to bring these refractory subjects 
 into the pale of a respectable tenantry. Every process of 
 the law had been essayed in turn. They had been hunted 
 down by the police, unroofed and turned into the wide bog ; 
 their chattels had been '' canted," and themselves — a last 
 resource — cursed from the altar; but, with that strange 
 tenacity that pertains to life where there is little to live for, 
 these creatures survived all modes of persecution, and came 
 back into their ruined hovels to defy the law and beard the 
 Church, and went on living — in some strange, mysterious 
 way of their own — an open challenge to all political econ- 
 omy, and a sore puzzle to the "Times" commissioner 
 when he came to report on the condition of the cottier in 
 Ireland. 
 
 At certain seasons of county excitement, — such as an 
 election or an unusually weighty assizes, — it was not deemed 
 perfectly safe to visit the village, and even the police would 
 not have adventured on the step except with a responsible 
 force. At other periods, the most marked feature of the 
 place would be that of utter vacuity and desolation. A 
 single inhabitant here and there smoking listlessly at his 
 door, — a group of women, with their arms concealed be- 
 neath their aprons, crouching under a ruined wall, — or a 
 few ragged children, too miserable and dispirited even for 
 play, would be all that would be seen. 
 
 At a spot where the stream was ford able for a horse, the 
 page Larry had already stationed himself, and now walked 
 into the river, which rose over his knees, to show the road 
 to his mistress. 
 
 " The bailiffs is on them to-day," said he, with a gleeful 
 look in his eye ; for any excitement, no matter at what cost 
 to others, was intensely pleasurable to him. 
 
 " What is he saying? " asked Nina. 
 
 "They are executing some process of law against these 
 people," muttered Donogan. " It 's an old story in Ireland ; 
 but I had as soon you had been spared the sight." 
 
 "Is it quite safe for yourself?" whispered she. "Is 
 there not some dan2;er in beino; seen here ? " 
 
268 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 *' Oh, if I could but think that you cared, — I mean ever 
 so slightly," cried he, with fervor, " I 'd call this moment of 
 my danger the proudest of my life ! " 
 
 Though declarations of this sort, more or less sincere 
 as chance might make them, were things Nina was well 
 used to, she could not help marking the impassioned manner 
 of him who now spoke, and bent her eyes steadily on him. 
 
 "It is true," said he, as if answering the interrogation in 
 her gaze. " A poor outcast as I am, — a rebel, — a felon, — 
 anything you like to call me, — the slightest show of your 
 interest in me gives my life a value and my hope a purpose 
 I never knew till now." 
 
 " Such interest would be but ill-bestowed if it only served 
 to heighten your danger. Are you known here ? " 
 
 " He who has stood in the dock, as I have, is sure to be 
 known by some one. Not that the people would betray me. 
 There is poverty and misery enough in that wretched village, 
 and yet there 's not one so hungry or so ragged that he 
 would hand me over to the law to make himself rich for 
 life." 
 
 " Then what do you mean to do? " asked she, hurriedly. 
 
 '' Walk boldly through the village at the head of your 
 pony, as I am now, — your guide to Croghan Castle." 
 
 " But we were to have stabled the beast here. I intended 
 to have gone on foot to Croghan." 
 
 " Which you cannot now. Do you know what English 
 law is. Lady?" cried he, fiercely. "This pony and this 
 carriage, if they had shelter here, are confiscated to the 
 landlord for his rent. It 's little use to say you owe nothing 
 to this owner of the soil; it's enough that they are found 
 amongst the chattels of his debtors." 
 
 " I cannot believe this is law." 
 
 " You can prove it, — at the loss of your pony ; and it is 
 mercy and generous dealing when compared with half the 
 enactments our rulers have devised for us. Follow me. I 
 see the police have not yet come down. I will go on in 
 front and ask the way to Croghan." 
 
 There was that sort of peril in the adventure now that 
 stimulated Nina and excited her; and as they stoutly 
 wended their way through the crowd, she was far from in- 
 
THE EXCURSION. 209 
 
 sensible to the looks of admiration that were bent on her 
 from every side. 
 
 "What are they saying?" asked she; "I do not know 
 their language." 
 
 " It is Irish," said he ; " they are talking of your beauty." 
 
 "I should so like to follow their words," said she, with 
 the smile of one to whom such homage had ever its charm. 
 
 " That wild-looking fellow, that seemed to utter an im- 
 precation, has just pronounced a fervent blessing; what he 
 has said was, ' May every glance of your eye be a candle to 
 light you to glory." 
 
 A half-insolent laugh at this conceit was all Nina's ac- 
 knowledgment of it. Short greetings and good wishes were 
 now rapidly exchanged between Donogan and the people, as 
 the little party made their wa}^ through the crowd, — the men 
 standing bareheaded, and the women uttering words of 
 admiration, some even crossing themselves piously, at sight 
 of such loveliness as to them recalled the ideal of all 
 beauty. 
 
 " The police are to be here at one o'clock," said Donogan, 
 translating a phrase of one of the bystanders. 
 
 " And is there anything for them to seize on? " asked she. 
 
 "No; but they can level the cabins," cried he, bitterly. 
 *' We have no more right to shelter than to food." 
 
 Moody and sad, he walked along at the pony's head, and 
 did not speak another word till they had left the village far 
 behind them. 
 
 Larry, as usual, had found something to interest him, and 
 dropped behind in the village, and they were alone. 
 
 A passing countryman, to whom Donogan addressed a few 
 words in Irish, told them that a short distance from Croghan 
 they could stable the pony at a small " shebeen." 
 
 On reaching this, Nina, who seemed to have accepted 
 Donogan's companionship without further question, directed 
 him to unpack the carriage, and take out her easel and her 
 drawing materials. "You'll have to carry these, — for- 
 tunately not very far, though," said she, smiling, " and 
 then you '11 have to come back here and fetch this basket." 
 
 "It is a very proud slavery, — command me how you 
 will," muttered he, not without emotion. 
 
270 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 '' That," continued she, pointing to the basket, " contains 
 my breakfast, and luncheon or dinner, and I invite you to be 
 my guest." 
 
 "And I accept with rapture. Oh!" cried he, passion- 
 ately, " what whispered to my heart this morning that this 
 would be the happiest day of my life ! " 
 
 " If so, fate has scarcely been generous to you." And her 
 lip curled half superciliously as she spoke. 
 
 " I 'd not say that. I have lived amidst great hopes, many 
 of them dashed, it is true, by disappointment ; but who that 
 has been cheered by glorious day-dreams has not tasted 
 moments at least of exquisite bliss? " 
 
 " I don't know that I have much sympathy with political 
 ambitions," said she, pettishly. 
 
 " Have you tasted, — have you tried them? Do you know 
 what it is to feel the heart of a nation throb and beat, — 
 to know that all that love can do to purify and elevate can 
 be exercised for the countless thousands of one's own race 
 and lineage, and to think that long after men have forgotten 
 your name, some heritage of freedom will survive to say that 
 there once lived one who loved his country? " 
 
 " This is very pretty enthusiasm." 
 
 " Oh, how is it that you, who can stimulate one's heart to 
 such confessions, know nothing of the sentiment? " 
 
 " I have my ambitions," said she, coldly, almost sternly. 
 
 " Let me hear some of them." 
 
 "They are not like yours, though they are perhaps just 
 as impossible." She spoke in a broken, unconnected man- 
 ner, like one who was talking aloud the thoughts that came 
 laggingly; then with a sudden earnestness she said: "I'll 
 tell you one of them. It's to catch the broad bold light that 
 has just beat on the old castle there, and brought out all its 
 rich tints of grays and yellows in such a glorious wealth of 
 color. Place my easel here, under the trees ; spread that rug 
 for yourself to lie on. No — you won't have it? Well, fold 
 it neatly, and place it there for my feet : very nicely done. 
 And now, Signor Ribello, you may unpack that basket, and 
 arrange our breakfast ; and when you have done all these, 
 throw yourself down on the grass, and either tell me a pretty 
 story, or recite some nice verses for me, or be otherwise 
 amusinff and agreeable." 
 
THE EXCURSION. 271 
 
 *' Shall I do what will best please myself? If so, it will 
 be to lie here and look at you." 
 
 " Be it so," said she, with a sigh. " I have always 
 thought, in looking at them, how saints are bored by being 
 worshipped, — it adds fearfully to martyrdom ; but, happily, 
 I am used to it. ' Oh the vanity of that girl ! ' Yes, sir, 
 say it out: tell her frankly that if she has no friend to 
 caution her against this besetting wile, that you will be that 
 friend. Tell her that whatever she has of attraction is 
 spoiled and marred by this self-consciousness, and that just 
 as you are a rebel without knowing it, so should she be 
 charming and never suspect it. Is not that coming nicely ? " 
 said she, pointing to the drawing; "see how that tender 
 light is carried down from those gray walls to the banks 
 beneath, and dies away in that little pool, where the faintest 
 breath of air is rustling. Don't look at me, sir ; look at my 
 drawing." 
 
 " True, there is no tender light there," muttered he, gaz- 
 ing at her eyes, where the enormous size of the pupils had 
 given a character of steadfast brilliancy, quite independent 
 of shape or size or color. 
 
 "You know very little about it," said she, saucily; then, 
 bending over the drawing, she said, " That middle distance 
 wants a bit of color ; you shall aid me here." 
 
 " How am I to aid you? " asked he, in sheer simplicity. 
 
 " I mean that you should be that bit of color, there. Take 
 my scarlet cloak, and perch yourself yonder on that low 
 rock. A few minutes will do. Was there ever immortality 
 so cheaply purchased ! Your biographer shall tell that you 
 were the figure in that famous sketch, — what will be called, 
 in the cant of art, one of Nina Kostalergi's earliest and hap- 
 piest efforts. There, now, dear Mr. Donogan, do as you 
 are bid." 
 
 " Do you know the Greek ballad, where a youth remembers 
 that the word ' dear ' has been coupled with his name, — a 
 passing courtesy, if even so much, but enough to light up a 
 whole chamber in his heart?" 
 
 " I know nothing of Greek ballads. How does it go? " 
 
 "It is a simple melody, in a low key." And he sang, in 
 a deep but tremulous voice, to a very plaintive air, — 
 
272 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " I took her hand within my own, 
 
 I drew her gently nearer, 
 And whispered almost on her cheek, 
 
 ' Oh, would that I were dearer ! ' 
 Dearer ! No, that 's not my prayer : 
 
 A stranger, e'en the merest, 
 Might chance to have some value there ; 
 
 But I would be the dearest." 
 
 "What had he done to merit such a hope?" said she, 
 haughtily. 
 
 " Loved her, — only loved her ! " 
 
 "What value you men must attach to this gift of your 
 affection, when it can nourish such thoughts as these ! Your 
 very wilfulness is to win us, — is not that your theory? I 
 expect from the man who offers me his heart that he means 
 to share with me his own power and his own ambition, — to 
 make me the partner of a station that is to give me some 
 pre-eminence I had not known before, nor could gain 
 unaided." 
 
 " And you would call that marrying for love?" 
 
 " Why not? Who has such a claim upon my life as he 
 who makes the life worth living for? Did you hear that 
 shout?" 
 
 " I heard it," said he, standing still to listen. 
 
 " It came from the village. What can it mean?" 
 
 "It's the old war-cry of the houseless," said he, mourn- 
 fully. "It's a note we are well used to here. I must go 
 down to learn. I'll be back presently." 
 
 "You are not going into danger?" said she; and her 
 cheek grew paler as she spoke. 
 
 " And if I were, who is to care for it? " 
 
 " Have you no mother, sister, sweetheart?" 
 
 " No, not one of the three. Good-bye." 
 
 " But if I were to say — stay ? " 
 
 " I should still go. To have your love, I'd sacrifice even 
 my honor. Without it — " He threw up his arms despair- 
 ingly and rushed away. 
 
 " These are the men whose tempers compromise us," said 
 she, thoughtfully. " We come to accept their violence as a 
 reason, and take mere impetuosity for an argument. I am 
 
THE EXCURSION. 273 
 
 glad that he did not shake my resolution. There, that was 
 another shout, but it seemed in joy. There was a ring of 
 gladness in it. Now for my sketch." And she re-seated 
 herself before her easel. "He shall see when he comes 
 back how diligently I have worked, and how small a share 
 anxiety has had in my thoughts. The one thing men are not 
 proof against is our independence of them." And thus talk- 
 ing in broken sentences to herself, she went on rapidly with 
 her drawing, occasionally stopping to gaze on it, and hum- 
 ming some old Italian ballad to herself. " His Greek air 
 was pretty. Not that it was Greek ; these fragments of 
 melody were left behind them by the Venetians, who, in all 
 lust of power, made songs about contented poverty and 
 humble joys. I feel intensely hungry, and if my dangerous 
 guest does not return soon I shall have to breakfast alone, — 
 another way of showing him how little his fate has interested 
 me. My foreground here does want that bit of color. 
 Why does he not come back ? " As she rose to look at her 
 drawing, the sound of somebody running attracted her atten- 
 tion, and turning, she saw it was her foot-page Larry coming 
 at full speed. 
 
 ' ' What is it, Larry ? What has happened ? " asked she. 
 
 ''You are to go — as fast as you can," said he; which, 
 being for him a longer speech than usual, seemed to have 
 exhausted him. 
 
 " Go where? and why? " 
 
 ''Yes," said he, with a stolid look, " you are." 
 
 "I am to do what? Speak out, boy! Who sent you 
 here ? " 
 
 " Yes," said he, again. 
 
 "Are they in trouble yonder? Is there fighting at the 
 village?" 
 
 "No." And he shook his head, as though he said so 
 regretfully. 
 
 " Will you tell me what you mean, boy? " 
 
 "The pony is ready," said he, as he stooped down to 
 pack away the things in the basket. 
 
 "Is that gentleman coming back here, — that gentleman 
 whom you saw with me?" 
 
 "He is gone; he got away." And here he laughed in 
 
 18 
 
274 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 a malicious way, that was more puzzling even than his 
 words. 
 
 "And am I to go back home at once? " 
 
 "Yes," replied he, resolutely. 
 
 "Do you know why, — for what reason? " 
 
 "I do." 
 
 "Come, like a good boy, tell me, and you shall have 
 this ; " and she drew a piece of silver from her purse, and 
 held it temptingly before him. " Why should I go back, 
 now ? " 
 
 "Because," muttered he, — "because — " and it w^as plain, 
 from the glance in his eyes, that the bribe had engaged all 
 his faculties. 
 
 "So, then, you will not tell me?" said she, replacing the 
 money in her purse. 
 
 "Yes," said he, in a despondent tone. 
 
 "You can have it still, Larry, if you will but say who 
 sent you here." 
 
 "^e sent me," was the answer. 
 
 "Who was he? Do you mean the gentleman who came 
 here with me?" A nod assented to this. "And what did 
 he tell you to say to me? " 
 
 "Yes," said he, with a puzzled look, as though once more 
 the confusion of his thoughts was mastering him. 
 
 "So, then, it is that you will not tell me?" said she, 
 angrily. He made no answer, but went on packing the 
 plates in the basket. " Leave those there, and go and fetch 
 me some water from the spring yonder." And she gave him 
 a jug as she spoke, and now she reseated herself on the 
 grass. He obeyed at once, and returned speedily with 
 water. 
 
 "Come now, Larry, " said she kindly to him. "I 'm sure 
 you mean to be a good boy. You shall breakfast with me. 
 Get me a cup, and I '11 give you some milk ; here is bread 
 and cold meat." 
 
 "Yes," muttered Larry, whose mouth was already too 
 much engaged for speech. 
 
 "You will tell me by and by what they were doing at the 
 village, and what that shouting meant, — won't you ? " 
 
 "Yes," said he, with a nod. Then suddenly bending his 
 
THE EXCURSION. 275 
 
 head to listen, he motioned with his hand to keep silence, 
 and after a long breath said, "They 're coming." 
 
 "Who are coming?" asked she, eagerly; but at the same 
 instant a man emerged from the copse below the hill, fol- 
 lowed by several others, whom she saw by their dress and 
 equipment to belong to the constabulary. 
 
 Approaching with his hat in his hand, and with that air 
 of servile civility which marked him, old Gill addressed 
 her. "If it 's not displazin' to ye, miss, we want to ax you 
 a few questions," said he. 
 
 "You have no right, sir, to make any such request," said 
 she, with a haughty air. 
 
 "There was a man with you, my Lady," he went on, "as 
 you drove through Cruhan, and we want to know where he 
 is now." 
 
 "That concerns you, sir, and not me." 
 
 "Maybe it does, my Lady," said he, with a grin; "but I 
 suppose you know who you were travelling with ? " 
 
 "You evidently don't remember, sir, whom you are 
 talking to." 
 
 "The law is the law, miss, and there 's none of us above 
 it," said he, half defiantly; "and when there's some hun- 
 dred pounds on a man's head there 's few of us such fools as 
 to let him slip through our fingers." 
 
 "I don't understand you, sir, nor do I care to do so." 
 
 "The sergeant there has a warrant against him," said he, 
 in a whisper he intended to be confidential; "and it 's not 
 to do anything that your Ladyship would think rude that I 
 came up myself. There 's how it is now," muttered he, 
 still lower. " They want to search the luggage, and exam- 
 ine the baskets there, and maybe, if you don't object, they 'd 
 look through the carriage." 
 
 "And if I should object to this insult? " broke she in. 
 
 "Faix, I believe," said he, laughing, "they 'd do it all the 
 same. Eight hundred — I think it's eight — isn't to be 
 made any day of the year!" 
 
 "My uncle is a justice of the peace, Mr. Gill; and you 
 know if he will suffer such an outrage to go unpunished." 
 
 "There 's the more reason that a justice should n't harbor 
 a Fenian, miss," said he, boldly; "as he '11 know when he 
 sees the search-warrant." 
 
^76 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Get ready the carriage, Larry," said she, turning con- 
 temptuously away, ''and follow me towards the village." 
 
 ''The sergeant, miss, would like to say a word or two," 
 said Gill, in his accustomed voice of servility. 
 
 "I will not speak with him," said she, proudly, and 
 swept past him. 
 
 The constables stood to one side, and saluted in military 
 fashion as she" passed down the hill. There was that in 
 her queen-like gesture and carriage that so impressed them, 
 the men stood as though on parade. 
 
 Slowly and thoughtfully as she sauntered along, her 
 thoughts turned to Donogan. Had he escaped? was the 
 idea that never left her. The presence of these men here 
 seemed to favor that impression ; but there might be others 
 on his track ; and if so, how in that wild bleak space was 
 he to conceal himself? A single man moving miles away 
 on the bog could be seen. There was no covert, no shelter 
 anywhere ! What an interest did his fate now suggest ; and 
 yet a moment back she believed herself indifferent to him. 
 "Was he aware of his danger," thought she, "when he lay 
 there talking carelessly to me? was that recklessness the 
 bravery of a bold man who despised peril ? " And if so, 
 what stuff these souls were made of ! These were not of the 
 Kearney stamp, that needed to be stimulated and goaded to 
 any effort in life; nor like Atlee, the fellow who relied on 
 trick and knavery for success ; still less such as Walpole, 
 self- worshippers and triflers. "Yes," said she, aloud, "a 
 woman might feel that with such a man at her side the 
 battle of life need not affright her. He might venture too 
 far, — he might aspire to much that was beyond his reach, 
 and strive for the impossible; but that grand bold spirit 
 would sustain him, and carry him through all the smaller 
 storms of life ; and such a man might be a hero, even to 
 her who saw him daily. These are the dreamers, as we 
 call them," said she. "How strange it would be if they 
 should prove the realists, and that it was ive should be the 
 mere shadows ! If these be the men who move empires and 
 make history, how doubly ignoble are we in our contempt 
 of them." And then she bethought her what a different 
 faculty was that great faith that these men had in them- 
 
THE EXCURSION. 277 
 
 selves from common vanity ; and in this way she was led 
 again to compare Donogan and Walpole. 
 
 She reached the village before her little carriage had 
 overtaken her, and saw that the people stood about in groups 
 and knots. A depressing silence prevailed over them, and 
 they rarely spoke above a whisper. The same respectful 
 greeting, however, which welcomed her before met her again ; 
 and as they lifted their hats, she saw, or thought she saw, 
 that they looked on her with a more tender interest. Several 
 policemen moved about through the crowd, who, though 
 tney saluted her respectfully, could not refrain from scruti- 
 nizing her appearance and watching her as she went. With 
 that air of haughty self-possession which well became her, 
 — for it was no affectation, — she swept proudly along, 
 resolutely determined not to utter a word, or even risk a 
 question as to the way. 
 
 Twice she turned to see if her pony were coming, and 
 then resumed her road. From the excited air and rapid 
 gestures of the police, as they hurried from place to place, 
 she could guess that up to this Donogan had not been cap- 
 tured. Still, it seemed hopeless that concealment in such 
 a place could be accomplished. , 
 
 As she gained the little stream that divided the village, 
 she stood for a moment uncertain ; when a countrywoman, 
 as it were divining her difficulty, said, "If you '11 cross 
 over the bridge, my Lady, the path will bring you out on 
 the high-road." 
 
 As Nina turned to thank her, the woman looked up from 
 her task of washing in the river, and made a gesture with 
 her hand towards the bog. Slight as the action was, it 
 appealed to that Southern intelligence that reads a sign even 
 faster than a word. Nina saw that the woman meant to 
 say Donogan had escaped, and once more she said, "Thank 
 you, — from my heart I thank you ! " • 
 
 Just as she emerged upon the high-road, her pony and car- 
 riage came up. A sergeant of police was, however, in 
 waiting beside it, who, saluting her respectfully, said: 
 "There was no disrespect meant to you, miss, by our 
 search of the carriage ; our duty obliged us to do it. We 
 have a warrant to apprehend the man that was seen with 
 
278 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 you this morning, and it 's only that we know who you are, 
 and where you come from, prevents us from asking you to 
 come before our chief." 
 
 He presented his arm to assist her to her place as he 
 spoke ; but she declined the help, and, without even notic- 
 ing him in any way, arranged her rugs and wraps around 
 her, took the reins, and, motioning Larry to his place, 
 drove on. 
 
 "Is my drawing safe? — have all my brushes and pencils 
 been put in ? " asked she, after a while. But already Larry 
 had taken his leave, and she could see him as he flitted 
 across the bog to catch her by some short cut. 
 
 That strange contradiction by which a woman can jour- 
 ney alone and in safety through the midst of a country only 
 short of open insurrection, filled her mind as she went; and 
 thinking of it in every shape and fashion occupied her for 
 miles of the way. The desolation, far as the eye could 
 reach, was complete, — there was not a habitation, not a 
 human thing to be seen. The dark brown desert faded 
 away in the distance into low-lying clouds, the only break 
 to the dull uniformity being some stray "clamp," as it is 
 called, of turf, left by the owners from some accident of 
 season or bad weather, and which loomed out now against 
 the sky like a vast fortress. 
 
 This long, long day — for so without any weariness she 
 felt it — was now in the afternoon, and already long 
 shadows of these turf-mounds stretched their giant limbs 
 across the waste. Nina, who had eaten nothing since at 
 early morning, felt faint and hungry. She halted her pony, 
 and taking out some bread and a bottle of milk, proceeded 
 to make a frugal luncheon. The complete loneliness, the 
 perfect silence, in which even the rattling of the harness as 
 the pony shook himself made itself felt, gave something of 
 solemnity to the moment, as the young girl sat there and 
 gazed half terrified around her. 
 
 As she looked, she thought she saw something pass from 
 one turf-clamp to the other; and, watching closely, she 
 could distinctly detect a figure crouching near the ground, 
 and after some minutes emerging into the open space, 
 again to be hid by some vast turf-mound. There, now, — 
 
THE EXCURSION. 279 
 
 there could not be a doubt, — it was a man, and he was 
 waving his handkerchief as a signal. It was Donogan him- 
 self; she could recognize him well. Clearing the long 
 drains at a bound, and with a speed that vouched for per- 
 fect training, he came rapidly forward, and, leaping the wide 
 trench, alighted at last on the road beside her. 
 
 "I have watched you for an hour, and but for this lucky 
 halt, I should not have overtaken you after all," cried he, 
 as he wiped his brow, and stood panting beside her. 
 
 "Do you know that they are in pursuit of you?" cried 
 she, hastily. 
 
 "I know it all. I learned it before I reached the village, 
 and in time — only in time — to make a circuit and reach 
 the bog. Once there^ I defy the best of them." 
 
 "They have what they call a warrant to search for you." 
 
 "I know that, too," cried he. "No, no!" said he, pas- 
 sionately, as she offered him a drink. "Let me have it 
 from the cup you have drunk from. It may be the last 
 favor I shall ever ask you, — don't refuse me this! " 
 
 She touched the glass slightly with her lips, and handed 
 it to him with a smile. 
 
 "What peril would I not brave for this! " cried he, with a 
 wild ecstasy. 
 
 "Can you not venture to return with me?" said she, in 
 some confusion, for the bold gleam of his gaze now half 
 abashed her. 
 
 "No. That would be to compromise others as well as 
 myself. I must gain Dublin how I can. There I shall be 
 safe against all pursuit. I have come back for nothing 
 but disappointment," added he, sorrowfull3^ "This coun- 
 try is not ready to rise; they are too many-minded for a 
 common effort. The men like Wolfe Tone are not to be 
 found amongst us now, and to win freedom you must dare 
 the felony." 
 
 "Is it not dangerous to delay so long here? " asked she, 
 looking around her with anxiety. 
 
 "So it is; and I will go. Will you keep this for me?" 
 said he, placing a thick and much- worn pocket-book in her 
 hands. "There are papers there would risk far better heads 
 than mine ; and if I should be taken, these must not be dis- 
 
280 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 covered. It may be, Nina, — oh, forgive me if I say your 
 name ! but it is such joy to me to utter it once, — it may be 
 that you should chance to hear some word whose warning 
 might save me. If so, and if you would deign to write to 
 me, you '11 find three, if not four, addresses, under any of 
 which you could safely write to me." 
 
 "I shall not forget. Good fortune be with you. Adieu! '* 
 
 She held out her hand ; but he bent over it, and kissed it 
 
 rapturously; and when he raised his head, his eyes were 
 
 streaming, and his cheeks deadly pale. "Adieu! " said 
 
 she, again. 
 
 He tried to speak, but no sound came from his lips; and 
 when, after she had driven some distance away, she turned 
 to look after him, he was standing on the same spot in the 
 road, his hat at his foot, where it had fallen when he 
 stooped to kiss her hand. 
 

^ OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 
CHAPTER XXXVII. 
 
 THE RETURN. 
 
 Kate Kearney was in the act of sending out scouts and 
 messengers to look out for Nina, whose long absence had 
 begun to alarm her, when she heard that she had returned 
 and was in her room. 
 
 ''What a fright you have given me, darling! " said Kate, 
 as she threw her arms about her, and kissed her affection- 
 ately. "Do you know how late you are? " 
 
 "No; I only know how tired I am." 
 
 "What a long day of fatigue you must have gone through I 
 Tell me of it all." 
 
 "Tell me rather of yours. You have had the great Mr. 
 Walpole here ; is it not so ? " 
 
 "Yes ; he is still here, — he has graciously given us another 
 day, and will not leave till to-morrow night." 
 
 "By what good fortune have you been so favored as 
 this?" 
 
 "Ostensibly to finish a long conversation or conference 
 with papa; but really and truthfully, I suspect, to meet 
 Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whose absence has piqued him." 
 
 "Yes; piqued is the word. It is the extreme of the pain 
 he is capable of feeling. What has he said of it? " 
 
 "Nothing beyond the polite regrets that courtesy could 
 express, and then adverted to something else." 
 
 "With an abruptness that betrayed preparation?" 
 
 "Perhaps so." 
 
 "Not perhaps, but certainly so. Vanity such as his has 
 no variety. It repeats its moods over and over; but why 
 do we talk of him ? I have other things to tell you of. You 
 know that man who came here with Dick. That Mr. — " 
 
282 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I know, — I know," cried the other, hurriedly; "what of 
 him?" 
 
 "He joined me this morning, on my way through the bog, 
 and drove with me to Cruhan." 
 
 "Indeed!" muttered Kate, thoughtfully. 
 
 "A strange, wayward, impulsive sort of creature, — 
 unlike any one ; interesting from his strong convictions — " 
 
 "Did he convert you to any of his opinions, Nina? " 
 
 "You mean, make a rebel of me. No; for the simple 
 reason that I had none to surrender. I do not know what 
 is wrong here, nor what people would say was right." 
 
 "You are aware, then, who he is?" 
 
 " Of course I am. I was on the terrace that night when 
 your brother told you he was Donogan, — the famous Fenian 
 Donogan. The secret was not intended for me, but I kept 
 it all the same, and I took an interest in the man from the 
 time I heard it." 
 
 "You told him, then, that you knew who he was." 
 
 "To be sure I did, and we are fast friends already; but 
 let me go on with my narrative. Some excitement, some 
 show of disturbance at Cruhan persuaded him that what 
 he called — I don't know why — the Crowbar Brigade was 
 at work, and that the people were about to be turned adrift 
 on the world by the landlord, and hearing a wild shout from 
 the village, he insisted on going back to learn what it might 
 mean. He had not left me long when your late steward. 
 Gill, came up with several policemen, to search for the con- 
 vict Donogan. They had a warrant to apprehend him, and 
 some information as to where he had been housed and 
 sheltered." 
 
 "Here — with us?" 
 
 "Here — with you! Gill knew it all. This, then, was the 
 reason for that excitement we had seen in the village. The 
 people had heard the police were coming, but for what they 
 knew not; of course the only thought was for their own 
 trouble." 
 
 "Has he escaped? Is he safe? " 
 
 "Safe so far that I last saw him on the wide bog, some 
 eight miles away from any human habitation; but where 
 he is to turn to, or who is to shelter him, I cannot say. " 
 
THE RETURN. 283 
 
 *'He told you there was a price upon his head? " 
 
 "Yes, some hundred pounds; I forget how much, but he 
 asked me yesterday if 1 did not feel tempted to give him 
 up and earn the reward." 
 
 Kate leaned her head upon her hand, and seemed lost in 
 thought. 
 
 "They will scarcely dare to come and search for him 
 here," said she; and, after a pause, added, "And yet I 
 suspect that the chief constable, Mr. Curtis, owes, or thinks 
 he owes, us a grudge ; he might not be sorry to pass this 
 slight upon papa." And she pondered for some time over 
 the thought. 
 
 " Do you think he can escape? " asked Nina, eagerly. 
 
 "Who, — Donogan? " 
 
 "Of course, — Donogan." 
 
 "Yes, I suspect he will; these men have popular feeling 
 with them, even amongst many who do not share their 
 opinions. Have you lived long enough amongst us, Nina, 
 to know that we all hate the law? In some shape or other 
 it represents to the Irish mind a tyranny." 
 
 "You are Greeks without their acuteness," said Nina. 
 
 "I'll not say that," said Kate, hastily. "It is true I 
 know nothing of your people, but I think I could aver that 
 for a shrewd calculation of the cost of a venture, for know- 
 ing when caution and when daring will best succeed, the 
 Irish peasant has scarcely a superior anywhere." 
 
 "I have heard much of his caution this very morning," 
 said Nina, superciliously. 
 
 "You might have heard far more of his recklessness, if 
 Donogan cared to tell of it," said Kate, with irritation. "It 
 is not English equadrons and batteries he is called alone to 
 face, he has to meet English gold, that tempts poverty, and 
 English corruption, that begets treachery and betrayal. 
 The one stronghold of the Saxon here is the informer, and 
 mind, I, who tell you this, am no rebel. I would rather 
 live under English law, if English law would not ignore 
 Irish feeling, than I 'd accept that Heaven knows what of 
 a government Fenianism could give us." 
 
 "I care nothing for all this; I don't well know if I can 
 follow it; but I do know that I 'd like this man to escape. 
 
284 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 He gave me this pocket-book, and told me to keep it safely. 
 It contains some secrets that would compromise people that 
 none suspect, and it has, besides, some three or four 
 addresses to which I could write with safety if I saw cause 
 to warn him of any coming danger." 
 
 "And you mean to do this?" 
 
 " Of course I do ; I feel an interest in this man. I like 
 him. I like his adventurous spirit. I like that ambitious 
 daring to do or to be something beyond the herd around 
 him. I like that readiness he shows to stake his life on an 
 issue. His enthusiasm inflames his whole nature. He 
 vulgarizes such fine gentlemen as Mr. Walpole, and such 
 poor pretenders as Joe Atlee, and, indeed, your brother, 
 Kate." 
 
 "I will suffer no detraction of Dick Kearney," said Kate, 
 resolutely. 
 
 *'Give me a cup of tea, then, and I shall be more man- 
 nerly ; for I am quite exhausted, and I am afraid my temper 
 is not proof against starvation." 
 
 " But you will come down to the drawing-room ; they are 
 all so eager to see you," said Kate, caressingly. 
 
 "No; I '11 have my tea and go to bed, and I '11 dream that 
 Mr. Donogan has been made King of Ireland, and made an 
 offer to share the throne with me." 
 
 "Your Majesty's tea shall be served at once," said Kate, 
 as she courtesied deeply and withdrew. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVIII. 
 
 There were many more pretentious houses than "O' Shea's 
 Barn." It would have been easy enough to discover larger 
 rooms and finer furniture, more numerous servants and 
 more of display in all the details of life ; but for an air of 
 quiet comfort, for the certainty of meeting with every mate- 
 rial enjoyment that people of moderate fortune aspire to, it 
 stood unrivalled. 
 
 The rooms were airy and cheerful, with flowers in sum- 
 mer, as they were well heated and well lighted in winter. 
 The most massive-looking but luxurious old arm-chairs, 
 that modern taste would have repudiated for ugliness, 
 abounded everywhere; and the four cumbrous but comfort- 
 able seats that stood around the circular dinner-table — and 
 it was a matter of principle with Miss Betty that the com- 
 pany should never be more numerous — only needed speech 
 to have told of traditions of conviviality for very nigh two 
 centuries back. 
 
 As for a dinner at "the Barn," the whole county-side con- 
 fessed that they never knew how it was that Miss Betty's 
 salmon was "curdier," and her mountain mutton more 
 tender, and her woodcocks racier and of higher flavor than 
 any one else's. Her brown sherry you might have equalled, 
 — she liked the color and the heavy taste, — but I defy you 
 to match that marvellous port which came in with the 
 cheese, and as little, in these days of light Bordeaux, that 
 stout-hearted Sneyd's claret, in its ancient decanter, whose 
 delicately fine neck seemed fashioned to retain the bouquet. 
 
 The most exquisite compliment that a courtier ever 
 uttered could not have given Miss Betty the same pleasure 
 as to hear one of her guests request a second slice off "the 
 haunch." This was, indeed, a flattery that appealed to her 
 
286 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 finest sensibilities, and, as she herself carved, she knew how 
 to reward that appreciative man with fat. 
 
 Never was the virtue of hospitality more self-rewarding 
 than in her case; and the discriminating individual who 
 ate with gusto, and who never associated the wrong condi- 
 ment with his food, found favor in her eyes, and was sure 
 of re-invitation. 
 
 Fortune had rewarded her with one man of correct taste 
 and exquisite palate as a diner-out. This was the parish 
 priest, the Rev. Luke Delany, who had been educated 
 abroad, and whose natural gifts had been improved by 
 French and Italian experiences. He was a small little meek 
 man, with closely cut black hair and eyes of the darkest; 
 scrupulously neat in dress, and, by his ruffles and buckled 
 shoes at dinner, affecting something of the abbe in his 
 appearance. To such as associated the Catholic priest with 
 coarse manners, vulgar expressions, or violent sentiments, 
 Father Luke, with his low voice, his well-chosen words, 
 and his universal moderation, was a standing rebuke; and 
 many an English tourist who met him came away with the 
 impression of the gross calumny that associated this man's 
 order with underbred habits and disloyal ambitions. He 
 spoke little, but he was an admirable listener; and there 
 was a sweet encouragement in the bland nod of his head,* 
 and a racy appreciation in the bright twinkle of his hu- 
 morous eye, that the prosiest talker found irresistible. 
 
 There were times, indeed, — stirring intervals of political 
 excitement, — when Miss Betty would have liked more 
 hardihood and daring in her ghostly counsellor; but Heaven 
 help the man who would have ventured on the open avowal 
 of such opinion or uttered a word in disparagement of 
 Father Luke. 
 
 It was in that snug dinner-room I have glanced at that a 
 party of four sat over their wine. They had dined admi- 
 rably, a bright wood-fire blazed on the hearth, and the scene 
 was the emblem of comfort and quiet conviviality. Oppo- 
 site Miss O'Shea sat Father Delany, and on either side of 
 her her nephew Gorman and Mr. Ralph Miller, in whose 
 honor the present dinner was given. 
 
 The Romish bishop of the diocese had vouchsafed a guarded 
 
•'O'SHEA'S BARN." 287 
 
 and cautious approval of Mr. Miller's views, and secretly 
 instructed Father Delany to learn as much more as he con- 
 veniently could of the learned gentleman's intentions before 
 committing himself to a pledge of hearty support. 
 
 "I will give him a good dinner," said Miss O'Shea, "and 
 some of the '45 claret; and if you cannot get his sentiments 
 out of him after that, I wash my hands of him." 
 
 Father Delany accepted his share of the task, and assur- 
 edly Miss Betty did not fail on her part. 
 
 The conversation had turned principally on the coming 
 election, and Mr. Miller gave a flourishing account of his 
 success as a canvasser, and even went the length of doubting 
 if any opposition would be offered to him. 
 
 "Ain't you and young Kearney going on the same ticket? " 
 asked Gorman, who was too new to Ireland to understand 
 the nice distinctions of party. 
 
 "Pardon me," said Miller, "we differ essentially. We 
 want a government in Ireland; the nationalists want none. 
 We desire order by means of timely concessions and judi- 
 cious boons to the people. They want disorder, the dis- 
 play of gross injustice, — content to wait for a scramble, 
 and see what can come of it." 
 
 "Mr. Miller's friends, besides," interposed Father Luke, 
 "would defend the Church and protect the Holy Father; " 
 and this was said with a half interrogation. 
 
 Miller coughed twice, and said, "Unquestionably. We 
 have shown our hand already ; look what we have done witli 
 the Established Church." 
 
 "You need not be proud of it," cried Miss Betty. "If 
 you wanted to get rid of the crows, why did n't you pull 
 down the rookery ? " 
 
 "At least, they don't caw so loud as they used," said 
 the priest, smiling; and Miller exchanged delighted glances 
 with him for his opinion. 
 
 "I want to be rid of them, root and branch," said Miss 
 Betty. 
 
 "If you will vouchsafe us, ma'am, a little patience. 
 Rome was not built in a day. The next victory of our 
 Church must be won by the downfall of the English estab- 
 lishment. Ain't I right. Father Luke? " 
 
288 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I am not quite clear about that," said the priest, cau- 
 tiously. "Equality is not the safe road to supremacy^" 
 
 "What was that row over towards Croghan Castle this 
 morning?" asked Gorman, who was getting wearied with 
 a discussion he could not follow. " I saw the constabulary 
 going in force there this afternoon." 
 
 "They were in pursuit of the celebrated Dan Donogan," 
 said Father Luke. "They say he was seen at Moate." 
 
 "They say more than that," said Miss Betty. " They say 
 that he is stopping at Kilgobbin Castle ! " 
 
 "I suppose to conduct young Kearney's election," said 
 Miller, laughing. 
 
 "And why should they hunt him down? " asked Gorman. 
 "What has he done? " 
 
 "He's a Fenian, — a Head-Centre; a man who wants to 
 revolutionize Ireland," replied Miller. 
 
 "And destroy the Church," chimed in the priest. 
 
 "Humph! " muttered Gorman, who seemed to imply. Is 
 this all you can lay to his charge? "Has he escaped?" 
 asked he, suddenly. 
 
 " Up to this he has," said Miller. " I was talking to the 
 constabulary chief this afternoon, and he told me that the 
 fellow is sure to be apprehended. He has taken to 4;he open 
 bog, and there are eighteen in full cry after him. There is 
 a search-warrant too arrived, and they mean to look him 
 up at Kilgobbin Castle." 
 
 "To search Kilgobbin Castle, do you mean?" asked 
 Gorman. 
 
 ' ' Just so. It will be, as I perceive you think it, a great 
 offence to Mr. Kearney, and it is not impossible that his 
 temper may provoke him to resist it." 
 
 " The mere rumor may materially assist his son's election," 
 said the priest, slyly. 
 
 " Only with' the party who have no votes. Father Luke," 
 rejoined Miller. " That precarious popularity of the mob is 
 about the most dangerous enemy a man can have in Ireland." 
 
 " You are right, sir," said the priest, blandly. " The real 
 favor of this people is only bestowed on him who has gained 
 the confidence of the clergy." 
 
 " If that be true," cried Gorman, " upon my oath I think 
 
"O'SHEA'S BARN." ' 289 
 
 you are worse off here than in Austria. There, at least, 
 we are beginning to think without the permission of the 
 Church." - 
 
 "Let us have none of your atheism here, young man," 
 broke in his aunt, angrily. "Such sentiments have never 
 been heard in this room before." 
 
 "If I apprehend Lieutenant Gorman aright," interposed 
 Father Luke, " he only refers to the late movement of 
 the Austrian Empire with reference to the Concordat, on 
 which, amongst religious men, there are two opinions." 
 
 "No, no, you mistake me altogether," rejoined Gormaln. 
 " What I mean was that a man can read and talk and 
 think in Austria without the leave of the priest ; that he can 
 marry, and, if he like, he can die without his assistance." 
 
 " Gorman, you are a beast," said the old lady; " and if 
 you lived here, you would be a Fenian." 
 
 *' You 're wrong too, aunt," replied he. ''I 'd crush those 
 fellows to-morrow if I was in power here." 
 
 " Mayhap the game is not so easy as you deem it," inter- 
 posed Miller. 
 
 " Certainly it is not so easy when played as you do it 
 here. You deal with your law-breakers only by the rule of 
 legality; that is to say, you respect all the regulations of 
 the game towards the men who play false. You have your 
 cumbrous details, and your lawyers and judges and juries, 
 and you cannot even proclaim a county in a state of siege 
 without a bill in your blessed Parliament, and a basketful 
 of balderdash about the liberty of the subject. Is it any 
 wonder rebellion is a regular trade with you, and that men 
 who don't like work or business habits take to it as a 
 livelihood?" 
 
 " But have you never heard Curran's saying, young gentle- 
 man, — ' You cannot bring an indictment against a nation ' ? " 
 said Miller. 
 
 " I'd trouble myself little with indictments," replied Gor- 
 man. " I 'd break down the confederac}^ by spies ; I 'd seize 
 the fellows I knew to be guilty, and hang them." 
 
 ' ' Without evidence, without trial ? " 
 
 " Very little of a trial, when I had once satisfied myself of 
 the guilt." 
 
 19 
 
290 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ' ' Are you so certain that no innocent men might be 
 brought to the scaffold?" asked the priest, mildly. 
 
 " No, I am not. I take it, as the world goes, veryife'w pf 
 us go through life without some injustice or another. T'd 
 do my best not to hang the fellows who did n't deserve it, but 
 I own I 'd be much more concerned about the millions who 
 wanted to live peaceably than the few hundred rapscallions 
 that were bent on troubling tliem." 
 
 "I must say, sir," said the priest, "I am much more 
 gratified to know that you are a Lieutenant of Lancers in 
 Austria than a British Minister in Downing Street." 
 
 "I have little doubt myself," said the other, laughing, 
 ''that I am more in my place; but of this I am sure, that 
 if we were as mealy-mouthed with our Croats and Slovacks 
 as you are with your Fenians, Austria would soon go to 
 pieces." 
 
 " There is, however, a higher price on that man Donogan's 
 head than Austria ever offered for a traitor," said Miller » 
 
 " I know how you esteem money here," said Gorman, 
 laughing. " When all else fails you, you fall back upon 
 it." 
 
 ''Why did I know nothing of these sentiments, young 
 man, before I asked you under my roof ? " said Miss Betty, 
 in anger. 
 
 " You need never to have known them now, aunt, if these 
 gentlemen had not provoked them, nor indeed are they solely 
 mine. I am only telling you what you would hear from any 
 intelligent foreigner, even though he chanced to be a liberal 
 in his own country." 
 
 "Ah, yes," sighed the priest; "what the young gentle- 
 man says is too true. The Continent is alarmingly in- 
 fected with such opinions as these." 
 
 ' ' Have you talked on politics with young Kearney ? " 
 asked Miller. 
 
 " He has had no opportunity," interposed Miss O'Shea. 
 "My nephew will be three weeks here on Thursday next, 
 and neither Mathew nor his son have called on him." 
 
 "Scarcely neighborlike that, I must say," cried Miller. 
 
 "I suspect the fault lies on my side," said Gorman, 
 boldly. " When I was little more than a boy, I was never 
 
"O'SHEA'S BARN." 291 
 
 out of that house. The old man treated me like a son. 
 All the more, perhaps, as his own son was seldom at home, 
 and the little girl Kitty certainly regarded me as a brother ; 
 and though we had our fights and squabbles, we cried very 
 bitterly at parting, and each of us vow^ed we should never 
 like any one so much again. And now, after all, here am 
 I three weeks, within two hours' ride of them, and my aunt 
 insists that my dignity requires I should be first called on. 
 Confound such dignity, say I, if it lose me the best and 
 the pleasantest friends 1 ever had in my life." 
 
 "I scarcely thought of your dignity, Gorman O'Shea," 
 said the old lady, bridling, " though I did bestow some 
 consideration on my own." 
 
 "I'm very sorry for it, aunt; and I tell you fairly — 
 and there 's no unpoliteness in the confession — that when 
 I asked for my leave, Kilgobbin Castle had its place in 
 my thoughts as well as O'Shea's Barn." 
 
 '' Why not say it out, young gentleman, and tell me that 
 the real charm of coming here was to be within twelve 
 mi)es of the Kearneys?" 
 
 *'The merits of this house are very independent of con- 
 tiguity," said the priest; and as he eyed the claret in his 
 glass, it was plain that the sentiment was an honest one. 
 
 "Fifty-six wine, I should say," said Miller, as he laid 
 down his glass. 
 
 " Forty-five, if Mr. Barton be a man of his word," said 
 the old lady, reprovingly. 
 
 "Ah," sighed the priest, plaintively, "how rarely one 
 meets these old full-bodied clarets nowadays! The free 
 admission of French wines has corrupted taste and impaired 
 palate. Our cheap Gladstones have come upon us like 
 universal suffrage." 
 
 "The masses, however, benefit," remarked Miller. 
 
 " Only in the first moment of acquisition and in the 
 novelty of the gain," continued Father Luke; "and then 
 they suffer irreparably in the loss of that old guidance, 
 which once directed appreciation when there was something 
 to appreciate." 
 
 " We want the priest again, in fact," broke in Gorman. 
 
 "You must admit they understand wine to perfection, 
 
292 LORD KILGOBBIK 
 
 though I would humbly hope, young gentleman," said the 
 Father, modestly, ^'to engage your good opinion of them 
 on higher grounds." 
 
 "Give yourself no trouble in the matter, Father Luke,'* 
 broke in Miss Betty. "Gorman's Austrian lessons have 
 placed him beyond your teaching." 
 
 " My dear aunt, you are giving the Imperial Government 
 a credit it never deserved. They taught me as a cadet 
 to groom my horse and pipeclay my uniform, to be respect- 
 ful to my corporal, and to keep my thumb on the seam of 
 my trousers when the captain's eye was on me ; but as to 
 what passed inside my mind, if I had a mind at all, or 
 what I thought of Pope, Kaiser, or Cardinal, they no more 
 cared to know it than the name of my sweetheart." 
 
 " What a blessing to that benighted country would be 
 one liberal statesman ! " exclaimed Miller, — " one man of 
 the mind and capacity of our present premier ! " 
 
 "Heaven forbid!" cried Gorman. "We have confu- 
 sion enough, without the reflection of being governed by 
 what you call here 'healing measures.'" * 
 
 "I should like to discuss that point with you," said 
 Miller. 
 
 "Not now, I beg," interposed Miss O'Shea. "Gorman, 
 will you decant another bottle?" 
 
 "I believe I ought to protest against more wine," said 
 the priest, in his most insinuating voice; "but there are 
 occasions where the yielding to temptation conveys a moral 
 lesson." 
 
 " I suspect that I cultivate my nature a good deal in that 
 fashion," said Gorman, as he opened a fresh bottle. 
 
 "This is perfectly delicious," said Miller, as he sipped 
 his glass; "and if I could venture to presume so far, I 
 would ask leave to propose a toast." 
 
 " You have my permission, sir," said Miss Betty, with 
 stateliness. 
 
 " I drink, then," said he, reverently, — "I drink to the 
 long life, the good health, and the unbroken courage of 
 the Holy Father." 
 
 There was something peculiarly sly in the twinkle of the 
 priest's black eye as he filled his bumper, and a twitch- 
 
"O'SHEA'S BARN." 293 
 
 ing motion of the corner of his mouth continued even as 
 he said, ''To the Pope." 
 
 '' The Pope," said Gorman, as he eyed his wine, — 
 
 ♦' Der Papst lebt herrlich in der Welt/' 
 
 " What are you muttering there? " asked his aunt, fiercely. 
 
 ' ' The line of an old song, aunt, that tells us how his 
 Holiness has a jolly time of it." 
 
 " I fear me it must have been written in other days," 
 said Father Luke. 
 
 "There is no intention to desert or abandon him, I 
 assure you," said Miller, addressing him in a low but eager 
 tone. "I could never — no Irishman could — ally himself 
 to an administration which should sacrifice the Holy See. 
 With the bigotry that prevails in England, the question 
 requires most delicate handling ; and even a pledge cannot 
 be given, except in language so vague and unprecise as to 
 admit of many readings." 
 
 " Why not bring in a Bill to give him a subsidy, a some- 
 thing per annum, or a round sum down?" cried Gorman. 
 
 " Mr. Miller has just shown us that Exeter Hall might 
 become dangerous. English intolerance is not a thing to 
 be rashly aroused." 
 
 " If I had to deal with him, I'd do as Bright proposed 
 with your landlords here. I 'd buy him out, give him a 
 handsome sum for his interest, and let him go." 
 
 "And how would you deal with the Church, sir?" asked 
 the priest. 
 
 "I have not thought of that; but I suppose one might 
 put it into commission, as they say, or manage it by a 
 Board, with a First Lord, like the Admiralty." 
 
 "I will give you some tea, gentlemen, when you appear 
 in the drawing-room," said Miss Betty, rising with dignity, 
 as though her condescension in sitting so long with the 
 party had been ill rewarded by her nephew's sentiments. 
 
 The priest, however, offered his arm, and the others 
 followed as he left the room. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIX. 
 
 AN EARLY GALLOP. 
 
 Mathew Kearney had risen early, an unusual thing with 
 him of late ; but he had some intention of showing his guest 
 Mr. Walpole over the farm after breakfast, and was anxious 
 to give some preliminary orders to have everything " ship- 
 shape " for the inspection. 
 
 To make a very disorderly and much-neglected Irish farm 
 assume an air of discipline, regularity, and neatness at a 
 moment's notice, was pretty much such ai\ exploit as it 
 would have been to muster an Indian tribe, and pass them 
 before some Prussian martinet as a regiment of guards. 
 
 To make the ill-fenced and misshapen fields seem trim 
 paddocks, wavering and serpentining furrows appear straight 
 and regular lines of tillage, weed-grown fields look marvels 
 of cleanliness and care, while the lounging and ragged popu- 
 lation were to be passed off as a thriving and industrious 
 peasantry, well paid and contented, were difficulties that Mr. 
 Kearney did not propose to confront. Indeed, to do him 
 justice, he thought there was a good deal of pedantic and 
 " model- farming humbug " about all that English passion 
 for neatness he had read of in public journals, and as our 
 fathers — better gentlemen, as he called them, and more 
 hospitable fellows than any of us — had got on without 
 steam-mowing and threshing and bone-crushing, he thought 
 we might farm our properties without being either black- 
 smiths or stokers. 
 
 "God help us!" he would say. "I suppose we'll be 
 chewing our food by steam one of these days, and filling our 
 stomachs by hydraulic pressure. But for my own part, I 
 like something to work for me that I can swear at when it 
 goes wrong. There 's little use in cursing a cylinder." 
 
AN EARLY GALLOP. 295 
 
 To have heard him amongst his laborers that morning, 
 it was plain to see that they were not in the category of 
 machinery. On one pretext or another, however, they had 
 slunk away one by one, so that at last he found himself 
 storming alone in a stubble-field, with no other companion 
 than one of Kate's terriers. The sharp barking of this dog 
 aroused him in the midst of his imprecations, and looking 
 over the dry-stone wall that enclosed the field, he saw a 
 horseman coming along at a sharp canter, and taking the 
 fences as they came like a man in a hunting-field. He rode 
 well, and was mounted upon a strong wiry hackney, — a cross- 
 bred horse, and of little moneyed value, but one of those 
 active cats of horseflesh that a knowing hand can appreciate. 
 Now, little as Kearney liked the liberty of a man riding 
 over his ditches and his turnips, when out of hunting season, 
 his old love of good horsemanship made him watch the rider 
 with interest and even pleasure. "May I never!" mut- 
 tered he to himself, "if he 's not coming at this wall." And 
 as the enclosure in question was built of large jagged stones, 
 without mortar, and fully four feet in height, the upper 
 course being formed of a sort of coping in which the stones 
 stood edgewise, the attempt did look somewhat rash. Not 
 taking the wall where it was slightly breached, and where 
 some loose stones had fallen, the rider rode boldly at one of 
 the highest portions, but where the ground was good on 
 either side. 
 
 "He knows what he's at!" muttered Kearney, as the 
 horse came bounding over and alighted in perfect safety in 
 the field. 
 
 " Well done, whoever you are ! " cried Kearney, delighted, 
 as the rider removed his hat and turned round to salute 
 him. 
 
 " And don't you know me, sir? " asked he. 
 
 "Faith, I do not," replied Kearney; "but somehow I 
 think I know the chestnut. To be sure I do. There 's the 
 old mark on her knee, how ever she found the man who 
 could throw her down. Isn't she Miss O'Shea's Kattoo?" 
 
 "That she is, sir, and I'm her nephew." 
 
 " Are you?" said Kearney, dryly. 
 
 The j^oung fellow was so terribly pulled up by the unex' 
 
296 LORD KILGOBBm. 
 
 pected repulse, more marked even by the look than the 
 words of the other, that he sat unable to utter a syllable. 
 "I had hoped, sir," said he at last, "that I had not out- 
 grown your recollection, as I can promise none of your 
 former kindness to me has outgrown mine." 
 
 " But it took you three weeks to recall it, all the same," 
 said Kearney. 
 
 "It is true, sir, I am very nearly so long here ; but my 
 aunt, whose guest I am, told me I must be called on first ; 
 that — I 'm sure I can't say for whose benefit it was sup- 
 posed to be — I should not make the first visit; in fact, 
 there was some rule about the matter, and that I must not 
 contravene it. And although I yielded with a very bad 
 grace, I was in a measure under orders, and dared not 
 resist." 
 
 " She told you, of course, that we were not on our old 
 terms ; that there was a coldness between the families, and 
 we had seen nothing of each other lately? " 
 
 " Not a word of it, sir." * 
 
 * ' Nor of any reason why you should not come here as of 
 old?" 
 
 "None, on my honor; beyond this piece of stupid eti- 
 quette, I never heard of anything like a reason." 
 
 " I am all the better pleased with my old neighbor," said 
 Kearney, in his more genial tone. "Not, indeed, that I 
 ought ever to have distrusted her, but for all that — Well, 
 never mind," muttered he, as though debating the question 
 with himself, and unable to decide it, " you are here now — 
 eh! You are here now." 
 
 " You almost make me suspect, sir, that I ought not to be 
 here now." 
 
 " At all events, if you were waiting for me you would n't 
 be here. Is not that true, young gentleman?" 
 
 " Quite true, sir, but not impossible to explain." And he 
 now flung himself to the ground, and with the rein over his 
 arm, came up to Kearney's side. " I suppose, but for an 
 accident, I should have gone on waiting for that visit you 
 had no intention to make me, and canvassing with myself 
 how long you were taking to make up your mind to call on 
 me, when I heard only last night that some noted rebel — I '11 
 
AN p:arly gallop. 297 
 
 remember his name in a minute or two — was seen in the 
 neighborhood, and that the police were on his track with a 
 warrant, and even intended to search for him here." 
 
 " In my house, — in Kilgobbin Castle? " 
 
 " Yes, here in your house, where, from a sure information, 
 he had been harbored for some days. This fellow — a 
 Head-Centre, or leader, with a large sum on his head — has, 
 they say, got away; but the hope of finding some papers, 
 some clew to him here, will certainly lead them to search the 
 castle, and I thought I 'd come over and apprise you of it at 
 all events, lest the surprise should prove too much for your 
 temper." 
 
 "Do they forget I'm in the commission of the peace?'* 
 said Kearney, in a voice trembling with passion. 
 
 " You know far better than me how far party spirit tempera 
 life in this country, and are better able to say whether some 
 private intention to insult is couched under this attempt." 
 
 "That's true," cried the old man, ever ready to regard 
 himself as the object of some secret malevolence. " You 
 cannot remember this rebel's name, can you?" 
 
 " It was Daniel something, — that 's all I know." 
 
 A long, fine whistle was Kearney's rejoinder, and after a 
 second or two he said: "I can trust you, Gorman; and I 
 may tell you they may be not so great fools as I took them 
 for. Not that I was harboring the fellow, mind you; but 
 there came a college friend of Dick's here a few days back, 
 — a clever fellow he was, and knew Ireland well, — and we 
 called him Mr. Daniel, and it was but yesterday he left us 
 and did not return. I have a notion now he was the Head- 
 Centre they 're looking for." 
 
 " Do you know if he has left any baggage or papers behind 
 him?" 
 
 " I know nothing about this whatever, nor do I know 
 how far Dick was in his secret." 
 
 " You will be cool and collected, I am sure, sir, when they 
 come here with the search-warrant. You '11 not give them 
 even the passing triumph of seeing that you are annoyed or 
 offended?" 
 
 " That I will, my lad. I'm prepared now, and I'll take 
 them as easy as if it was a morning call. Come in and have 
 
298 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 your breakfast with us, and say nothing about what we've 
 been talking over." 
 
 "Many thanks, sir, but I think — indeed, I feel sure — I 
 ought to go back at once. I have come here without my 
 aunt's knowledge, and now that I have seen you and put you 
 on your guard, I ought to get back as fast as I can." 
 
 " So you shall when you feed your beast and take some- 
 thing yourself. Poor old Kattoo is n't used to this sort of 
 cross-country work, and she 's panting there badly enough. 
 That mare is twenty-one years of age." 
 
 " She 's fresh on her legs, — not a curb, nor a spavin, nor 
 even a wind-gall about her," said the young man. 
 
 "And the reward for it all is to be ridden like a steeple- 
 chaser ! " sighed old Kearney. " Is n't that the world over? 
 Break down early, and you are a good-for-nothing. Carry 
 on your spirit and your pluck and your endurance to a green 
 old age, and maybe they won't take it out of you ! — always 
 contrasting you, however, with yourself long ago, and tell- 
 ing the bystanders what a rare beast you were in your good 
 days. Do you think they had dared to pass this insult upon 
 me when I was five-and-twenty or thirty? Do you think 
 there 's a man in the county would have come on this errand 
 to search Kilgobbin when I was a young man, Mr. O'Shea? " 
 
 " I think you can afford to treat it with the contempt you 
 have determined to show it." 
 
 "That's all very fine now," said Kearney; "but there 
 was a time I 'd rather have chucked the chief constable out 
 of the window, and sent the sergeant after him." 
 
 " I don't know whether that would have been better," 
 said Gorman, with a faint smile. 
 
 " Neither do I ; but I know that I myself would have felt 
 better and easier in my mind after it. I 'd have eaten my 
 breakfast with a good appetite, and gone about my day's 
 work, whatever it was, with a free heart and fearless in my 
 conscience! Ay, ay," muttered he to himself, "poor old 
 Ireland is n't what it used to be I " 
 
 " I 'm very sorry, sir, but though I 'd like immensely to go 
 back with you, don't you think I ought to return home ? " 
 
 " I don't think anything of the sort. Your aunt and I 
 had a tiff the last time we met, and that was some months 
 
AN EARLY GALLOP. 299 
 
 ago. We 're both of us old and cross-grained enough to 
 keep up the grudge for the rest of our lives. Let us, then, 
 make the most of the accident that has led you here, and 
 when you go home you shall be the bearer of the most sub- 
 missive message I can invent to my old friend, and there 
 shall be no terms too humble for me to ask her pardon." 
 
 " That 's enough, sir. I '11 breakfast here." 
 
 " Of course you'll say nothing of what brought you over 
 here. But I ought to warn you not to drop anything care- 
 lessly about politics in the county generally, for we have a 
 young relative and a private secretary of the Lord Lieutenant's 
 visiting us, and it 's as well to be cautious before him." 
 
 The old man mentioned this circumstance in the cursory 
 tone of an ordinary remark, but he could not conceal the 
 pride he felt in the rank and condition of his guest. As for 
 Gorman, perhaps it was his foreign breeding, perhaps his 
 ignorance of all home matters generally, but he simply 
 assented to the force of the caution, and paid no other atten- 
 tion to the incident. 
 
 " His name is Walpole, and he is related to half the peer- 
 age," said the old man, with some irritation of manner. 
 
 A mere nod acknowledged the information, and he went 
 on : — 
 
 '' This was the young fellow who was with Kitty on the 
 night they attacked the castle, and he got both bones of his 
 forearm smashed with a shot.'* 
 
 " An ugly wound," was the only rejoinder. 
 
 "So it was, and for a while they thought he 'd lose the 
 arm. Kitty says he behaved beautifully, cool and steady all 
 through." 
 
 Another nod, but this time Gorman's lips were firmly 
 compressed. 
 
 " There 's no denying it," said the old man, with a touch 
 of sadness in his voice, — '' there 's no denying it, the Eng- 
 lish have courage ; though," added he afterwards, "it's in a 
 cold, sluggish way of their own, which we don't like here. 
 There he is now, that young fellow that has just parted from 
 the two girls. The tall one is my niece, — I must present 
 you to her." 
 
CHAPTER XL. 
 
 OLD MEMORIES. 
 
 Though both Kate Kearney and young O'Shea had greatly 
 outgrown each other's recollection, there were still traits of 
 feature remaining, and certain tones of voice, by which they 
 were carried back to old times and old associations. 
 
 Amongst the strange situations in life, there are few 
 stranger, or, in certain respects, more painful, than the 
 meeting after long absence of those who, when they had 
 parted years before, were on terms of closest intimacy, and 
 who now see each other changed by time, with altered habits 
 and manners, and impressed in a variety of ways with in- 
 fluences and associations which impart their own stamp on 
 character. 
 
 It is very difficult at such moments to remember how far 
 we ourselves have changed in the interval, and how much of 
 what we regard as altered in another may not simply be the 
 new standpoint from which we are looking, and thus our 
 friend may be graver or sadder or more thoughtful, or, as 
 it may happen, seem less reflective and less considerative 
 than we have thought him, all because the world has been 
 meantime dealing with ourselves in such wise that qualities 
 we once cared for have lost much of their value, and others 
 that we had deemed of slight account have grown into im- 
 portance with us. 
 
 Most of us know the painful disappointment of revisiting 
 scenes which had impressed us strongly in early life : how 
 the mountain we regarded with a wondering admiration had 
 become a mere hill, and the romantic tarn a pool of sluggish 
 water ; and some of this same awakening pursues us in our 
 renewal of old intimacies, and we find ourselves continually 
 warring- with our recollections. 
 
OLD MEMOKIES. 301 
 
 Besides this, there is another source of uneasiness that 
 presses unceasingly. It is in imputing every change we dis- 
 cover, or think we discover in our friend, to some unknown 
 influences that have asserted their power over him in our 
 absence, and thus when we find that our arguments have lost 
 their old force, and our persuasions can be stoutly resisted, 
 we begin to think that some other must have usurped our 
 place, and that there is treason in the heart we had deemed 
 to be loyally our own. 
 
 How far Kate and Gorman suffered under these irritations, 
 I do not stop to inquire ; but certain it is, that all their re- 
 newed intercourse was little other than snappish reminders 
 of unfavorable change in each, and assurances more frank 
 than flattering that they had not improved in the interval. 
 
 " How well I know every tree and alley of this old gar- 
 den ! " said he, as they strolled along one of the walks in 
 advance of the others. " Nothing ie changed here but the 
 people." 
 
 " And do you think we are? " asked she, quietly. 
 
 " I should think I do ! Not so much for your father, per- 
 haps. I suppose men of his time of life change little, if at 
 all ; but you are as ceremonious as if I had been introduced 
 to you this morning." 
 
 ' ' You addressed me so deferentially as Miss Kearney, and 
 with such an assuring little intimation that you were not 
 either very certain of that^ that I should have been very 
 courageous indeed to remind you that I once was Kate." 
 
 " No, not Kate, — Kitty," rejoined he, quickly. 
 
 ''Oh, yes, perhaps, when you were young, but we grew 
 out of that." 
 
 "Did we?- And when?" 
 
 " When we gave up climbing cherry-trees, and ceased to 
 pull each other's hair when we were angry." 
 
 " Oh dear! " said he, drearily, as his head sunk heavily. 
 
 " You seem to sigh over those blissful times, Mr. O'Shea,'' 
 said she, "as if they were terribly to be regretted." 
 
 " So they are. So I feel them." 
 
 " I never knew before that quarrelling left such pleasant 
 associations." 
 
 " My memory is good enough to remember times when we 
 
302 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 were not quarrelling, — when I used to think you were nearer 
 an angel than a human creature, — ay, when I have had the 
 boldness to tell you so." 
 
 "You don't mean that?'' 
 
 "I do mean it, and I should like to know why I should 
 not mean it?" 
 
 " For a great many reasons, — one amongst the number, 
 that it would have been highly indiscreet to turn a poor 
 child's head with a stupid flattery." 
 
 "But were you a child? If I 'm right, you were not very 
 far from fifteen at the time I speak of." 
 
 "How shocking that you should remember a young lady's 
 age!" 
 
 "That is not the point at all," said he, as though she had 
 been endeavoring to introduce another issue. 
 
 " And what is the point, pray ? " asked she, haughtily. 
 
 "Well, it is this, — Jiow many have uttered what you call 
 stupid flatteries since that time, and how have they been 
 taken." 
 
 "Is this a question?" asked she. "I mean a question 
 seeking to be answered ? " 
 
 "I hope so." 
 
 "Assuredly, then, Mr. O'Shea, however time has been 
 dealing with me, it has contrived to take marvellous liber- 
 ties with you since we met. Do you know, sir, that this is 
 a speech you would not have uttered long ago for worlds ? " 
 
 "If I have forgotten myself as well as you," said he, with 
 deep humility, "I very humbly crave pardon. Not but 
 there were days," added he, "when my mistake, if I made 
 one, would have been forgiven without my asking." 
 
 "There 's a slight touch of presumption, sir, in telling me 
 what a wonderful person I used to think you long ago." 
 
 "So you did," cried he, eagerly. "In return for the 
 homage I laid at your feet, as honest an adoration as ever 
 a heart beat with, you condescended to let me build my 
 ambitions before you, and I must own you made the edifice 
 very dear to me." 
 
 "To be sure, I do remember it all, and I used to play or 
 sing, ' Mein Schatz ist ein Reiter,' and take your word that 
 you were going to be a Lancer — 
 
OLD MEMORIES. 303 
 
 ' In file arrayed, 
 With helm and blade, 
 And plume in the gay wind dancing.' 
 
 I 'm certain my cousin would be charmed to see you in all 
 your bravery." 
 
 "Your cousin will not speak to me for being an 
 Austrian. " 
 
 "Has she told you so? " 
 
 "Yes; she said it at breakfast." 
 
 "That denunciation does not sound very dangerously; is 
 it not worth your while to struggle against a miscon- 
 ception? " 
 
 "I have had such luck in my present attempt as should 
 scarcely raise my courage." 
 
 "You are too ingenious by far for me, Mr. O'Shea," said 
 she, carelessly. "I neither remember so well as you, nor 
 have I that nice subtlety in detecting all the lapses each of 
 us has made since long ago. Try, however, if you cannot 
 get on better with Mademoiselle Kostalergi, where there 
 are no antecedents to disturb you." 
 
 "I will; that is, if she let me." 
 
 "I trust she may, and not the less willingly, perhaps, as 
 she evidently will not speak to Mr. Walpole." 
 
 "Ah, indeed, and is he here? " He stopped and hesitated ; 
 and the full, bold look she gave him did not lessen his 
 embarrassment. 
 
 "Well, sir," asked she, "go on. Is this another 
 reminiscence ? " 
 
 "No, Miss Kearney; I was only thinking of asking you 
 who this Mr. Walpole was." 
 
 "Mr. Cecil Walpole is a nephew or a something to the 
 Lord Lieutenant, whose private secretary he is. He is very 
 clever, very amusing, — sings, draws, rides, and laughs at 
 the Irish to perfection. I hope you mean to like him." 
 
 "Do you?" 
 
 "Of course, or I should not have bespoken your sym- 
 pathy. My cousin used to like him, but somehow he has 
 fallen out of favor with her." 
 
 "Was he absent some time?" asked he, with a half- 
 
304 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Yes, I believe there was something of that in it. He 
 was not here for a considerable time ; and when we saw him 
 again, we almost owned we were disappointed. Papa is 
 calling me from the window; pray excuse me for a 
 moment." She left him as she spoke, and ran rapidly 
 back to the house, whence she returned almost immedi- 
 ately. "It was to ask you to stop and dine here, Mr. 
 O'Shea," said she. "There will be ample time to send back 
 to Miss O'Shea, and if you care to have your dinner-dress, 
 they can send it." 
 
 "This is Mr. Kearney's invitation?" asked he. 
 
 "Of course; papa is the master at Kilgobbin." 
 
 "But will Miss Kearney condescend to say that it is hers 
 also?" 
 
 "Certainly; though I'm not aware what solemnity the 
 engagement gains by my co-operation." 
 
 "I accept at once; and if you allow me, I '11 go back and 
 send a line to my aunt to say so." 
 
 "Don't you remember Mr. O'Shea, Dick?" asked she, 
 as her brother lounged up, making his first appearance that 
 day. 
 
 "I'd never have known you," said he, surveying him 
 from head to foot, without, however, any mark of cor- 
 diality in the recognition. 
 
 "All find me a good deal changed!" said the young 
 fellow, drawing himself to his full height, and with an air 
 that seemed to say, "and none the worse for it." 
 
 "I used to fancy I was more than your match," rejoined 
 Dick, smiling; "I suspect it 's a mistake I am little likely 
 to incur again." 
 
 "Don't, Dick, for he has got a very ugly way of ridding 
 people of their illusions," said Kate, as she turned once 
 more and walked rapidly towards the house. 
 
CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 TWO FAMILIAR EPISTLES. 
 
 There were a number of bolder achievements Gorman 
 O'Shea would have dared rather than write a note; nor 
 were the cares of the composition the only difficulties of the 
 undertaking. He knew of but one style of correspondence, 
 
 — the report to his commanding officer, — and in this he 
 was aided by a formula to be filled up. It was not, then, 
 till after several efforts, he succeeded in the following 
 familiar epistle: — 
 
 " KiLGOBBiN Castle. 
 " Dear Aunt, — Don't blow up or make a rumpus, but if I had 
 not taken the mare and come over here this morning, the rascally 
 police with their search-warrant might have been down upon Mr. 
 Kearney without a warning. They were all stiff and cold enough at 
 first ; they are nothing to brag of in the way of cordiality even yet, 
 
 — Dick especially, — but they have asked me to stay and dine, and 
 I take it, it is the right thing to do. Send me over some things to 
 dress with — and believe me 
 
 " Your affectionate nephew, 
 
 " G. O'Shea. 
 
 " I send the mare back, and shall walk home to-morrow morning. 
 " There's a great Castle swell here, a Mr. Walpole, but" I have 
 not made his acquaintance yet, and can tell nothing about him." 
 
 Towards a late hour of the afternoon a messenger arrived 
 with an ass-cart and several trunks from O' Shea's Barn, 
 and with the following note : — 
 
 " Dear Nephew Gorman, — O'Shea's Barn is not an inn, nor 
 are the horses there at public livery. So much for your information. 
 As you seem fond of 'warnings,' let me give you one, which is, 
 To mind your own affairs in preference to the interests of other 
 people. The family at Kilgobbin are perfectly welcome — so far 
 
 20 
 
306 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 as I am concerned — to the fascinations of your society at dinner 
 to-day, at breakfast to-morrow, and so on, with such regularity and 
 order as the meals succeed. To which end, I have now sent you all 
 the luggage belonging to you here. 
 
 " I am very respectfully, your aunt, 
 
 "Elizabeth O'Shea." 
 
 The quaint, old-fashioned, rugged writing was marked 
 throughout by a certain distinctness and accuracy that 
 betokened care and attention ; there was no evidence what- 
 ever of haste or passion, and this expression of a serious 
 determination, duly weighed and resolved on, made itself 
 very painfully felt by the young man as he read. 
 
 "I am turned out, — in plain words, turned out!" said 
 he aloud, as he sat with the letter spread out before him. 
 "It must have been no common quarrel — not a mere cold- 
 ness between the families — when she resents my coming 
 here in this fashion." That innumerable differences could 
 separate neighbors in Ireland, even persons with the same 
 interests and the same religion, he well knew, and he sol- 
 aced himself to think how he could get at the source of 
 this disagreement, and what chance there might be of a 
 reconciliation. 
 
 Of one thing he felt certain. Whether his aunt were 
 right or wrong, whether tyrant or victim, he knew in his 
 heart all the submission must come from the others. He 
 had only to remember a few of the occasions in life in which 
 he had to entreat his aunt's forgiveness for the injustice she 
 had herself inflicted, to anticipate what humble pie Mathew 
 Kearney must partake of in order to conciliate Miss Betty's 
 favor. 
 
 "Meanwhile," he thought, and not only thought, but said 
 too, — "meanwhile I am on the world." 
 
 Up to this, she had allowed him a small yearly income. 
 Father Luke, whose judgment on all things relating to Con- 
 tinental life was unimpeachable, had told her that any- 
 thing like the reputation of being well off or connected with 
 wealthy people would lead a young man into ruin in the 
 Austrian service; that with a sum of three thousand francs 
 per annum — about one hundred and twenty pounds — he 
 would be in possession of something like the double of his 
 
TWO FAMILIAR EPISTLES. 307 
 
 pay, or rather more, and that with this he would be enabled 
 to have all the necessaries and many of the comforts of 
 his station, and still not be a mark for that high play and 
 reckless style of living that certain young Hungarians of 
 family and large fortune affected ; and so far the priest was 
 correct, for the young Gorman was wasteful and extravagant 
 from disposition, and his quarter's allowance disappeared 
 almost when it came. His money out, he fell back at once 
 to the penurious habits of the poorest subaltern about him, 
 and lived on his florin-and-half per diem till his resources 
 came round again. He hoped — of course he hoped — that 
 this momentary fit of temper would not extend to stopping 
 his allowance. 
 
 "She knows as well as any one," muttered he, "that 
 though the baker's son from Prague or the Amtmann's 
 nephew from a Bavarian Dorf may manage to ' come through ' 
 with his pay, the young Englishman cannot. I can neither 
 piece my own overalls, nor forswear stockings; nor can I 
 persuade my stomach that it has had a full meal by tighten- 
 ing my girth-strap three or four holes. 
 
 "I 'd go down to the ranks to-morrow rather than live 
 that life of struggle and contrivance that reduces a man to 
 playing a dreary game with himself, by which, while he 
 feels like a pauper, he has to fancy he felt like a gentle- 
 man. No, no, I '11 none of this. Scores of better men have 
 served in the ranks. I '11 just change my regiment. By a 
 lucky chance, I don't know a man in the Walmoden Cuiras- 
 siers. I '11 join them, and nobody will ever be the wiser.'' 
 
 There is a class of men who go through life building very 
 small castles, and are no more discouraged by the frailty 
 of the architecture than is a child with his toy-house. This 
 was Gorman's case; and now that he had found a solution 
 of his difficulties in the Walmoden Cuirassiers, he really 
 dressed for dinner in very tolerable spirits. "It 's droll 
 enough," thought he, "to go down to dine amongst all these 
 ' swells,' and to think that the fellow behind my chair is 
 better off than myself." The very uncertainty of his fate 
 supplied excitement to his spirits, for it is amongst the 
 privileges of the j'oung that mere flurry can be pleasurable. 
 
 When Gorman reached the drawing-room, he found only 
 
308 LORD KILGOBBm. 
 
 one person. This was a young man in a shooting-coat, 
 who, deep in the recess of a comfortable arm-chair, sat with 
 the " Times " at his feet, and to all appearance as if half 
 dozing. 
 
 He looked around, however, as young O'Shea came for- 
 ward, and said carelessly, "I suppose it's time to go and 
 dress, — if I could." 
 
 O'Shea making no reply, the other added, "That is, if I 
 have not overslept dinner altogether." 
 
 "I hope not, sincerely," rejoined the other, "or I shall 
 be a partner in the misfortune." 
 
 "Ah, you 're the Austrian," said Walpole, as he stuck his 
 glass in his eye and surveyed him. 
 
 "Yes; and you are the private secretary of the Governor." 
 
 "Only we don't call him Governor. We say Viceroy 
 here." 
 
 "With all my heart, Viceroy be it." 
 
 There was a pause now; each, as it were, standing on 
 his guard to resent any liberty of the other. At last Wal- 
 pole said, "I don't think you were in the house when that 
 stupid stipendiary fellow called here this morning?" 
 
 "No; I was strolling across the fields. He came with the 
 police, I suppose ? " 
 
 "Yes, he came on the track of some Fenian leader, — a 
 droll thought enough anywhere out of Ireland, to search 
 for a rebel under a magistrate's roof; not but there was 
 something still more Irish in the incident." 
 
 "How was that?" asked O'Shea, eagerly. 
 
 "I chanced to be out walking with the ladies when the 
 escort came ; and as they failed to find the man they were 
 after, they proceeded to make diligent search for his papers 
 and letters. That taste for practical joking that seems an 
 instinct in this country suggested to Mr. Kearney to direct 
 the fellows to my room, and what do you think they have 
 done? Carried off bodily all my baggage, and left me with 
 nothing but the clothes I 'm wearing ! " 
 
 "What a lark!" cried O'Shea, laughing. 
 
 "Yes, I take it that is the national way to look at these 
 things; but that passion for absurdity and for ludicrous 
 situations has not the same hold on us English." 
 
TWO FAMILIAR EPISTLES. 309 
 
 "I know that. You are too well off to be droll.'' 
 
 *'Not exactly that; but when we want to laugh we go to 
 the Adelphi." 
 
 "Heaven help you if you have to pay people to make fun 
 for you ! " 
 
 Before Walpole could make rejoinder, the door opened to 
 admit the ladies, closely followed by Mr. Kearney and 
 Dick. 
 
 " Not mine the fault if I disgrace your dinner-table by 
 such a costume as this," cried Walpole. 
 
 " I 'd have given twenty pounds if they 'd have carried off 
 yourself as the rebel ! " said the old man, shaking with 
 laughter. "But there's the soup on the table. Take my 
 niece, Mr. Walpole; Gorman, give your arm to my daugh- 
 ter. Dick and I will bring up the rear." 
 
CHAPTER XLir. 
 
 AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM. 
 
 The fatalism of youth, unlike that of age, is all rose- 
 colored. That which is coming, and is decreed to come, 
 cannot be very disagreeable. This is the theory of the 
 young, and differs terribly from the experiences of after- 
 life. Gorman O'Shea had gone to dinner with about as 
 heavy a misfortune as could well befall him, so far as his 
 future in life was concerned. All he looked forward to and 
 hoped for was lost to him. The aunt, who for so many 
 years had stood to him in place of all family, had suddenly 
 thrown him off, and declared that she would see him no 
 more ; the allowance she had hitherto given him withdrawn, 
 it was impossible he could continue to hold his place in his 
 regiment. Should he determine not to return, it was deser- 
 tion ; should he go back, it must be to declare that he was a 
 ruined man, and could only serve in the ranks. These 
 were the thoughts he revolved while he dressed for dinner, 
 and dressed, let it be owned, with peculiar care ; but when 
 the task had been accomplished, and he descended to the 
 drawing-room, such was the elasticity of his young temper- 
 ament, every thought of coming evil was merged in the 
 sense of present enjoyment, and the merry laughter which 
 he overheard as he opened the door obliterated all notion 
 that life had anything before him except what was agreeable 
 and pleasant. 
 
 "We want to know if you play croquet, Mr. O'Shea?" 
 said Nina, as he entered. "And we want also to know, 
 are you a captain, or a Ritt-Meister, or a major? You can 
 scarcely be a colonel." 
 
 "Your last guess I answer first. I am only a lieutenant, 
 and even that very lately. As to croquet, if it be not your 
 foreign mode of pronouncing cricket, I never even saw it." 
 
AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM. 311 
 
 *' It is not my foreign mode of pronouncing cricket, Herr 
 Lieutenant," said she, pertly; "but I guessed already you 
 had never heard of it." 
 
 "It is an out-of-door affair," said Dick, indolently, 
 "made for the diffusion of worked petticoats and Balmoral 
 boots." 
 
 "I should say it is the game of billiards brought down to 
 universal suffrage and the million," lisped out Walpole. 
 
 "Faith," cried old Kearney, "I 'd say it was just football 
 with a stick." 
 
 "At all events," said Kate, "we purpose to have a grand 
 match to-morrow. Mr. Walpole and I are against Nina and 
 Dick, and we are to draw lots for you, Mr. O'Shea." 
 
 "My position, if I understand it aright, is not a flattering 
 one," said he, laughing. 
 
 "We '11 take him," cried Nina, at once. "I '11 give him 
 a private lesson in the morning, and I '11 answer for his 
 performance. These creatures," added she in a whisper, 
 "are so drilled in Austria you. can teach them anything." 
 
 Now, as the words were spoken, Gorman caught them, 
 and drawing close to her, "I do hope I '11 justify that flat- 
 tering opinion." But her only recognition was a look of 
 half-defiant astonishment at his boldness. 
 
 A very noisy discussion now ensued as to whether croquet 
 was worthy to be called a game or not, and what were its 
 laws and rules, — points which Gorman followed with due 
 attention, but very little profit; all Kate's good sense and 
 clearness being cruelly dashed by Nina's ingenious interrup- 
 tions, and Walpole' s attempts to be smart and witty, even 
 where opportunity scarcely offered the chance. 
 
 "Next to looking on at the game," cried old Kearney, at 
 last, "the most tiresome thing I know of is to hear it talked 
 over. Come, Nina, and give me a song." 
 
 "What shall it be, uncle?" said she, as she opened the 
 piano. 
 
 "Something Irish, I'd say, if I were to choose for my- 
 self. We 've plenty of old tunes, Mr. Walpole," said Kear- 
 ney, turning to that gentleman, "that rebellion, as you call 
 it, has never got hold of. There 's ' Cushla Macree ' and 
 the ' Cailan deas cruidhte na Mbo.' " 
 
312 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Very like hard swearing that," said Walpole to Nina; 
 but his simper and his soft accent were only met by a cold 
 blank look, as though she had not understood his liberty in 
 addressing her. Indeed, in her distant manner and even 
 repelling coldness, there was what might have disconcerted 
 any composure less consummate than his own. It was, 
 however, evidently Walpole 's aim to assume that she felt 
 her relation towards him, and not altogether without some 
 cause ; while she, on her part, desired to repel the insinua- 
 tion by a show of utter indifference. She would willingly, 
 ■in this contingency, have encouraged her cousin, Dick 
 Kearney, and even led him on to little displays of attention; 
 but Dick held aloof, as though not knowing the meaning of 
 this favorable turn towards him. He would not be cheated 
 by coquetry. How many men are of this temper, and who 
 never understand that it is by surrendering ourselves to 
 numberless little voluntary deceptions of this sort we arrive 
 at intimacies the most real and most truthful. 
 
 She next tried Gorman, and here her success was com- 
 plete. All those womanly prettinesses, which are so many 
 modes of displaying graceful attraction of voice, look, 
 gesture, or attitude, were especially dear to him. Not only 
 they gave beauty its chief charm, but they constituted a 
 sort of game, whose address was quickness of eye, readiness 
 of perception, prompt reply, and that refined tact that can 
 follow out one thought in a conversation just as you follow 
 . a melody through a mass of variations. 
 
 Perhaps the young soldier did not yield himself the less 
 readily to these captivations that Kate Kearney's manner 
 towards him was studiously cold and ceremonious. 
 
 "The other girl is more like the old friend," muttered he, 
 as he chatted on with her about Rome and Florence and 
 Venice, imperceptibly gliding into the language which the 
 names of places suggested. 
 
 "If any had told me that I ever could have talked thus 
 freely and openly with an Austrian soldier, I 'd not 'have 
 believed him," said she at length, " for all my sympathies 
 in Italy were with the national party." 
 
 "But we were not the ' Barbari ' in your recollection, 
 Mademoiselle," said he. "We were out of Italy before you 
 could have any feeling for either party." 
 
AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM. 313 
 
 " The tradition of all your cruelties has survived you, and 
 I am sure if 3^ou were wearing your white coat still, I'd hate 
 you." 
 
 "You are giving me another reason to ask for a longer 
 leave of absence," said he, bowing courteously. 
 
 " And this leave of yours, — how long does it last? " 
 
 " I am afraid to own to myself. Wednesday fortnight is 
 the end of it; that is, it gives me four days after that to 
 reach Vienna." 
 
 " And, presenting yourself in humble guise before your 
 Colonel, to say, * Ich melde mich gehorsamst.' " 
 
 " Not exactly that, but something like it." 
 
 "I'll be the Herr Oberst, lieutenant," said she, laughing; 
 " so come forward now and clap your heels together, and let 
 us hear how you utter your few syllables in true abject 
 fashion. I'll sit here, and receive you." As she spoke, she 
 threw herself into an arm-chair, and assuming a look of intense 
 hauteur and defiance, affected to stroke an imaginary moustache 
 with one hand, while with the other she waved a haughty 
 gesture of welcome. 
 
 "I have outstayed my leave," muttered Gorman, in a 
 tremulous tone. " I hope my colonel, with that bland 
 mercy which characterizes him, will forgive my fault and 
 let me ask his pardon." And with this he knelt down on 
 one knee before her and kissed her hand. 
 
 " What liberties are these, sir ? " cried she, so angrily that 
 it was not easy to say whether the anger was not real. 
 
 " It is the latest rule introduced into our service," said 
 he, with mock humility. 
 
 " Is that a comedy they are acting yonder," said Walpole, 
 " or is it a proverb ? " 
 
 " Whatever the drama," replied Kate, coldly, " I don't 
 think they want a public." 
 
 " You may go back to your duty, Herr Lieutenant," said 
 Nina, proudly, and with a significant glance towards Kate. 
 "Indeed, I suspect you have been rather neglecting it of 
 late." And with this she sailed majestically away towards 
 the end of the room. 
 
 " I wish I could provoke even that much of jealousy from 
 the other," muttered Gorman to himself, as he bit his lip in 
 
314 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 passion. And certainly, if a look and manner of calm 
 unconcern meant anything, there was little that seemed less 
 likely. 
 
 "I am glad you are going to the piano, Nina," said Kate. 
 " Mr. Walpole has been asking me by what artifice you could 
 be induced to sing something of Mendelssohn." 
 
 ' ' I am going to sing an Irish ballad for that Austrian 
 patriot, who, like his national poet, thinks ' Ireland a beau- 
 tiful country to live out of.' " Though a haughty toss of her 
 head accompanied these words, there was a glance in her 
 eye towards Gorman that plainly invited a renewal of their 
 half-flirting hostilities. 
 
 " When I left it, you had not been here," said he, with an 
 obsequious tone, and an air of deference only too marked in 
 its courtesy. 
 
 A slight, very faiiit blush on her cheek showed that she 
 rather resented than accepted the flattery ; but she appeared 
 to be occupied in looking through the music-books, and 
 made no rejoinder. 
 
 " We want Mendelssohn, Nina," said Kate. 
 ' " Or at least Spohr," added Walpole. 
 
 "I never accept dictation about what I sing," muttered 
 Nina, only loud enough to be overheard by Gorman. 
 "People don't tell you what theme you are to talk on; 
 they don't presume to say, ' Be serious or be witty.' They 
 don't tell you to come to the aid of their sluggish natures 
 by passion, or to dispel their dreariness by flights of fancy ; 
 and why are they to dare all this to us who speak through 
 song?" 
 
 "Just because you alone can do these things," said Gor- 
 man, in the same low voice as she had spoken in. 
 
 "Can I help you in your search, dearest?" said Kate, 
 coming over to the piano. 
 
 " Might I hope to be of use? " asked Walpole. , 
 
 "Mr. O'Shea wants me to sing something for him,'' said 
 Nina, coldly. " What is it to be? " asked she of Gorman. 
 
 With the readiness of one who could respond to any 
 sudden call upon his tact, Gorman at once took up a piece of 
 music from the mass before him, and said, " Here is what I 
 have been searching for." It was a little Neapolitan ballad, 
 
AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM. 315 
 
 of no p&culiar beauty, but one of those simple melodies in 
 which the rapid transition from deep feeling to a wild, almost 
 reckless gayety imparts all the character. 
 
 " Yes, I '11 sing that," said Nina ; and almost in the same 
 breath the notes came floating through the air, slow and sad 
 at first, as though laboring under some heavy sorrow, the 
 very syllables faltered on her lips like a grief struggling for 
 utterance, — when, just as a thrilling cadence died slowly 
 away, she burst forth into the wildest and merriest strain, 
 something so impetuous in gayety that the singer seemed to 
 lose all control of expression, and floated away in sound with 
 every caprice of enraptured imagination. When in the very 
 whirlwind of this impetuous gladness, as though a memory 
 of a terrible sorrow had suddenly crossed her, she ceased ; 
 then, in tones of actual agony, her voice rose to a cry of such 
 utter misery as despair alone could utter. The sounds 
 died slowly away, as though liugeringly. Two bold chords 
 followed, and she was silent. 
 
 None spoke in the room. Was this real passion, or was it 
 the mere exhibition of an accomplished artist, who could 
 call up expression at will, as easily as a painter could 
 heighten color ? Kate Kearney evidently believed the former, 
 as her heaving chest and her tremulous lip betrayed ; while 
 the cold, simpering smile on Walpole's face, and the " Brava, 
 bravissima," in which he broke the silence, vouched how he 
 had interpreted that show of emotion. 
 
 " If that is singing, I wonder what is crying," cried old 
 Kearney, while he wiped his eyes, very angry at his own 
 weakness. ''And now will any one tell me what it was 
 all about ? " 
 
 "A j^oung girl, sir," replied Gorman, "who by a great 
 effort has rallied herself to dispel her sorrow and be merry, 
 suddenly remembers that her sweetheart may not love her ; 
 and the more she dwells on the thought, the more firmly she 
 believes it. That was the cry, ' He never loved me,' that 
 went to all our hearts." 
 
 " Faith, then, if Nina has to say that," said the old man. 
 "Heaven help the others." 
 
 " Indeed, uncle, you are more gallant than all these young 
 gentlemen," said Nina, rising, and approaching him. 
 
316 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 '' Why they are not all at your feet this moment is more 
 than I can tell. They 're always telling me the world is 
 changed, and I begin to see it now." 
 
 ''I suspect, sir, it's pretty much what it used to be," 
 lisped out Walpole. " We are only less demonstrative than 
 our fathers." 
 
 " Just as I am less extravagant than mine," cried Kil- 
 gobbin, " because I have not got it to spend." 
 
 '' I hope Mademoiselle Nina judges us more mercifully," 
 said Walpole. ' 
 
 " Is that song a favorite of yours? " asked she of Gorman, 
 without noticing Walpole's remark in any way. 
 
 *'No," said he, bluntly; "it makes me feel like a fool, 
 and, I am afraid, look like one, too, when I hear it." 
 
 " I 'm glad there 's even that much blood in you," cried old 
 Kearney, who had caught the words. " Oh dear ! oh dear ! 
 England need never be afraid of the young generation." 
 
 "That seems to be a very painful thought to you, sir," 
 said Walpole. 
 
 "And so it is," replied he. "The lower we bend, the 
 more you '11 lay on us. It was your language, and what 
 you call your civilization, broke us down first, and the 
 little spirit that fought against either is fast dying out of 
 us." 
 
 " Do you want Mr. Walpole to become a Fenian, papa? " 
 asked Kate. 
 
 " You see, they took him for one to-day," broke in Dick, 
 "when they came and carried off all his luggage." 
 
 "By the way," interposed Walpole, "we must take care 
 that that stupid blunder does not get into the local papers, 
 or we shall have it circulated by the London, press." 
 
 " I have already thought of that," said Dick, " and I shall 
 go into Moate to-morrow and see about it." 
 
 "Does that mean to say that you desert croquet?" said 
 Nina, imperiously. 
 
 "You have got Lieutenant O'Shea in my place, and a 
 better player than me already." 
 
 " I fear I must take my leave to-morrow," said Gorman, 
 with a touch of real sorrow, for in secret he knew not whither 
 he was going. 
 
AN EVENING IN THE DRAWING-ROOM. 317 
 
 " Would your aunt not spare you to us for a few days? " 
 said the old man. " I am in no favor with her just now, but 
 she would scarcely refuse what we would all deem a great 
 favor." 
 
 " My aunt would not think the sacrifice too much for her," 
 said Gorman, trying lo laugh at the conceit. 
 
 " You shall stay," murmured Nina, in a tone only audible 
 to him ; and by a slight bow he acknowledged the words as 
 a command. 
 
 " I believe my best way," said Gorman, gayly, " will be to 
 outstay my leave, and take my punishment, whatever it be, 
 when I go back again." 
 
 "That is military morality," said Walpole, in a half- 
 whisper to Kate, but to be overheard by Nina. "We poor 
 civilians don't understand how to keep a debtor and credi- 
 tor account with conscience." 
 
 " Could you manage to provoke that man to quarrel with 
 you? " said Nina secretly to Gorman, while her eyes glanced 
 towards Walpole. 
 
 "I think I might; but what then? He wouldn't fight, 
 and the rest of England would shun me." 
 
 " That is true," said she, slowly. " When any is injured 
 here, he tries to make money out of it. I don't suppose you 
 want money ? " 
 
 ' ' Not earned in that fashion, certainly. But I think they 
 are saying good-night." 
 
 " They 're always boasting about the man that found out 
 the safety-lamp," said old Kearney, as he moved away ; "but 
 give me the fellow that invented a flat candlestick ! " 
 
CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS. 
 
 When Gorman . reached his room, into which a rich flood 
 of moonlight was streaming, he extinguished his candle, 
 and, seating himself at the open window, lighted his cigar, 
 seriously believing he was going to reflect on his present 
 condition and forecast something of the future. Though 
 he had spoken so cavalierly of outstaying his time, and 
 accepting arrest afterwards, the jest was by no means so 
 palatable now that he was alone, and could own to himself 
 that the leave he possessed was the unlimited liberty to 
 be houseless and a vagabond, to have none to claim, no 
 roof to shelter him. 
 
 His aunt's law-agent, the same Mr. McKeown who acted 
 for Lord Kilgobbin, had once told Gorman that all the King's 
 County property of the O'Sheas was entailed upon him, and 
 that his aunt had no power to alienate it. It is true the old 
 lady disputed this position, and so strongly resented even 
 allusion to it, that, for the sake of inheriting that twelve 
 thousand pounds she possessed in Dutch stock, McKeown 
 warned Gorman to avoid anything that might imply his 
 being aware of this fact. 
 
 Whether a general distrust of all legal people and their 
 assertions was the reason, or whether mere abstention from 
 the topic had impaired the force of its truth, or whether — 
 more likely than either — he would not suffer himself to 
 question the intentions of one to whom he owed so much, 
 certain is it young O'Shea almost felt as much averse to 
 the belief as the old lady herself, and resented the thought 
 of its being true, as of something that would detract from 
 the spirit of the affection she had always borne him, and 
 that he repaid by a love as faithful. 
 
SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS. 319 
 
 *' No, no. Confound it!" he would say to himself. 
 ' ' Aunt Betty loves me, and money has no share in the 
 affection I bear her. If she knew I must be her heir, 
 she'd say so frankly and freely. She'd scorn the notion 
 of doling out to me as benevolence what one day would 
 be my own by right. She is proud and intolerant enough, 
 but she is seldom unjust, — never so willingly and con- 
 sciously. If, then, she has not said O'Shea's Barn must 
 be mine some time, it is because she knows well it caunot 
 be true. Besides, this very last step of hers, this haughty 
 dismissal of me from her house, implies the possession of 
 a power which she would not dare to exercise if she were 
 but a life-tenant of the property. Last of all, had she 
 speculated ever so remotely on my being the proprietor 
 of Irish landed property, it was most unlikely she would 
 so strenuously have encouraged me to pursue my career 
 as an Austrian soldier, and turn all my thoughts to my 
 prospects under the Empire." 
 
 In fact, she never lost the opportunity of reminding him 
 how unfit he was to live in Ireland or amongst Irishmen. 
 
 Such reflections as I have briefly hinted at here took him 
 some time to arrive at, for his thoughts did not come freely, 
 or rapidly make place for others. The sum of them, how- 
 ever, was that he was thrown upon the world, and just at 
 the very threshold of life, and when it held out its more 
 alluring prospects. 
 
 There is something peculiarly galling to the man who is 
 wincing under the pang of poverty to find that the world 
 regards him as rich and well off, and totally beyond the 
 accidents of fortune. It is not simply that he feels how his 
 every action will be misinterpreted and mistaken, and a 
 spirit of thrift, if not actual shabbiness, ascribed to all 
 that he does, but he also regards himself as a sort of im- 
 position or sham, who has gained access to a place he has 
 no right to occupy, and to associate on terms of equality 
 with men of tastes and habits and ambitions totally above 
 his own. It was in this spirit he remembered Nina's chance 
 expression, "I don't suppose you want money!" There 
 could be no other meaning in the phrase than some fore- 
 gone conclusion about his being a man of fortune. Of 
 
820 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 course she acquired this notion from those around her. As 
 a stranger to Ireland, all she knew, or thought she knew, 
 had been conveyed by others. ^'I don't suppose you want 
 money" was another way of saying, "You are your aunt's 
 heir. You are the future owner of the O'Shea estates. No 
 vast property, it is true ; but quite enough to maintain the 
 position of a gentleman." 
 
 ' ^ Who knows how much of this Lord Kilgobbin or his 
 son Dick believed?" tliought he. "But certainly my old 
 playfellow Kate has no faith in the matter, or if she have, 
 it has little weight with her in her estimate of me. 
 
 " It was in this very room I was lodged something like 
 five years ago. It was at this very window I used to sit at 
 night, weaving Heaven knows what dreams of a future. I 
 was very much in love in those days, and a very honest 
 and loyal love it was. I wanted to be very great, and 
 very gallant, and distinguished, and, above all, very rich; 
 but only for /ier, ojily that she might be surrounded with 
 every taste and luxury that became her, and that she should 
 share them with me. I knew well she was better than me, 
 — better in every way : not only purer and simpler and 
 more gentle, but more patient, more enduring, more tena- 
 cious of what was true, and more decidedly the enemy of 
 what was merely expedient. Then, was she not proud? 
 not with the pride of birth or station, or of an old name 
 and a time-honored house, but proud that whatever she did 
 or said amongst the tenantry or the neighbors, none ever 
 ventured to question or even qualify the intention that sug- 
 gested it. The utter impossibility of ascribing a double 
 motive to her, or of imagining any object in what she coun- 
 selled but the avowed one, gave her a pride that accom- 
 panied her through every hour of life. 
 
 " Last of all, she believed in me, — believed I was going 
 to be one day something very famous and distinguished : 
 a gallant soldier, whose very presence gave courage to the 
 men who followed him, and with a name repeated in honor 
 over Europe. The day was too short for these fancies, for 
 they grew actually as we fed them, and the wildest flight of 
 imagination led us on to the end of the time when there would 
 be but one hope, one ambition, and one heart between us. 
 
SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS. 321 
 
 '' I am convinced that had any one at that time hinted to 
 her that I was to inherit the O'Shea estates, he would have 
 dealt a most dangerous blow to her affection for me. The 
 romance of that unknown future had a great share in our 
 compact. And then we were so serious about it all, — the 
 very gravity it impressed being an ecstasy to our young 
 hearts in the thought of self-importance and responsibility. 
 Nor were we without our little tiffs, — those lovers' quarrels 
 that reveal what a terrible civil war can rage within the 
 heart that rebels against itself. I know the very spot where 
 we quarrelled ; I could point to the miles of way we walked 
 side by side without a word; and oh! was it not on that 
 very bed I have passed the night, sobbing till I thought my 
 heart would break, all because I had not fallen at her feet 
 and begged her forgiveness ere we parted? Not that she 
 was without her self-accusings, too; for I remember one 
 way in which she expressed sorrow for having done me 
 wrong was to send me a shower of rose-leaves from her 
 little terraced garden ; and as they fell in shoals across my 
 window, what a balm and bliss they shed over my heart! 
 Would I. not give every hope I have to bring it all back 
 again ? to live it over once more, — to lie at her feet in the 
 grass, affecting to read to her, but really watching her long 
 black lashes as they rested on her cheek, or that quivering 
 lip as it trembled with emotion. How I used to detest that 
 work which employed the blue- veined hand I loved to hold 
 within my own, kissing it at every pause in the reading, or 
 whenever I could pretext a reason to question her! And 
 now here I am in the self-same place, amidst the same scenes 
 and objects. Nothing changed but herself! She, however, 
 will remember nothing of the past, or if she does, it is with 
 repugnance and regret ; her manner to me is a sort of cold 
 defiance, not to dare to revive our old intimacy, nor to fancy 
 that I can take up our acquaintanceship from the past. I 
 almost fancied she looked resentfully at the Greek girl for 
 the freedom to which she admitted me, — not but there was 
 in the other's coquetry the very stamp of that levity other 
 women are so ready to take offence at ; in fact, it constitutes 
 amongst women exactly the same sort of outrage, the same 
 breach of honor and loyalty, as cheating at play does 
 
 21 
 
322 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 amongst men, and the offenders are as much socially out- 
 lawed in one case as in the other. I wonder, am I what is 
 called falling in love with the Greek, — that is, I wonder, 
 have the charms of her astonishing beauty, and the grace of 
 her manner, and the thousand seductions of her voice, her 
 gestures, and her walk, above all, so captivated me that I do 
 not want to go back on the past, and may hope soon to 
 repay Miss Kate Kearney by an indifference the equal of her 
 own? I don't think so. Indeed I feel that even when 
 Nina was interesting me most, I was stealing secret glances 
 towards Kate, and cursing that fellow Walpole for the way 
 he was engaging her attention. Little the Greek suspected, 
 when she asked if 'I could not fix a quarrel on him,' with 
 what a motive it was that my heart jumped at the sugges- 
 tion ! He is so studiously ceremonious and distant with me ; 
 he seems to think I am not one of those to be admitted to 
 closer intimacy. I know that English theory of ' the unsafe 
 man,' by which people of unquestionable courage avoid con- 
 tact with all schooled to other ways and habits than their 
 own. I hate it. ' I am unsafe,' to his thinking. Well, if 
 having no reason to care for safety be sufficient, he is not 
 far wrong. Dick Kearney, too, is not very cordial. He 
 scarcely seconded his father's invitation to me, and what 
 he did say was merely what courtesy obliged. So that in 
 reality, though the old lord was hearty and good-natured, I 
 believe I am here now because Mademoiselle Nina com- 
 manded me, rather than from any other reason. If this be 
 true, it is, to say the least, a sorry compliment to my sense 
 of delicacy. Her words were, ' You shall stay,' and it is 
 upon this I am staying." 
 
 As though the air of the room grew more hard to breathe 
 with this thought before him, he arose and leaned half-way 
 out of the window. 
 
 As he did so, his ear caught the sound of voices. It was 
 Kate and Nina, who were talking on the terrace above his 
 head. 
 
 '' I declare, Nina,'* said Kate, " you have stripped every 
 leaf off my poor ivy-geranium ; there 's nothing left of it but 
 bare branches." 
 
 '' There goes the last handful," said the other, as she threw 
 
SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS. 323 
 
 them over the parapet, some falling on Gorman as he leaned 
 out. " It was a bad habit I learned from yourself, child. I 
 remember when I came here, you used to do this each night, 
 like a religious rite." 
 
 "I suppose they were the dried or withered leaves that I 
 threw away," said Kate, with a half irritation in her voice. 
 
 ' ' No, they were not. They were oftentimes from your 
 prettiest roses, and as I watched you, I saw it was in noj 
 distraction or inadvertence you were doing this, for you were ' 
 generally silent and thoughtful some time before, and there 
 was even an air of sadness about you, as though a painful 
 thought was bringing its gloomy memories." 
 
 " What an object of interest I have been to you without 
 suspecting it ! " said Kate, coldly. 
 
 " It is true," said the other, in the same tone ; " they who 
 make few confidences suggest much ingenuity. If you had 
 a meaning in this act and told me what it was, it is more 
 than likely I had forgotten all about it ere now. You pre- 
 ferred secrecy, and you made me curious." 
 
 *' There was nothing to reward curiosity," said she, in 
 the same measured tone ; then, after a moment, she added : 
 *' I'm sure I never sought to ascribe some hidden motive to 
 you. When you left my plants leafless, I was quite content 
 to believe that you were mischievous without knowing it." 
 
 "I read you differently," said Nina. "When you do 
 mischief, you mean mischief. Now I became so — so — what 
 shall I call it ? — intriguee about this little ' fetish ' of yours 
 that I remember well the night you first left off and never 
 resumed it." 
 
 " And when was that? " asked Kate, carelessly. 
 
 " On a certain Friday, the night Miss O'Shea dined here 
 last ; was it not a Friday ? " 
 
 "Fridays, we fancy, are unlucky days," said Kate, in a 
 voice of easy indifference. 
 
 " I wonder which are the lucky ones? " said Nina, sighing. 
 " They are certainly not put down in the Irish almanac. 
 By the way, is not this a Friday? " 
 
 " Mr. O'Shea will not call it amongst his unlucky days,*' 
 said Kate, laughingly. 
 
 " I almost think I like your Austrian," said the other. 
 
324 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Only don't call him my Austrian." 
 
 " Well, he was yours till you threw him off. No, don't 
 be angry ; I am only talking in that careless slang we all 
 use when we mean nothing, just as people employ counters 
 instead of money at cards ; but I like him. He has that easy 
 flippancy in talk that asks for no effort to follow, and he 
 says his little nothings nicely, and he is not too eager as to 
 great ones, or too energetic, which you all are here. I like 
 him." 
 
 "I fancied you liked the eager and enthusiastic people, 
 and that you felt a warm interest in Donogan's fate." 
 
 " Yes, I do hope they'll not catch him. It would be too 
 horrid to think of any one we had known being hanged ! 
 And then, poor fellow, he was very much in love." 
 
 *' Poor fellow ! " sighed out Kate. 
 
 ** Not but it was the only gleam of sunlight in his exist- 
 ence, he could go away and fancy that, with Heaven knows 
 what chances of fortune, he might have won me." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! " cried Kate, more sorrowfully than before- ' 
 
 '' No, far from it, but very ' happy fellow ' if he could 
 feed his heart with such a delusion." 
 
 '' And you think it fair to let him have this delusion? " 
 
 "Of course I do. I'd no more rob him of it than I'd 
 snatch a life-buoy from a drowning man. Do you fancy, 
 child, that the swimmer will always go about with the corks 
 that have saved his life ? " 
 
 " These mock analogies are sorry arguments," said Kate. 
 
 " Tell me, does your Austrian sing? I see he understands 
 music, but I hope he can sing." 
 
 *' I can tell you next to nothing of my Austrian, — if he 
 must be called so. It is five years since we met, and all I 
 know is how little like he seems to what he once was." 
 
 " I 'm sure he is vastly improved ; a hundred times better 
 mannered ; with more ease, more quickness, and more readi- 
 ness in conversation. I like him." 
 
 " I trust he'll find out his great good fortune, — that is, if 
 it be not a delusion." 
 
 For a few seconds there was a silence, — a silence so com- 
 plete that Gorman could hear the rustle of a dress as Nina 
 moved from her place, and seated herself on the battlement 
 
SOME NIGHT-THOUGHTS. 325 
 
 of the terrace. He then could catch the low murmuring 
 sounds of her voice, as she hummed an air to herself, and at 
 length traced it to be the song she had sung that same 
 evening in the drawing-room. The notes came gradually 
 more and more distinct, the tones swelled out into greater 
 fulness, and at last, with one long-sustained cadence of 
 thrilling passion, she cried, *' Non mi amava — non mi 
 amava ! " with an expression of heart-breaking sorrow, tlie 
 last syllables seeming to linger on the lips as if a hope was 
 deserting them forever. "Oh, non mi amava! " cried she, 
 and her voice trembled as though the avowal of her despair 
 was the last effort of her strength. Slowly and faintly the 
 sounds died away, while Gorman, leaning out to the utmost 
 to catch the dying notes, strained his hearing to drink them 
 in. All was still, and then suddenly with a wild roulade 
 that sounded at first like the passage of a musical scale, she 
 burst out into a fit of laughter, crying, ''Non mi amava," 
 through the sounds, in a half-frantic mockery. "No, no, 
 mon mi amava," laughed she out, as she walked back into 
 the room. The window was now closed with a heavy bang, 
 and all was silent in the house. 
 
 *'And these are the affections we break our hearts for! " 
 cried Gorman, as he threw himself on his bed and covered 
 his face with both his hands. 
 
CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 THE HEAD CO>^STABLE. 
 
 The Chief Constable, — or, to use the irreverent designation 
 of the neighborhood, the Head Peeler, — who had carried away 
 Walpole's luggage and papers, no sooner discovered the 
 grave mistake he had committed than he hastened to restore 
 them, and was waiting personally at the castle to apologize 
 for the blunder, long before any of the family had come 
 downstairs. His indiscretion might cost him his place; 
 and Captain Curtis, who had to maintain a wife and family, 
 three saddle-horses, and a green uniform with more gold on 
 it than a field-marshal's, felt duly anxious and uneasy for 
 what he had done. 
 
 " Who is that gone down the road ? " asked he, as he 
 stood at the window, while a woman was setting the room 
 in order. 
 
 "Sure, it's Miss Kate taking the dogs out. Isn't she 
 always the first up of a morning?" Though the Captain 
 had little personal acquaintance with Miss Kearney, he knew 
 her well by reputation, and knew, therefore, that he might 
 safely approach her to ask a favor. He overtook her at 
 once, and in a few words made known the difficulty in 
 which he found himself. 
 
 "Is it not, after all, a mere passing mistake, which once 
 apologized for is forgotten altogether?" asked she. "Mr. 
 Walpole is surely not a person to bear any malice for such 
 an incident?" 
 
 "I don't know that. Miss Kearney," said he, doubtingly. 
 "His papers have been thoroughly ransacked, and old Mr. 
 Flood, the Tory magistrate, has taken copies of several 
 letters and documents, all, of course, under the impression 
 that they formed part of a treasonable correspondence." 
 
THE HEAD CONSTABLE. 327 
 
 '*Was it not very evident that the papers could not have 
 belonged to a Fenian leader? Was not any mistake in the 
 matter easily avoided ? " 
 
 "Not at once, because there was, first of all, a sort of 
 account of the insurrectionary movement here, with a num- 
 ber of queries, such as, ' Who is M ? ' ' Are F. Y 
 
 and M'Causland the same person? ' ' What connection 
 exists between the Meath outrages and the late events 
 
 in Tipperary ? ' ' How is B to explain his conduct 
 
 sufficiently to be retained in the Commission of the Peace ? ' 
 In a word. Miss Kearney, all the troublesome details by 
 which a Ministry have to keep their own supporters in 
 decent order, are here hinted at, if not more, and it lies 
 with a batch of red-hot Tories to make a terrible scandal 
 out of this affair." 
 
 "It is graver than I suspected," said she, thoughtfully. 
 
 "And I may lose my place," muttered Curtis, "unless, 
 indeed, you would condescend to say a word for me to Mr. 
 Walpole." 
 
 "Willingly, if it were of any use; but I think my cousin, 
 Mademoiselle Kostalergi, would be likelier of success, and 
 here she comes." 
 
 Nina came forward at that moment, with that indolent 
 grace of movement with which she swept the greensward of 
 the lawn as though it were the carpet of a saloon. With a 
 brief introduction of Mr. Curtis, her cousin Kate in a few 
 words conveyed the embarrassment of his present position, 
 and his hope that a kindly intercession might avert his 
 danger. 
 
 "What droll people you must be not to find out that the 
 letters of a Viceroy's secretary could not be the correspond- 
 ence of a rebel leader! " said Nina, superciliously. 
 
 "I have already told Miss Kearney how that fell out," 
 said he; "and I assure you there was enough in those 
 papers to mystify better and clearer heads." 
 
 "But you read the addresses, and saw how the letters 
 began, ' My dear Mr. Walpole,' or ' Dear Walpole ' ? " 
 
 "And thought they had been purloined. Have I not found 
 ' Dear Clarendon ' often enough in the same packet with 
 cross-bones and a coffin?" 
 
328 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " What a country ! " said Nina, with a sigh. 
 
 "Very like Greece, I suppose," said Kate, tartly; then, 
 suddenly, "Will you undertake to make this gentleman's 
 peace with Mr. Walpole, and show how the whole was a 
 piece of ill-directed zeal?" 
 
 "Indiscreet zeal." 
 
 "Well, indiscreet, if you like it better." 
 
 "And you fancied, then, that all the fine linen and purple 
 you carried away were the properties of a Head-Centre ? " 
 
 "We thought so." 
 
 "And the silver objects of the dressing-table, and the 
 ivory inlaid with gold, and the trifles studded with 
 turquoise ? " 
 
 "They might have been Donogan's. Do you know, 
 Mademoiselle, that this same Donogan was a man of for- 
 tune, and in all the society of the first men at Oxford, when 
 — a mere boy at the time — he became a rebel?" 
 
 "How nice of him! What a fine fellow! " 
 
 "I'd say what a fool!" continued Curtis. "He had no 
 need to risk his neck to achieve a station; the thing was 
 done for him. He had a good house and a good estate in 
 Kilkenny; I have caught salmon in the river that washes 
 the foot of his lawn." 
 
 "And what has become of it? Does he still own it? " 
 
 "Not an acre, — not a rood of it; sold every square yard 
 of it to throw the money into the Fenian treasury. Rifled 
 artillery, Colt's revolvers. Remington's, and Parrot guns 
 have walked off with the broad acres." 
 
 "Fine fellow, — a fine fellow!" cried Nina, enthusiasti- 
 cally. 
 
 "That fine fellow has done a deal of mischief," said Kate, 
 thoughtfully. 
 
 "He has escaped, has he not? " asked Nina. 
 
 "We hope not; that is, we know that he is about to sail 
 for St. John's by a clipper now in Belfast, and we shall 
 have a fast steam-corvette ready to catch her in the Chan- 
 nel. He '11 be under Yankee colors, it is true, and claim an 
 American citizenship; but we must run risks sometimes, 
 and this is one of those times." 
 
 "But you know where he is now? Why not apprehend 
 him on shore ? " 
 
THE HEAD CONSTABLE. 329 
 
 "The very thing we do not know, Mademoiselle. I 'd 
 rather be sure of it than have five thousand pounds in my 
 hand. Some say he is here, in the neighborhood; some 
 that he is gone south; others declare that he has reached 
 Liverpool. All we really do know is about the ship that 
 he means to sail in, and on which the second mate has 
 informed us." 
 
 "And all your boasted activity is at fault," said she, inso- 
 lently, "when you have to own you cannot track him." 
 
 "Nor is it so easy. Mademoiselle, where a whole popula- 
 tion befriend and feel for him." 
 
 "And if they do, with what face can you persecute what 
 has the entire sympathy of a nation ? " 
 
 "Don't provoke answers which are sure not to satisfy 
 you, and which you could but half comprehend ; but tell Mr. 
 Curtis you will use your influence to make Mr. Walpole 
 forget this mishap." 
 
 "But I do want to go to the bottom of this question. I 
 will insist on learning why people rebel here." 
 
 "In that case I'll go home to breakfast, and I '11 be quite 
 satisfied if I see you at luncheon," said Kate. 
 
 "Do, pray, Mr. Curtis, tell me all about it. Why do 
 some people shoot the others who are just as much Irish as 
 themselves? Why do hungry people kill the cattle and 
 never eat them? And why don't the English go away and 
 leave a country where nobody likes them? If there be a 
 reason for these things, let me hear it." 
 
 "By-by," said Kate, waving her hand, as she turned 
 away. 
 
 "You are so ungenerous," cried Nina, hurrying after her; 
 "I am a stranger, and would naturally like to learn all that 
 I could of the country and the people ; here is a gentleman 
 full of the very knowledge I am seeking. lEIe knows all 
 about these terrible Fenians. What will they do with Don- 
 ogan if they take him? " 
 
 "Transport him for life; they '11 not hang him, I think." 
 
 "That 's worse than hanging. I mean — that is — Miss 
 Kearney would rather they 'd hang him." 
 
 "I have not said so," replied Kate; "and I don't suspect 
 I think so, either." 
 
330 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Well," said Nina, after a pause, "let us go back to 
 breakfast. You'll see Mr. Walpole; he 's sure to be down 
 by that time; and I'll tell him what you wish is that he 
 must not think any more of the incident-; that it was a 
 piece of official stupidity, done, of course, out of the best 
 motives, and that if he should cut a ridiculous figure at the 
 end, he has only hirnself to blame for the worse than 
 ambiguity of his private papers." 
 
 "I do not know that I'd exactly say that," said Kate, 
 who felt some difficulty in not laughing at the horror-struck 
 expression of Mr. Curtis' s face. 
 
 " Well, then, I '11 say — this was what I wished to tell 
 you, but my cousin Kate interposed and suggested that a 
 little adroit flattery of you, and some small coquetries that 
 might make you believe you were charming, would be the 
 readiest mode to make you forget anything disagreeable, 
 and she would charge herself with the task." 
 
 "Do so," said Kate, calmly; "and let us now go back to 
 breakfast." 
 
CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 SOME IRISHRIES. 
 
 That which the English irreverently call *^ chaff " enters 
 largely as an element into Irish life; and when Walpole 
 stigmatized the habit to Joe Atlee as essentially that of the 
 smaller island, he was not far wrong. I will not say that 
 it is a high order of wit, very elegant or very refined ; but 
 it is a strong incentive to good humor, a vent to good 
 spirits; and being a weapon which every Irishman can 
 wield in some fashion or other, establishes that sort of 
 joust which prevailed in the melee tournaments, and where 
 each tilted with whom he pleased. 
 
 Any one who has witnessed the progress of an Irish trial, 
 even when the crime was of the very gravest, cannot fail to 
 have been struck by the continual clash of smart remark 
 and smarter rejoinder between the bench and the bar; 
 showing how men feel the necessity of ready-wittedness, 
 and a promptitude to repel attack, in which even the pris- 
 oner in the dock takes his share, and cuts his joke at the 
 most critical moment of his existence. 
 
 The Irish theatre always exhibits traits of this national 
 taste; but a dinner-party, with its due infusion of barris- 
 ters, is the best possible exemplification of this give and 
 take, which, even if it had no higher merit, is a powerful 
 ally of good humor, and the sworn foe to everything like 
 over-irritability or morbid self-esteem. Indeed, I could 
 not wish a very conceited man, of a somewhat grave tem- 
 perament and distant demeanor, a much heavier punishment 
 than a course of Irish dinner-parties; for even though he 
 should come out scathless himself, the outrages to his sense 
 of propriety and the insults to his ideas of taste would be 
 a severe suffering. 
 
332 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 That breakfast-table at Kilgobbin had some heavy hearts 
 around the board. There was not, with the exception of 
 Walpole, one there who had not, in the doubts that beset 
 his future, grave cause for anxiety ; and yet to look at, still 
 more to listen to them, you would have said that Walpole 
 alone had any load of care upon his heart, and that the 
 others were a light-hearted, happy set of people, with whom 
 the world went always well. No cloud ! — not even a 
 shadow to darken the road before them. Of this levity, — 
 for I suppose I must give it a hard name, — the source of 
 much that is best and worst amongst us, our English rulers 
 take no account, and are often as ready to charge us with a 
 conviction which was no more than a caprice as they are 
 to nail us down to some determination which was simply 
 a drollery ; and until some intelligent traveller does for us 
 what I lately perceived a clever tourist did for the Japanese, 
 in explaining their modes of thought, impulses, and pas- 
 sions to the English, I despair of our being better known in 
 Downing Street than we now are. 
 
 Captain Curtis — for it is right to give him his rank — 
 was fearfully nervous and uneasy ; and though he tried to 
 eat his breakfast with an air of unconcern and carelessness, 
 he broke his egg with a tremulous hand, and listened with 
 painful eagerness every time Walpole spoke. 
 
 ''I wish somebody would send us the ' Standard.' When 
 it is known that the Lord Lieutenant's secretary has turned 
 Fenian," said Kilgobbin, "won't there be a grand Tory 
 outcry over the unprincipled Whigs ! " 
 
 "The papers need know nothing whatever of the inci- 
 dent," interposed Curtis, anxiously, "if old Flood is not 
 busy enough to inform them." 
 
 "Who is old Flood?" asked Walpole. 
 
 "A Tory J. P. who has copied out a considerable share 
 of your correspondence," said Kilgobbin. 
 
 "And four letters in a lady's hand," added Dick, "that 
 he imagines to be a treasonable correspondence by sym- 
 bol." 
 
 "I hope Mr. Walpole," said Kate, "will rather accept 
 felony to the law than falsehood to the lady." 
 
 "You don't mean to say — " began Walpole, angrily; 
 
SOME IRISHRIES. 333 
 
 then correcting his irritable manner, he added, "Am I to 
 suppose my letters have been read?" 
 
 ''Well, roughly looked through," said Curtis. "Just a 
 glance here and there to catch what they meant." 
 
 "Which I must say was quite unnecessary," said Wal- 
 pole, haughtily. 
 
 "It was a sort of journal of yours," blundered out Curtis, 
 who had a most unhappy knack of committing himself, 
 "that they opened first, and they saw an entry with Kilgob- 
 bin Castle at the top of it, and the date last July." 
 
 "There was nothing political in that, I 'm sure," said 
 Walpole. 
 
 "No, not exactly, but a trifle rebellious all the same; the 
 words ' we this evening learned a Fenian song, "The time 
 to begin," and rather suspect it is time to leave off; the 
 Greek better-looking than ever, and more dangerous. ' " 
 
 Curtis' s last words were drowned in the laugh that now 
 shook the table ; indeed, except Walpole and Nina herself, 
 they actually roared with laughter, which burst out afresh 
 as Curtis, in his innocence, said, "We could not make out 
 about the Greek, but we hoped we 'd find out later on." 
 
 "And I fervently trust you did," said Kilgobbin. 
 
 "I'm afraid not; there was something about somebody 
 called Joe, that the Greek would n't have him, or disliked 
 him, or snubbed him, — indeed, I forget the words." 
 
 "You are quite right, sir, to distrust your memory," said 
 Walpole; "it has betrayed you most egregiously already." 
 
 "On the contrary," burst in Kilgobbin, "I am delighted 
 with this proof of the Captain's acuteness; tell us some- 
 thing more, Curtis." 
 
 "There was then ' From the upper castle yard, Maude,' 
 whoever Maude is, ' says, "Deny it all, and say you never 
 were there," — not so easy as she thinks, with a broken 
 right arm, and a heart not quite so whole as it ought to 
 be.'" 
 
 "There, sir, — with the permission of my friends here, — 
 I will ask you to conclude your reminiscences of my private 
 papers, which can have no possible interest for any one but 
 myself." 
 
 "Quite wrong in that," cried Kilgobbin, wiping his eyes, 
 
334 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 which had run over with laughter. "There 's nothing I 'd 
 like so much as to hear more of them." 
 
 "What was that about his heart?" whispered Curtis to 
 Kate; "was he wounded in the side also? " 
 
 "I believe so," said she, dryly; "but I believe he has 
 got quite over it by this time." 
 
 "Will you say a word or two about me. Miss Kearney?" 
 whispered he again. "I 'm not sure I improved my case by 
 talking so freely; but as I saw you all so outspoken, I 
 thought I'd fall into your ways." 
 
 " Captain Curtis is much concerned for any fault he may 
 have committed in this unhappy business," said Kate; 
 "and he trusts that the agitation and excitement of the 
 Donogan escape will excuse him." 
 
 "That 's your policy now," interposed Kilgobbin. "Catch 
 the Fenian fellow, and nobody will remember the other 
 incident." 
 
 " We mean to give out that we know he has got clear away 
 to America," said Curtis, with an air of intense cunning. 
 "And to lull his suspicions we have notices in print to say 
 that no further rewards are to be given for his apprehension, 
 so that he '11 get a false confidence, and move about as 
 before." 
 
 " With such acuteness as yours on his trail, his arrest is 
 certain," said Walpole, gravely. 
 
 "Well, I hope so, too," said Curtis, in good faith for the 
 compliment. " Did n't I take up nine men for the search of 
 arms here, though there were only five? One of them 
 turned evidence," added he, gravely; "he was the fellow 
 that swore Miss Kearney stood between you and the fire 
 after they wounded you." 
 
 "You are determined to make Mr. Walpole your friend," 
 whispered Nina in his ear; "don't you see, sir, that you are 
 ruining yourself? " 
 
 "I have often been puzzled to explain how it was that 
 crime went unpunished in Ireland," said Walpole, senten- 
 tiously. 
 
 "And you know now? " asked Curtis. 
 
 "Yes; in a great measure, you have supplied me with 
 the information." 
 
SOME lEISHRIES. 335 
 
 ((- 
 
 'I believe it's all right now," muttered the Captain to 
 Kate. "If the swell owns that I have put him up to a thing 
 or two, he '11 not throw me over." 
 
 "Would you give me three minutes of your time? " whis- 
 pered Gorman O'Shea to Lord Kilgobbin, as they arose 
 from table. 
 
 "Half an hour, my boy, or more if you want it. Come 
 along with me now into my study, and we '11 be safe there 
 from all interruption." 
 
CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 SAGE ADVICE. 
 
 " So, then, you 're in a hobble with your aunt, " said Mr. 
 Kearney, as he believed he had summed up the meaning of 
 a very blundering explanation by Gorman O'Shea; "isn't 
 that it?" 
 
 "Yes, sir; I suppose it comes to that." 
 
 "The old story, I 've no doubt, if we only knew it, — as 
 old as the Patriarchs; the young ones go into debt, and 
 think it very hard that the elders dislike the paying it." 
 
 "No, no, I haVe no debts; at least, none to speak of." 
 
 "It's a woman, then? Have you gone and married some 
 good-looking girl with no fortune and less family? Who 
 is she?" 
 
 "Not even that, sir," said he, half impatient at seeing 
 how little attention had been bestowed on his narrative. 
 
 "'Tis bad enough, no doubt," continued the old man, 
 still in pursuit of his own reflections ; "not but there 's scores 
 of things worse ; for if a man is a good fellow at heart, he '11 
 treat the woman all the better for what she has cost him. 
 That is one of the good sides of selfishness ; and when you 
 have lived as long as me, Gorman, you '11 find out how often 
 there 's something good to be squeezed out of a bad quality, 
 just as though it were a bit of our nature that was depraved, 
 but not gone to the devil entirely." 
 
 "There is no woman in the case here, sir," said O'Shea, 
 bluntly, for these speculations only irritated him. 
 
 "Ho, ho! I have it then," cried the old man. "You 've 
 been burning your fingers with rebellion. It 's the Fenians 
 have got a hold of you." 
 
 "Nothing of the kind, sir. If you'll just read these 
 two letters. The one is mine, written on the morning I 
 
SAGE ADVICE. 337 
 
 came here; here is my aunt's. The first is not word for 
 word as I sent it, but as well as I can remember. At all 
 events, it will show how little I had provoked the answer. 
 There, that 's the document that came along with my trunks, 
 and I have never heard from her since." 
 
 *' ' Dear Nephew,' " read out the old man, after patiently 
 adjusting his spectacles, " ' O' Shea's Barn is not an inn,' 
 — And more's the pity," added he; "for it would be a 
 model house of entertainment. You 'd say any one could 
 have a sirloin of beef or a saddle of mutton ; but where Miss 
 Betty gets hers is quite beyond me. ' Nor are the horses at 
 public livery,' " read he out. "I think I may say, if they 
 were, that Kattoo won't be hired out again to the young 
 man that took her over the fences. 'As you seem fond of 
 warnings,' " continued he, aloud, — "Ho, ho! that 's at you 
 for coming over here to tell me about the search-warrant; 
 and she tells you to mind your own business; and droll 
 enough it is. We always fancy we 're saying an imperti- 
 nence to a man when we tell him to attend to what concerns 
 him most. It shows, at least, that we think meddling a 
 luxury. And then she adds, ' Kilgobbin is welcome to you,' 
 and I can only say you are welcome to Kilgobbin, — ay, 
 and in her own words, — ' with such regularity and order as 
 the meals succeed.' — ' All the luggage belonging to you,' 
 &c. , and ' I am very respectfully, your Aunt. ' By my con- 
 science, there was no need to sign it ! That was old Miss 
 Betty all the world over! " and he laughed till his eyes ran 
 over, though the rueful face of young O' Shea was staring at 
 him all the time. "Don't look so gloomy, O'Shea," cried 
 Kearney. "I have not so good a cook, nor, I 'm sorry to 
 say, so good a cellar, as at the Barn ; but there are young 
 faces, and young voices, and young laughter, and a light 
 step on the stairs ; and if I know anything, or rather, if I 
 remember anything, these will warm a heart at your age 
 better than '44 claret or the crustiest port that ever stained 
 a decanter." 
 
 "I am turned out, sir, — sent adrift on the world," said 
 the young man, despondently. 
 
 "And it is not so bad a thing after all, take my word for 
 it, boy. It 's a great advantage, now and then, to begin life 
 
 22 
 
338 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 as a vagabond. It takes a deal of snobbery out of a fellow 
 to lie under a haystack, and there's no better cure for pre- 
 tension than a dinner of cold potatoes. Not that I say you 
 need the treatment, — far from it ; but our distinguished 
 friend Mr. Walpole wouldn't be a bit the worse of such an 
 alterative." 
 
 "If I am left without a shilling in the world? " 
 
 "Then you must try what you can do on sixpence; the 
 whole thing is how you begin. I used not to be able to 
 eat my dinner when I did not see the fellow in a white tie 
 standing before the sideboard, and the two flunkies in plush 
 and silk stockings at either side of the table; and when I 
 perceived that the decanters had taken their departure, and 
 that it was beer I was given to drink, I felt as if I had 
 dined, and was ready to go out and have a smoke in the 
 open air; but a little time, even without any patience, but 
 just time, does it all." 
 
 "Time won't teach a man to live upon nothing." 
 
 "It would be very hard for him if it did; let him begin 
 by having few wants, and work hard to supply means for 
 them." 
 
 "Work hard! Why, sir, if I labored from daylight to 
 dark, I 'd not earn the wages of the humblest peasant, and 
 I 'd not know how to live on it." 
 
 "Well, I have given you all the philosophy in my budget; 
 and to tell you the truth, Gorman, except so far as coming 
 down in the world in spite of myself, I know mighty little 
 about the fine precepts I have been giving you; but this I 
 know, you have a roof over your head here, and you 're 
 heartily welcome to it; and who knows but your aunt 
 may come to terms all the sooner, because she sees you 
 here?" 
 
 "You are very generous to me, and I feel it deeply," said 
 the young man ; but he was almost choked with the words. 
 
 "You have told me already, Gorman, that your aunt gave 
 you no other reason against coming here than that I had not 
 been to call on you ; and I believe you, — believe you thor- 
 oughly; but tell m.e now, with the same frankness, was 
 there nothing passing in your mind, — had you no suspi- 
 cions or misgivings, or something of the same kind, to keep 
 
SAGE ADVICE. 339 
 
 you away? Be candid with me now, and speak it out 
 freely." 
 
 "None, on my honor. I was sorely grieved to be told 
 I must not come, and thought very often of rebelling, so 
 that, indeed, when I did rebel, I was in a measure prepared 
 for the penalty, though scarcely so heavy as this." 
 
 "Don't take it to heart. It will come right yet; every- 
 thing comes right if we give it time, and there 's plenty of 
 time to the fellow who is not five-and-twenty. It 's only 
 the old dogs, like myself, who are always doing their match 
 against time, are in a hobble. To feel that every minute 
 of the clock is something very like three weeks of the 
 almanac, flurries a man when he wants to be cool and col- 
 lected. Put your hat on a peg, and make your home here. 
 If you want to be of use, Kitty will show you scores of 
 things to do about the garden, and we never object to see 
 a brace of snipe at the end of dinner, though there 's nobody 
 cares to shoot them ; and the bog trout — for all their dark 
 color — are excellent catch, and I know you can throw a 
 line. All I say is, do something, and something that takeaj 
 you into the open air. Don't get to lying about in easy-j 
 chairs and reading novels; don't get to singing duets and 
 philandering about with the girls. May I never, if I 'd not. 
 rather find a brandy flask in your pocket than Tennyson's; 
 poems ! " 
 
CHAPTER XL VII. 
 
 REPROOF. 
 
 "Say it out frankly, Kate," cried Nina, as with flashing 
 eyes and heightened color she paced the drawing-room from 
 end to end, with that bold sweeping stride which in moments 
 of passion betrayed her. "Say it out. 1 know perfectly 
 what you are hinting at." 
 
 "I never hint," said the other, gravely; "least of all with 
 those I love." 
 
 "So much the better. I detest an equivoque. If I am 
 to be shot, let me look the fire in the face." 
 
 "There is no question of shooting, at all. I think you are 
 very angry for nothing." 
 
 "Angry for nothing! Do you call that studied coldness 
 you have observed towards me all day yesterday nothing ? 
 Is your ceremonious manner, — exquisitely polite, I will not 
 deny, — is that nothing ? Is your chilling salute when we 
 met, — I half believe you courtesied, — nothing? That you 
 shun me, that you take pains not to keep my company, never 
 to be with me alone, is past denial." 
 
 "And I do not deny it," said Kate, with a voice of calm 
 and quiet meaning. 
 
 "At last, then, I have the avowal. You own that you love 
 me no longer." 
 
 "No, I own nothing of the kind. I love you very dearly; 
 but I see that our ideas of life are so totally unlike, that 
 unless one should bend and conform to the other, we cannot 
 blend our thoughts in that harmony which perfect confidence 
 requires. You are so much above me in many things, so 
 much more cultivated and gifted, — I was going to say 
 civilized, and I believe I might — " 
 
REPROOF. 341 
 
 "Ta^ta — ta," cried Nina, impatiently. ''These flat- 
 teries are very ill-timed." 
 
 "So they would be if they were flatteries; but if you had 
 patience to hear me out, you 'd have learned that I meant a 
 higher flattery for myself." 
 
 "Don't I know it? don't I guess?" cried the Greek. 
 "Have not your downcast eyes told it? and that look of 
 sweet humility that says, ' At least, I am not a flirt ' ? " 
 
 " Nor am I," said Kate, coldly. 
 
 " And I am! Come, now, do confess. You want to say 
 it." 
 
 " With all my heart I wish you were not ! " And Kate's 
 eyes swam as she spoke. 
 
 " And what if I tell you that I know it, — that in the very 
 employment of the arts of what you call coquetry, I am but 
 exercising those powers of pleasing by which men are led to 
 frequent the salon instead of the cafe, and like the society 
 of the Cultivated and refined better than — " 
 
 " No, no, po ! " burst in Kate. " There is no such mock 
 principle in the cas^. You are a flirt because you like the 
 homage it secures you, and because, as you do not believe 
 in such a thing as an honest affection, you have no scruple 
 about trifling with a man's heart." 
 
 " So much for captivating that bold hussar," cried Nina. 
 
 " For the moment I was not thinking of him." 
 
 " Of whom then? " 
 
 " Of that poor Captain Curtis, who has just ridden away." 
 
 "Oh, indeed!" 
 
 "Yes. He has a pretty wife and three nice little girls, 
 and they are the happiest people in the world. They love 
 each other, and love their home, — so, at least, I am told, 
 for I scarcely know them myself." 
 
 " And what have I done with Jiimf" 
 
 " Sent him away sad and doubtful, — very doubtful if the 
 happiness he believed in was the real article after all, and 
 disposed to ask himself how it was that his heart was beat- 
 ing in a new fashion, and that some new sense had been 
 added to his nature, of which he had no inkling before. 
 Sent him away with the notes of a melody floating through 
 his brain, so that the merry laugh of his children will be a 
 
342 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 discord, and such a memory of a soft glance, that his wife's 
 bright look will be meaningless." 
 
 '' And I have done all this? Poor me ! " 
 
 ''Yes, and done it so often, that it leaves no remorse 
 behind it." 
 
 "And the same, I suppose, with the others?" 
 
 "With Mr. Walpole, and Dick, and Mr. O'Shea, and Mr. 
 Atlee, too, when he was here, in their several ways." 
 
 " Oh, in theirs, not in mine, then? " 
 
 " I am but a bungler in my explanation. I wished to say 
 that you adapted your fascinations to the tastes of each." 
 
 ' ' What a siren ! " 
 
 "Well, yes, — what a siren! for they're all in love in 
 some fashion or other ; but I could have forgiven you these, 
 had you spared the married man." 
 
 " So you actually envy that poor prisoner the gleam of 
 light and the breath of cold air that comes between his 
 prison bars, — that one moment of ecstasy that reminds him 
 how he once was free and at large, and no manacles to 
 weigh him down? You will not let him even touch bliss in 
 imagination ? Are you not more cruel than me 9 " 
 
 " This is mere nonsense," said Kate, boldly. " You 
 either believe that man was fooling you^ or that you have 
 sent him away unhappy. Take which of these you like." 
 
 " Can't your rustic nature see that there is a third case, 
 quite different from both, and that Harry Curtis went off 
 believing — " 
 
 " Was he Harry Curtis? " broke in Kate. 
 
 " He was dear Harry when I said good-bye," said Nina, 
 calmly. 
 
 " Oh, then, I give up everything, — I throw up my brief.'* 
 
 " So you ought, for you have lost your cause long ago." 
 
 "Even that poor Donogan was not spared, and Heaven 
 knows he had troubles enough on his head to have pleaded 
 some pity for him." 
 
 " And is there no kind word to say of me, Kate? " 
 
 " Oh, Nina, how ashamed you make me of my violence, 
 when I dare to blame you ! but if I did not love you so 
 dearly I could better bear you should have a fault." 
 
 " I have only one, then? " 
 
REPROOF. 343 
 
 "I know of no great one but this. I mean, I know of 
 none that endangers good nature and right fe^Ung." 
 
 ''And are you so sure that this does? Are you so sure 
 that what you are faulting is not the manner and the way of 
 a world you have not seen? that all these levities, as you 
 would call them, are not the ordinary ware of people whose 
 lives are passed where there is more tolerance and less 
 pain?" 
 
 '' Be serious, Nina, for a moment, and own that it was by 
 intention you were in the approach when Captain Curtis rode 
 away, — that you said something to him, or looked some- 
 thing—perhaps both — on which he got down from his 
 horse and walked beside you for full a mile?" 
 
 " All true," said Nina, calmly. " I confess to every part 
 of it." 
 
 '' I 'd far rather that you said you were sorry for it." 
 
 " But I am not ; I 'm very glad, — I 'm very proud of it. 
 Yes, look as reproachfully as you like, Kate ! * very proud ' 
 was what I said." 
 
 "Then I am indeed sorry," said Kate, growing pale as 
 she spoke. 
 
 "I don't think after all this sharp lecturing of me that 
 you deserve much of my confidence, and if I make you any, 
 Kate, it is not by way of exculpation ; for I do not accept 
 your blame ; it is simply out of caprice — mind that, and 
 that I am not thinking of defending myself." 
 
 '^ I can easily believe that," said Kate, dryly. 
 
 And the other continued : ' ' When Captain Curtis was 
 talking to your father, and discussing the chances of cap- 
 turing Donogan, he twice or thrice mentioned Harper and 
 Fry, — names which somehow seemed familiar to me ; and 
 on thinking the matter over when I went to my room, I 
 opened Donogan's pocket-book, and there found how these 
 names had become known to me. Harper and Fry were 
 tanners, in Cork Street, and theirs was one of the addresses 
 by which, if I had occasion to warn Donogan, I could write 
 to him. On hearing these names from Curtis, it struck me 
 that there might be treachery somewhere. Was it that 
 these men themselves had turned traitors to the cause? or 
 had another betrayed them? Whicliever way the matter 
 
344 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 went, Donogan was evidently in great danger ; for this was 
 one of the places he regarded as perfectly safe. 
 
 ' ' What was to be done ? I dared not asked advice on any 
 side. To reveal the suspicions which were tormenting me 
 required that I should produce this pocket-book, and to 
 whom could I impart this man's secret? I thought of 
 your brother Dick, but he was from home, and even if he 
 had not been, I doubt if I should have told him. I should 
 have come to you, Kate, but that grand rebukeful tone you 
 had taken up this last twenty-four hours repelled me ; and 
 finally, I took counsel with myself. I set off just before 
 Captain Curtis started, to what you have called waylay him 
 in the avenue. 
 
 ''Just below the beech-copse he came up; and then that 
 small flirtation of the drawing-room, which has caused you 
 so much anger and me such a sharp lesson, stood me in 
 good stead, and enabled me to arrest his progress by some 
 chance word or two, and at last so far to interest him that 
 he got down and walked along at my side. I shall not 
 shock you by recalling the little tender ' nothings ' that 
 passed between us, nor dwell on the small mockeries of 
 sentiment which we exchanged, — I hope very harmlessly, — 
 but proceed at once to what I felt my object. He was 
 profuse of his gratitude for what I had done for him with 
 Walpole, and firmly believed that my intercession alone had 
 saved him ; and so I went on to say that the best reparation 
 he could make for his blunder would be some exercise of 
 well-directed activity when occasion should offer. ' Sup- 
 pose, for instance,' said I, ' you could capture this man 
 Donogan ? ' 
 
 " ' The very thing I hope to do,' cried he. ' The train is 
 laid already. One of my constables has a brother in a well- 
 known house in Dublin, the members of which, men of 
 large wealth and good position, have long been suspected of, 
 holding intercourse with the rebels. Through his brother, 
 himself a Fenian, this man has heard that a secret committee 
 will meet at this place on Monday evening next, at which 
 Donogan will be present. Molloy, another Head-Centre, will 
 also be there, and Cummings, who escaped from Carrick- 
 fergus.' I took down all the names, Kate, the moment we 
 
EEPROOF. 345 
 
 parted, and while they were fresh in my memory. ' We '11 
 draw the net on them all/ said he; ' and such a haul has 
 not been made since '98. The rewards alone will amount 
 to some thousands.' It was then I said, ' And is tliere no 
 danger, Harry ? ' " 
 
 "Oh, Nina!" 
 
 "Yes, darling, it was very dreadful, and I felt it so; but 
 somehow one is carried away by a burst of feeling at certain 
 moments, and the shame only comes too late. Of course it 
 was wrong of me to call him Harry, and he, too, with a 
 wife at home, and five little girls, — or three, I forget which, 
 — should never have sworn that he loved me, nor said all 
 that mad nonsense about what he felt in that region where 
 chief constables have their hearts; but I own to great 
 tenderness and a very touching sensibility on either side. 
 Indeed, I may add here, that the really sensitive natures 
 amongst men are never found under forty-five; but for 
 genuine uncalculating affection, for the sort of devotion that 
 flings consequences to the winds, I say, give me fifty-eight 
 or sixty." 
 
 " Nina, do not make me hate you," said Kate, gravely. 
 
 " Certainly not, dearest, if a little hypocrisy will avert 
 such a misfortune. And so to return to my narrative, I 
 learned as accurately as a gentleman so much in love could 
 condescend to inform me, of all the steps taken to secure 
 Donogan at this meeting, or to capture him later on if he 
 should try to make his escape by sea." 
 
 " You mean, then, to write to Donogan and apprise him 
 of his danger? " 
 
 "It is done. I wrote the moment I got back here. I 
 addressed him as Mr. James Bredin, care of Jonas Mullory, 
 Esq., 41 New Street, which was the first address in the list 
 he gave me. I told him of the peril he ran, and what his 
 friends were also threatened by, and I recounted the absurd 
 seizure of Mr. Walpole's effects here ; and, last of all, what 
 a dangerous rival he had in this Captain Curtis, who was 
 ready to desert wife, children, and the constabulary to- 
 morrow for me ; and assuring him confidentially that I was 
 well worth greater sacrifices of better men, I signed my 
 initials in Greek letters." 
 
346 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Marvellous caution and great discretion," said Kate, 
 solemnly. 
 
 " And now come over to the drawing-room, where I have 
 promised to sing for Mr. O'Shea some little ballad that he 
 dreamed over all the night through ; and then there 's some- 
 thing else, — what is it? what is it? " 
 
 " How should I know, Nina? I was not present at your 
 arrangement." 
 
 " Never mind ; I '11 remember it presently. It will come 
 to my recollection while I 'm singing that song." 
 
 *' If emotion is not too much for you." 
 
 '' Just so, Kate, — sensibilities permitting ; and, indeed,'"' 
 she said, " I remember it already. It was luncheon." 
 
CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE. 
 
 "Is it true they have captured Donogan?" said Nina, 
 coming hurriedly into the library, where Walpole was busily 
 engaged with his correspondence, and sat before a table 
 covered not only with official documents, but a number of 
 printed placards and handbills. 
 
 He looked up, surprised at her presence, and by the tone 
 of familiarity in her question, for which he was in no way 
 prepared, and for a second or two actually stared at without 
 answering her. 
 
 ' ' Can't you tell me ? Are they correct in saying he has 
 been caught ?" cried she, impatiently. 
 
 "Very far from it. There are the police returns up to 
 last night from Meath, Kildare, and Dublin; and though 
 he was seen at Naas, passed some hours in Dublin, and 
 actually attended a night meeting at Kells, all trace of him 
 has been since lost, and he has completely baffled us. 
 By the Viceroy's orders, I am now doubling the reward 
 for his apprehension, and am prepared to offer a free 
 pardon to any who shall give information about him, who 
 may not actually have comitted a felony." 
 
 "Is he so very dangerous, then? " 
 
 " Every man who is so daring is dangerous here. The 
 people have a sort of idolatry for reckless courage. It is not 
 only that he has ventured to come back to the country where 
 his life is sacrificed to the law, but he declares openly he is 
 ready to offer himself as a representative for an Irish county, 
 and to test in his own person whether the English will have 
 the temerity to touch the man, — the choice of the Irish 
 people." 
 
 "He is bold," said she, resolutely. 
 
348 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " And I trust he will pay for his boldness ! Our law offi- 
 cers are prepared to treat him as a felon, irrespective of all 
 claim to his character as a Member of Parliament." 
 
 " The danger will not deter him." 
 
 "You think so?" 
 
 *' I know it,'^ was the calm reply. 
 
 *' Indeed," said he, bending a steady look at her. " What 
 opportunities, might I ask, have you had to form this same 
 opinion ? " 
 
 '' Are not the public papers full of him? Have we not an 
 almost daily record of his exploits? Do not your own re- 
 wards for his capture impart an almost fabulous value to his 
 life?" 
 
 "His portrait, too, may lend some interest to his story," 
 said he, with a half-sneering smile. " They say this is very 
 like him." And he handed a photograph as he spoke. 
 
 "This was done in New York," said she, turning to the 
 back of the card, the better to hide an emotion she could 
 not entirely repress. 
 
 "Yes, done by a brother Fenian, long since in our pay." 
 
 " How base all that sounds ! how I detest such treachery ! " 
 
 "How deal with treason without it? Is it like him?" 
 asked he, artlessly. 
 
 " How should I know? " said she, in a slightly hurried tone. 
 " It is not like the portrait in the ' Illustrated News.' " 
 
 " I wonder which is the more like," added he, thoughtfully, 
 " and I fervently hope we shall soon know. There is not a 
 man he confides in who has not engaged to betray him." 
 
 "I trust you feel proud of your achievement." 
 
 " No, not proud, but very anxious for its success. The 
 perils of this country are too great for mere sensibilities. 
 He who would extirpate a terrible disease must not fear the 
 knife." 
 
 " Not if he even kill the patient? " asked she. 
 
 "That might happen, and would be to be deplored," said 
 he, in the same unmoved tone. "But might I ask, whence 
 has come all this interest for this cause, and how have you 
 learned so much sympathy with these people ? " 
 
 " I read the newspapers," said she, dryly. 
 
 " You must read those of only one color, then," said he, 
 
HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE. 349 
 
 slyly ; ''or perhaps it is the tone of comment you hear about 
 you. Are your sentiments such as you daily listen to from 
 Lord Kilgobbin and his family ? " 
 
 " I don't know that they are. I suspect I'm more of a 
 rebel than he is ; but I '11 ask him if you wish it." 
 
 " On no account, I entreat you. It would compromise me 
 seriously to hear such a discussion even in jest. Remember 
 who I am, mademoiselle, and the office I hold." 
 
 " Your great frankness, Mr. Walpole, makes me some- 
 times forget both," said she, with well-acted humility. 
 
 " I wish it would do something more," said he, eagerly; 
 " I wish it would inspire a little emulation, and make you 
 deal as openly with me as I long to do with you" 
 
 " It might embarrass you very much, perhaps." 
 
 "As how?" asked he, with a touch of tenderness in his 
 voice. 
 
 For a second or two she made no answer, and then, falter- 
 ing at each word, she said, " What if some rebel leader, — 
 this man Donogan, for instance, — drawn towards you by 
 some secret magic of trustfulness, — moved by, I know 
 not what need of your sympathy, — for there is such a 
 craving void now a^nd then felt in the heart, — should tell 
 you some secret thought of his nature, — something that he 
 could utter alone to himself, — would you bring yourself to 
 use it against him ? Could you turn round and say, — ' I 
 have your inmost soul in my keeping. You are mine now, 
 — mine — mine ' ? " 
 
 " Do I understand you aright? " said he, earnestly. " Is it 
 just possible, even possible, that you have that to confide to 
 me which would show that you regard me as a dear friend ? " 
 
 "Oh! Mr. Walpole," burst she out, passionately, "do 
 not by the greater power of your intellect seek the mastery 
 over mine. Let the loneliness and isolation of my life here 
 rather appeal to you to pity than suggest the thought of in- 
 fluencing and dominating me." 
 
 " Would that I might! What would I not give or do to 
 have that power that you speak of ! " 
 
 " Is this true? " said she. 
 
 "It is." 
 
 *' Will you swear it? " 
 
350 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Most solemnly." 
 
 She paused for a moment, and a slight tremor shook her 
 mouth; but whether the motion expressed a sentiment of 
 acute pain or a movement of repressed sarcasm, it was very 
 difficult to determine. 
 
 "What is it, then, that you would swear?" asked she, 
 calmly and even coldly. 
 
 " Swear that I have no hope so high, no ambition so great, 
 as to win your heart." 
 
 "Indeed! And that other heart that you have won, — 
 what is to become of it? " 
 
 " Its owner has recalled it. In fact, it was never in my 
 keeping but as a loan." 
 
 " How strange ! At least, how strange to me this sounds. 
 I, in my ignorance, thought that people pledged their very 
 lives in these bargains." 
 
 " So it ought to be, and so it would be, if this world were 
 not a web of petty interests and mean ambitions ; and these, 
 I grieve to say, will find their way into hearts that should be 
 the home of very different sentiments. It was of this order 
 was that compact with my cousin, — for I will speak openly 
 to you, knowing it is her to whom you allude. We were to 
 have been married. It was an old engagement. Our friends 
 — that is, I believe, the way to call them — liked it. They 
 thought it a good thing for each of us. Indeed, making the 
 dependants of a good family intermarry is an economy of 
 patronage, — the same plank rescues two from drowning. I 
 believe — that is, I fear — we accepted all this in the same 
 spirit. We were to love each other as much as we could, 
 and our relations were to do their best for us." 
 
 " And now it is all over? " 
 
 " All — and forever." 
 
 " How came this about? " 
 
 " At first by a jealousy about you." 
 
 " A jealousy about me ! You surely never dared — " and 
 here her voice trembled with real passion, while her eyes 
 flashed angrily. 
 
 "No, no. I am guiltless in the matter. It was that cur 
 Atlee made the mischief. In a moment of weak trustfulness 
 I sent him over to Wales to assist my uncle in his corre- 
 
HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE. 351 
 
 spondence. He, of course, got to know Lady Maude Bick- 
 erstaffe ; by what arts he ingratiated himself into her confi- 
 dence I cannot say. Indeed, I had trusted that the fellow's 
 vulgarity would form an impassable barrier between them, 
 and prevent all intimacy; but, apparently, I was wrong. 
 He seems to have been the companion of her rides and 
 drives, and, under the pretext of doing some commissions 
 for her in the bazaars of Constantinople, he got to corre- 
 spond with her. So artful a fellow would well know what 
 to make of such a privilege." 
 
 ":A.nd is he your successor now?" asked she, with a look 
 of almost undisguised insolence. 
 
 "Scarcely that," said he, with a supercilious smile. "I 
 think, if you had ever seen my cousin, you would scarcely 
 have asked the question." 
 
 "But I have seen her. I saw her at the Odescalchi Palace 
 at Rome. I remember the stare she was pleased to bestow 
 on me as she swept past me. I remember more, her words 
 as she asked, ' Is this your Titian girl I have heard so 
 much of?' " 
 
 "And may hear more of," muttered he, almost uncon- 
 sciously. 
 
 "Yes, even that, too; but not, perhaps, in the sense you 
 mean." Then, as if correcting herself, she went on, "It 
 was a bold ambition of Mr. Atlee. I must say I like the 
 very daring of it." 
 
 " jye never dared it; take my word for it." 
 
 An insolent laugh was her first reply. "How little you 
 men know of each other, and how less than little you know 
 of us! You sneer at the people who are moved by sudden 
 impulse, but you forget it is the squall upsets the boat." 
 
 "I believe I can follow what you mean. You would 
 imply that my cousin's breach with me might have impelled 
 h^ to listen to Atlee ? " 
 
 "Not so much that, as by establishing himself as her 
 confidant he got the key of her heart, and let himself in as 
 he pleased." 
 
 "I suspect he found little to interest him there." 
 
 "The insufferable insolence of that speech! Can you men 
 never be brought to see that we are not all alike to each of 
 
352 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 you; that our natures have their separate watchwords, and 
 that the soul which would vibrate with tenderness to this, 
 is to that a dead and senseless thing, with no trace nor 
 touch of feeling about it? " 
 
 ''I only believe this in part." 
 
 "Believe it wholly, then, or own that you know nothing 
 of love ; no more than do those countless thousands who go 
 through life and never taste its real ecstasy, nor its real 
 sorrow; who accept convenience, or caprice, or flattered 
 vanity as its counterfeit, and live out the delusion in lives 
 of discontent. You have done wrong to break with your 
 cousin. It is clear to me you suited each other." 
 
 •'This is sarcasm." 
 
 "If it is, I am sorry for it. I meant it for sincerity. In 
 your career, ambition is everything. The woman that could 
 aid you on your road would be tho real helpmate. She who 
 would simply cross your piith by her sympathies, or her 
 affections, would be a mere embarrassment. Take the very 
 case before us. Would not Lady Maude point out to you 
 how, by the capture of this rebel, you might so aid your 
 friends as to establish a claim for recompense? Would she 
 not impress you with the necessity of showing how your 
 activity redounded to the credit of your party? She would 
 neither interpose with ill-timed appeals to your pity or a 
 misplaced sympathy. She would help the politician, while 
 another might hamper the man." 
 
 "All that might be true if the game of political life were 
 played, as it seems to be, on the surface, and my cousin 
 was exactly the sort of woman to use ordinary faculties with 
 ability and acuteness; but there are scores of things in 
 which her interference would have beeh hurtful, and her 
 secrecy dubious. I will give you an instance, and it will 
 serve to show my implicit confidence in yourself. Now 
 with respect to this man, Donogan, there is nothing we 
 wish less than to take him. To capture means to try ; to 
 try means to hang him ; and how much better, or safer, or 
 stronger are we when it is done? These fellows, right or 
 wrong, represent opinions that are never controverted by 
 the scaffold; and every man who dies for his convictions 
 leaves a thousand disciples who never believed in him 
 
HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE. 353 
 
 before. It is only because he braves us that we pursue him, 
 and in the face of our opponents and Parliament we cannot 
 do less. So that while we are offering large rewards for his 
 apprehension we would willingly give double the sum to 
 know he had escaped. Talk of the supremacy of the Law; 
 the more you assert that here, the more ungovernable is 
 this country by a Party. An active Attorney-General is 
 another word for three more regiments in Ireland." 
 
 ''I follow you with some difficulty; but I see that you 
 would like this man to get away, and how is that to be 
 done?" 
 
 ''Easily enough, when once he knows that it will be safe 
 for him to go north. He naturally fears the Orangemen 
 of the northern counties. They will, however, do nothing 
 without the police, and the police have got their orders 
 throughout Antrim and Derry. Here, — on this strip of 
 paper, — here are the secret instructions : ' To George 
 Dargan, Chief Constable, Letterkenny district. Private and 
 confidential. — It is, for many reasons, expedient that the 
 convict Donogan, on a proper understanding that he will not 
 return to Ireland, should be suffered to escape. If you are, 
 therefore, in a position to extort a pledge from him to this 
 extent, and it should be explicit and beyond all cavil, you 
 will, taking due care not to compromise your authority in 
 your office, aid him to leave the country, even to the extent 
 of moneyed assistance.' To this are appended directions 
 how he is to proceed to carry out these instructions ; what 
 he may, and what he may not do, with whom he may seek 
 for co-operation, and where he is to maintain a guarded and 
 careful secrecy. Now, in telling you all this. Mademoiselle 
 Kostalergi, I have given you the strongest assurance in my 
 power of the unlimited trust I have in you. I see how the 
 questions that agitate this country interest you. I read 
 the eagerness with which you watch them, but I want you to 
 see more. I want you to see that the men who purpose to 
 themselves the great task of extricating Ireland from her 
 difficulties must be politicians in the highest sense of the 
 word, and that you should see in us statesmen of an order 
 that can weigh human passions and human emotions ; and 
 see that hope and fear, and terror and gratitude, sway the 
 
 23 
 
354 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 hearts of men who, to less observant eyes, seem to have no 
 
 place in their natures but for rebellion. That this mode of 
 
 governing Ireland is the one charm to the Celtic heart, all 
 
 the Tory rule of the last fifty years, with its hangings and 
 
 banishments and other terrible blunders, will soon convince 
 
 you. The priest alone has felt the pulse of this people, and 
 
 j we are the only ministers of England who have taken the 
 
 i priest into our confidence. I own to you I claim some 
 
 I credit for myself in this discovery. It was in long reflect- 
 
 1 ing over the ills of Ireland that I came to see that where 
 
 1 the malady has so much in its nature that is sensational and 
 
 I emotional, so must the remedy be sensational too. The 
 
 ^Tories were ever bent on extirpating; we devote ourselves 
 
 to ' healing measures. ' Do you follow me ? " 
 
 "I do," said she, thoughtfully. 
 
 "Do I interest you?" asked he, more tenderly. 
 
 "Intensely," was the reply. 
 
 "Oh, if I could but think that/ If I could bring myself 
 to believe that the day would come, not only to secure your 
 interest, but your aid and your assistance in this great task ! 
 I have long sought the opportunity to tell j^ou that we, who 
 hold the destinies of our people in our keeping, are not 
 inferior to our great trust ; that we are not mere creatures 
 of a state department, small deities of the Olympus of office, 
 but actual statesmen and rulers. Fortune has given me 
 the wished-for moment, let it complete my happiness ; let it 
 tell me that you see in this noble work one worthy of your 
 genius and your generosity, and that you would accept me 
 as a fellow-laborer in the cause." 
 
 The fervor which he threw into the utterance of these 
 words contrasted strongly and strangely with the words 
 themselves; so unlike the declaration of a lover's passion. 
 
 "I do — not — know," said she, falteringly. 
 
 "What is that you do not know?" asked he with tender 
 eagerness. 
 
 "I do not know if I understand you aright, and I do not 
 know what answer I should give you." 
 
 "Will not your heart tell you? " 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " You will not crush me with the thought that there is no 
 pleading for me there." 
 
HOW MEN IN OFFICE MAKE LOVE. 355 
 
 "If you had desired in honesty my regard, you should not 
 have prejudiced me. You began here by enlisting my sym- 
 pathies in your task; you told me of your ambitions. I 
 like these ambitions." 
 
 "Why not share them?'* cried he, passionately. 
 
 " You seem to forget what you ask. A woman does not 
 give her heart as a man joins a party or an administration. 
 It is no question of an advantage based upon a compromise. 
 There is no sentiment of gratitude, or recompense, or reward 
 in the gift. She simply gives that which is no longer hers 
 to retain. She trusts to what her mind will not stop to 
 question; she goes where she cannot help but follow." 
 
 "How immeasurably greater your every word makes the 
 prize of your love ! " 
 
 "It is in no vanity that I say, I know it," said she, 
 calmly. "Let us speak no more on this now." 
 
 "But you will not refuse to listen to me, Nina? " 
 
 "I will read you if you write to me; " and with a wave of 
 good-bye she slowly left the room. 
 
 "She is my master, even at my own game," said Walpole, 
 as he sat down and rested his head between his hands. 
 " Still, she is mistaken; I can write just as vaguely as I can 
 speak, and if I could not, it would have cost me my freedom 
 this many a day. With such a woman one might venture 
 high; but Heaven help him when he ceased to climb the 
 mountain ! " 
 
CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 A CUP OF TEA. 
 
 It was so rare an event of late for Nina to seek her cousin 
 in her own room that Kate was somewhat surprised to see 
 Nina enter with all her old ease of manner, and, flinging 
 away her hat carelessly, say, "Let me have a cup of tea, 
 dearest, for I want to have a clear head and a calm mind for 
 at least the next half- hour." 
 
 "It is almost time to dress for dinner, especially for you, 
 Nina, who make a careful toilette." 
 
 "Perhaps I shall make less to-day; perhaps not go down 
 to dinner at all. Do you know, child, I have every reason 
 for agitation, and maiden bashfulness, besides? Do you 
 know I have had a proposal — a proposal in all form — from 
 — but you shall guess whom." 
 
 "Mr. O'Shea, of course." 
 
 "No, not Mr. O'Shea, though I am almost prepared for 
 such a step on his part; nor from your brother Dick, who 
 has been falling in and out of love with me for the last 
 three months or more. My present conquest is the supremely 
 arrogant, but now condescending, Mr. Walpole, who, for 
 reasons of state and exigencies of party, has been led to 
 believe that a pretty wife, with a certain amount of natural 
 astuteness, might advance his interests, and tend to his 
 promotion in public life; and with his old instincts as a 
 gambler, he is actually ready to risk his fortunes on a single 
 card, and I, the portionless Greek girl, with about the 
 same advantages of family as of fortune, — I am to be that 
 queen of trumps on which he stands to win. And now, dar- 
 ling, the cup of tea, the cup of tea, if you want to hear 
 more." 
 
A CUP OF TEA. 357 
 
 While Kate was busy arranging the cups of a little tea- 
 service that did duty in her dressing-room, Nina walked 
 impatiently to and fro, talking with rapidity all the time. 
 
 ''The man is a greater fool than I thought him, and mis- 
 takes his native weakness of mind for originality. If you 
 had heard the imbecile nonsense he talked to me for 
 political shrewdness; and when he had shown me what a 
 very poor creature he was, he made me the offer of himself ! 
 This was so far honest and above-board. It was saying 
 in so many words, ' You see, I am a bankrupt. ' Now, I 
 don't like bankrupts, either of mind or money. Could he 
 not have seen that he who seeks my favor must sue in 
 another fashion?" 
 
 " And so you refused him ? " said Kate, as she poured out 
 her tea. 
 
 "Far from it; I rather listened to his suit. I was so far 
 curious to hear what he could plead in his behalf that I bade 
 him write it. Yes, dearest ; it was a maxim of that very 
 acute man my papa, that, when a person makes you any 
 dubious proposition in words, you oblige him to commit it 
 to writing. Not necessaril}^ to be used against him after- 
 wards, but for this reason, — and I can almost quote my 
 papa's phrase on the occasion, — in the homage of his 
 self-love a man will rarely write himself such a knave as' he 
 will dare to own when he is talking, and in that act of weak- 
 ness is the gain of the other party to the compact." 
 
 "I don't think I understand jou." 
 
 ''I 'm sure you do not; and you have put no sugar in my 
 tea, which is worse. Do you mean to say that your clock 
 is right, and that it is already nigh seven? Oh, dear! and 
 I, who have not told you one half of my news, I must go 
 and dress. I have a certain green silk with white roses 
 which I mean to wear; and with my hair in that crimson 
 Neapolitan net, it is a toilette a la minute." 
 
 "You know how it becomes you," said Kate, half slyly. 
 
 "Of course I do, or in this critical moment of my life I 
 should not risk it. It will have its own suggestive meaning, 
 too. It will recall ce cher Cecil to days at Baia, or wan- 
 dering along the coast at Portici. I have known a frag- 
 ment of lace, a flower, a few bars of a song, do more to link 
 
358 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 the broken chain of memory than scores of more labored 
 recollections; and then these little paths that lead you back 
 are so simple, so free from all premeditation. Don't you 
 think so, dear?" 
 
 "I do not know, and if it were not rude, I 'd say I do not 
 care." 
 
 "If my cup of tea were not so good, I should be offended 
 and leave the room after such a speech. But you do not 
 know, you could not guess, the interesting things that I 
 could tell you," cried she, with an almost breathless rapidity. 
 "Just imagine that deep statesman, that profound plotter, 
 telling me that they actually did not wish to capture Dono- 
 gan ; that they would rather that he should escape ! " 
 
 "He told you this?" 
 
 "He did more; he showed me the secret instructions to 
 his police creatures, — I forget how they are called, — show- 
 ing what they might do to connive at his escape, and how 
 they should — if they could — induce him to give some 
 written pledge to leave Ireland forever." 
 
 "Oh, this is impossible!" cried Kate. 
 
 "I could prove it to you if I had not just sent off the veri- 
 table bit of writing by post. Yes, stare and look horrified 
 if you like ; it is all true. I stole the piece of paper with 
 the secret directions, and sent it straight to Donogan, under 
 cover to Archibald Casey, Esq., 9 Lower Gardner Street, 
 Dublin." 
 
 "How could you have done such a thing? " 
 
 "Say, how could I have done otherwise. Donogan now 
 knows whether it will become him to sign this pact with the 
 enemy. If he deem his life worth having at the price, it 
 is well that I should know it." 
 
 "It is, then, of yourself you were thinking all the while." 
 
 "Of myself and of him. I do not say I love this man; 
 but I do say his conduct now shall decide if he be worth 
 loving. There 's the bell for dinner. You shall hear all I 
 have to say this evening. What an interest it gives to life, 
 even this much of plot and peril ! Short of being with the 
 rebel himself, Kate, and sharing his dangers, I know of 
 nothing could have given me such delight." 
 
 She turned back as she left the door, and said, "Make 
 
A CUP OF TEA. 359 
 
 Mr. Walpole take you down to dinner to-day ; I shall take 
 Mr. O' Shea's arm, or your brother's." 
 
 The address of Archibald Casey, which Nina had used on 
 this occasion, was that of a well-known solicitor in Dublin, 
 whose Conservative opinions placed him above all suspicion 
 or distrust. One of his clients, however, — a certain Mr. 
 Maher, — had been permitted to have letters occasionally 
 addressed to him to Casey's care; and Maher, being an 
 old college friend of Donogan's, afforded him this mode of 
 receiving letters in times of unusual urgency or danger. 
 Maher shared very slightly in Donogan's opinions. He 
 thought the men of the National party not only dangerous 
 in themselves, but that they afforded a reason for many of 
 the repressive laws which Englishmen passed with reference 
 to Ireland. A friendship of early life, when both these 
 young men were college students, had overcome such scru- 
 ples, and Donogan had been permitted to have many letters 
 marked simply with a D., which were sent under cover to 
 Maher. This facility had, however, been granted so far 
 back as '47, and had not been renewed in the interval, 
 during which time the Archibald Casey of that period had 
 died, and been succeeded by a son with the same name as 
 his father. 
 
 When Nina, on looking over Donogan's note-book, came 
 upon this address, she saw, also, some almost illegible 
 words, which implied that it was only to be employed as the 
 last resort, or had been so used, — a phrase she could not 
 exactly determine what it meant. The present occasion, so 
 emergent in every way, appeared to warrant both haste and 
 security; and so, under cover to S. Maher, she wrote to 
 Donogan in these words : — 
 
 "I send you the words in the original handwriting, of the instruc- 
 tions with regard to you. You will do what your honor and your 
 conscience dictate. Do not write to me; the public papers will 
 inform me what your decision has been, and I shall be satisfied, 
 however it incline. I rely upon you to burn the enclosure." 
 
 A suit-at-law, in which Casey acted as Maher's attorney 
 at this period, required that the letters addressed to his 
 house for Maher should be opened and read; and though the 
 
360 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 letter D.. on the outside might have suggested a caution, 
 Casey either overlooked or misunderstood it, and broke the 
 seal. Not knowing what to think of this document, which 
 was without signature, and had no clew to the writer except 
 the post-mark of Kilgobbin, Casey hastened to lay the letter, 
 as it stood, before the barrister who conducted Maher's 
 cause, and to ask his advice. The Right Hon. Paul Harti- 
 gan was an ex- Attorney-General of the Tory party, — a 
 zealous, active, but somewhat rash member of his party; 
 still in the House, a Member for Mallow, and far more 
 eager for the return of his friends to power than the great 
 man who dictated the tactics of the Opposition, and who 
 with more of responsibility could calculate the chances of 
 success. 
 
 Paul Hartigan's estimate of the Whigs was such that it 
 would have in no wise astonished him to discover that Mr. 
 Gladstone was in close correspondence with O'Donovan 
 Rossa, or that Chichester Fortescue had been sworn in as a 
 Head-Centre. That the whole Cabinet were secretly Papists, 
 and held weekly confession at the feet of Dr. Manning, he 
 was prepared to prove. He did not vouch for Mr. Lowe; 
 but he could produce the form of scapular worn by Mr. 
 Gladstone, and had a fac-simile of the scourge by which Mr. 
 Cardwell diurnally chastened his natural instincts. 
 
 If, then, he expressed but small astonishment at this 
 "traffic of the Government with rebellion," for so he called 
 it, he lost no time in endeavoring to trace the writer of the 
 letter, and ascertaining, so far as he might, the authenticity 
 of the enclosure. 
 
 "It 's all true, Casey," said he, a few days after his 
 receipt of the papers. "The instructions are written by 
 Cecil Walpole, the private secretary of Lord Danesbury. 
 I have obtained several specimens of his writing. There is 
 no attempt at disguise or concealment in this. I have 
 learned, too, that the police-constable Dargan is one of 
 their most trusted agents ; and the only thing now to find 
 out is, who is the writer of the letter ; for, up to this, all 
 we know is, the hand is a woman's." 
 
 Now it chanced that when Mr. Hartigan — who had taken 
 great pains and bestowed much time to learn the story of the 
 
A CUP OF TEA. 361 
 
 night attack on Kilgobbin, and wished to make the presence 
 of Mr. Walpole on the scene the ground of a question in 
 Parliament — had consulted the leader of the Opposition on 
 the subject, he had met not only a distinct refusal of aid, 
 but something very like a reproof for his ill-advised zeal. 
 The Honorable Paul, not for the first time disposed to dis- 
 trust the political loyalty that differed with his own ideas, 
 now declared openly that he would not confide this great 
 disclosure to the lukewarm advocacy of Mr. Disraeli; he 
 would himself lay it before the House, and stand or fall by 
 the result. 
 
 If the men who " stand or fall " by any measure were 
 counted, it is to be feared that they usually would be found 
 not only in the category of the latter, but that they very 
 rarely rise again, so very few are the matters which can be 
 determined without some compromise, and so rare are the 
 political questions which comprehend a distinct principle. 
 
 What warmed the Hartigan ardor, and, indeed, chafed it 
 to a white heat on this occasion, was to see by the public 
 papers that Daniel Donogan had been fixed on by the men 
 of King's County as the popular candidate, and a public 
 meeting held at Kilbeggan to declare that the man who 
 should oppose him at the hustings should be pronounced the 
 enemy of Ireland. To show that while this man was adver- 
 tised in the "Hue and Cry," with an immense reward for 
 his apprehension, he was in secret protected by the Govern- 
 ment, who actually condescended to treat with him ; what an 
 occasion would this afford for an attack that would revive 
 the memories of Grattan's scorn and Curran's sarcasm, and 
 declare to the senate of England that the men who led them 
 were unworthy guardians of the national honor! 
 
CHAPTER L. 
 
 CROSS PURPOSES. 
 
 Whether Walpole found some peculiar difficulty in commit- 
 ting his intentions to writing, or whether the press of busi- 
 ness which usually occupied his mornings served as an 
 excuse, or whether he was satisfied with the progress of his 
 suit by his personal assiduities, is not easy to say ; but his 
 attentions to Mademoiselle Kostalergi had now assumed 
 the form which prudent mothers are wont to call "serious," 
 and had already passed into that stage where small jeal- 
 ousies begin, and little episodes of anger and discontent are 
 admitted as symptoms of the complaint. 
 
 In fact, he had got to think himself privileged to remon- 
 strate against this, and to dictate that, — a state, be it 
 observed, which, whatever its effect upon the " lady of his 
 love," makes a man particularly odious to the people around 
 him; and he is singularly fortunate if it make him not 
 ridiculous also. 
 
 The docile or submissive was not the remarkable element 
 in Nina's nature. She usually resisted advice, and resented 
 anything like dictation from any quarter. Indeed, they who 
 knew her best saw that, however open to casual influences, a 
 direct show of guidance was sure to call up all her spirit of 
 opposition. It was, then, a matter of actual astonishment 
 to all to perceive not only how quietly and patiently she 
 accepted Walpole' s comments and suggestions, but how 
 implicitly she seemed to obey them. 
 
 All the little harmless freedoms of manner with Dick 
 Kearney and O'Shea were now completely given up. No 
 more was there between them that interchange of light 
 "persiflage" which, presupposing some subject of common 
 interest, is in itself a ground of intimacy. 
 
CROSS PURPOSES. 363 
 
 She ceased to sing the songs that were their favorites. 
 Her walks in the garden after breakfast, where her ready 
 wit and genial pleasantry used to bring her a perfect troop 
 of followers, were abandoned. The little projects of daily 
 pleasure, hitherto her especial province, were changed for 
 a calm subdued demeanor which, though devoid of all de- 
 pression, wore the impress of a certain thoughtfuluess and 
 seriousness. 
 
 No man was less observant than old Kearney; and yet 
 even he saw the change at last, and asked Kate what it 
 might mean. "She is not ill, I hope," said he; "or is our 
 humdrum life too wearisome to her?" 
 
 "I do not suspect either," said Kate, slowly. "I rather 
 believe that as Mr. Walpole has paid her certain attentions, 
 she has made the changes in her manner in deference to 
 some wishes of his." 
 
 "He wants her to be more English, perhaps," said he, 
 sarcastically. 
 
 "Perhaps so." 
 
 "Well, she is not born one of us, but she is like us all 
 the same; and I'll be sorely grieved if she'll give up her 
 light-heartedness and her pleasantry to win that cockney." 
 
 "I think she has won the cockney already, sir." 
 
 A long low whistle was his reply. At last he said, "I 
 suppose it 's a very grand conquest, and what the world calls 
 * an elegant match;' but may I never see Easter, if I 
 would n't rather she 'd marry a fine dashing young fellow 
 over six feet high, like O'Shea there, than one of your gold- 
 chain-and-locket young gentlemen who smile where they 
 ought to laugh, and pick their way through life as a man 
 crosses a stream on stepping-stones." 
 
 "Maybe she does not like Mr. O'Shea, sir." 
 
 "And do you think she likes the other 'man? or is it any- 
 thing else than one of those mercenary attachments that you 
 young ladies understand better, far better, than the most 
 worldly-minded father or mother of us all ? " 
 
 "Mr. Walpole has not, I believe, any fortune, sir. There 
 is nothing very dazzling in his position nor his prospects." 
 
 "No. Not amongst his own set, nor with his own people; 
 he is small enough there, I grant you ; but when he comes 
 
364 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 down to ours, Kitty, we think him a grandee of Spain ; and 
 if he was married into the family, we 'd get off all his noble 
 relations by heart, and soon start talking of our aunt. Lady 
 Sueh-a-one, and Lord Somebody else, that was our first 
 cousin, till our neighbors would nearly die out of pure 
 spite. Sitting down in one's poverty, and thinking over 
 one's grand relations, is for all the world like Paddy eating 
 his potatoes, and pointing at the red-herring; even the look 
 of what he dare not taste flavors his meal." 
 
 "At least, sir, you have found an excuse for our 
 conduct." 
 
 " Because we are all snobs, Kitty ; because there is not a 
 bit of honesty or manliness in our nature; and because our 
 women, that need not be bargaining or borrowing, — 
 neither pawnbrokers nor usurers, — are just as vulgar- 
 minded as ourselves; and now that we have given twenty 
 millions to get rid of slavery, like to show how they can 
 keep it up in the old country, just out of defiance." 
 
 "If you disapprove of Mr. Walpole, sir, I believe it is 
 full time you should say so.'* 
 
 "I neither approve nor disapprove of him. I don't well 
 know whether I have any right to do either, — I mean so far 
 as to influence her choice. He belongs to a sort of men I 
 know as little about as I do of the Choctaw Indians. They 
 have lives and notions and ways all unlike ours. The 
 world is so civil to them that it prepares everything to their 
 taste. If they want to shoot, the birds are cooped up in a 
 cover, and only let fly when they 're ready. When they fish, 
 the salmon are kept prepared to be caught; and if they 
 make love, the young lady is just as ready to rise to the 
 fly, and as willing to be bagged as either. Thank God, 
 my darling, with all our barbarism, we have not come to 
 that in Ireland." 
 
 "Here comes Mr. Walpole now, sir; and, if I read his 
 face aright, he has something of importance to say to 
 you." 
 
 Kate had barely time to leave the room as Walpole came 
 forward with an open telegram and a mass of papers in his 
 hand. 
 
 "May I have a few moments of conversation with you? " 
 
CROSS PURPOSES. 365 
 
 said he ; and in the tone of his words, and a certain gravity 
 in his manner, Kearney thought he could perceive what the 
 communication portended. 
 
 "I am at your orders," said Kearney, and he placed a 
 chair for the other. 
 
 " An incident has befallen my life here, Mr. Kearney, 
 which, I grieve to say, may not only color the whole of my 
 future career, but not impossibly prove the barrier to my 
 pursuit of public life." 
 
 Kearney stared at him as he finished speaking, and the 
 two men sat fixedly gazing on each other. 
 
 " It is, I hasten to own, the one unpleasant, the one, the 
 only one, disastrous event of a visit full of the happiest 
 memories of my life. Of your generous and graceful hos- 
 pitality, I cannot say half what I desire — " 
 
 " Say nothing about my hospitality," said Kearney, 
 whose irritation as to what the other called a disaster left 
 him no place for any other sentiment; "but just tell me 
 why you count this a misfortune." 
 
 " I call a misfortune, sir, what may not only depose me 
 from my office and my station, but withdraw entirely from 
 me the favor and protection of my uncle, Lord Danesbury." 
 
 "Then why the devil do you do it?" cried Kearney, 
 angrily. 
 
 " Wh}^ do I do what, sir? I am not aware of any action 
 of mine you should question with such energy." 
 
 "I mean, if it only tends to ruin your prospects and 
 disgust your family, why do you persist, sir? I was going 
 to say more, and ask with what face you presume to come 
 and tell these things to meV* 
 
 " I am really unable to understand you, sir." 
 
 "Mayhap, we are both of us in the same predicament," 
 cried Kearney, as he wiped his brow in proof of his con- 
 fusion. 
 
 " Had you accorded me a very little patience, I might, 
 perhaps, have explained myself." 
 
 Not trusting himself with a word, Kearney nodded, and 
 the other went on: "The post this morning brought me, 
 among other things, these two newspapers, with penmarks 
 in the margin to direct my attention. This is the ' Lily 
 
366 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 of Londonderry,' a wild Orange print; this, the 'Banner 
 of Ulster,' a journal of the same complexion. Here is 
 what the ' Lily ' says : ' Our county member, Sir Jonas 
 Gettering, is now in a position to call the attention of Par- 
 liament to a document which will distinctly show how her 
 Majesty's Ministers are not only in close correspondence 
 with the leaders of Fenianism, but that Irish rebellion 
 receives its support and comfort from the present Cabinet. 
 Grave as this charge is, and momentous as would be the 
 consequences of such an allegation if unfounded, we repeat 
 that such a document is in existence, and that we who write 
 these lines have held it in our hands and have perused it.' 
 
 " The ' Banner ' copies the paragraph, and adds, ' We give 
 all the publicity in our power to a statement which, from 
 our personal knowledge, we can declare to be true. If the 
 disclosures which a debate on this subject must inevitably 
 lead to will not convince Englishmen that Ireland is now 
 governed by a party whose falsehood and subtlety not even 
 Machiavelli himself could justify, we are free to declare 
 we are ready to join the Nationalists to-morrow, and to cry 
 out for a Parliament in College Green, in preference to a 
 Holy Inquisition at Westminster.' " 
 
 "That fellow has blood in him," cried Kearney, with 
 -enthusiasm, "and I go a long way with him." 
 
 " That may be, sir, and I am sorry to hear it," said 
 Walpole, coldly ; ' ' but what I am concerned to tell you 
 is, that the document or memorandum here alluded to was 
 among my papers, and abstracted from them since I have 
 been here." 
 
 "So that there was actually such a paper?" broke in 
 Kearney. 
 
 ' ' There was a paper which the malevolence of a party 
 journalist could convert to the support of such a charge. 
 What concerns me more immediately is, that it has been 
 stolen from my despatch-box." 
 
 "Are you certain of that?" 
 
 " I believe I can prove it. The only day in which T was 
 busied with these papers I carried them down to the library, 
 and with my own hands I brought them back to my room 
 and placed them under lock and key at once. The box 
 
CROSS PURPOSES. 367 
 
 bears no trace of having been broken, so that the only 
 solution is a key. Perhaps my own key may have been 
 used to open it, for the document is gone." 
 
 "This is a bad business," said Kearney, sorrowfully. 
 
 "It is ruin to me," cried Walpole, with passion. "Here 
 is a despatch from Lord Danesbury, commanding me 
 immediately to go over to him in Wales, and I can guess 
 easily what has occasioned the order." 
 
 "I'll send for a force of Dublin detectives. I'll write 
 to the chief of the police. I '11 not rest till I have every one 
 in the house examined on oath," cried Kearney. " What 
 was it like? Was it a despatch — was it in an envelope? " 
 
 " It was a mere memorandum, — a piece of post paper, 
 and headed, ' Draught of instruction touching D. D. For- 
 ward to chief constable of police at Letterkenny. October 
 9th.' " 
 
 "But you had no direct correspondence with Donogan?" 
 
 " I believe, sir, I need not assure you I had not. The 
 malevolence of party has alone the merit of such an impu- 
 tation. For reasons of state, we desired to observe a certain 
 course towards the man, and Orange malignity is pleased to 
 misrepresent and calumniate us." 
 
 " And can't you say so in Parliament? " 
 
 " So we will, sir, and the nation will believe us. Mean- 
 while, see the mischief that the miserable slander will reflect 
 upon our administration here, and remember that the people 
 who could alone contradict the story are those very Fenians 
 who will benefit by its being believed." 
 
 " Do your suspicions point to any one in particular? Do 
 you believe that Curtis — ? " 
 
 " I had it in my hand the day after he left." 
 
 "Was any one aware of its existence here but yourself?" 
 
 "None — wait, I am wrong. Your niece saw it. She 
 was in the library one day. I was engaged in writing, and 
 as we grew to talk over the country, I chanced to show her 
 the despatch." 
 
 "Let us ask her if she remembers whether any servant 
 was about at the time, or happened to enter the room." 
 
 "I can myself answer that question. I know there was 
 not." 
 
368 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 '' Let us call her down and see what she remembers/' said 
 Kearney. 
 
 "I'd rather not, sir. A mere question in such a case 
 would be offensive, and 1 would not risk the chance. What 
 I would most wish is, to place my despatch-box, with the 
 key, in your keeping, for the purposes of the inquiry, for I 
 must start in half an hour. I have sent for post-horses to 
 Moate, and ordered a special train to town. I shall, I hope, 
 catch the eight o'clock boat for Holyhead, and be with his 
 Lordship before this time to-morrow. If I do not see the 
 ladies, for I believe they are out walking, will you make my 
 excuses and my adieux? My confusion and discomfiture will, 
 I feel sure, plead for me. It would not be, perhaps, too 
 much to ask for any information that a police inquiry might 
 elicit ; and if either of the young ladies would vouchsafe me 
 a line to say what, if anything, has been discovered, I should 
 feel deeply gratified." 
 
 " I '11 look to that. You shall be informed." 
 
 ' ' There was another question that I much desired to speak 
 of," and here he hesitated and faltered; " but perhaps, on 
 every score, it is as well I should defer it till my return to 
 Ireland." 
 
 " You know best, whatever it is," said the old man, drjdy. 
 
 "Yes, I think so. lam sure of it." A hurried shake- 
 hands followed, and he was gone. 
 
 It is but right to add that a glance at the moment through 
 the window had shown him the wearer of a muslin dress 
 turning into the copse outside the garden, and Walpole 
 dashed down the stairs and hurried in the direction he saw 
 Nina take, with all the speed he could. 
 
 "Get my luggage on the carriage, and have everything 
 ready," said he, as the horses were drawn up at the door. 
 " I shall return in a moment." 
 
CHAPTER LI. 
 
 AWAKENINGS. 
 
 When Walpole hurried into the beech alley, which he had 
 seen Nina take, and followed her in all haste, he did not stop 
 to question himself why he did so. Indeed, if prudence 
 were to be consulted, there was every reason in the world 
 why he should rather have left his leave-takings to the care 
 of Mr. Kearney than assume the charge of them himself ; 
 but if young gentlemen who fall in love were only to be logi- 
 cal or "consequent," the tender passion would soon lose 
 some of the contingencies which give it much of its charm, 
 and people who follow such occupations as mine would dis- 
 cover that they had lost one of the principal employments of 
 their lifetime. 
 
 As he went along, however, he bethought him that as it 
 was to say good-bye he now followed her, it behooved him to 
 blend his leave-taking with that pledge of a speedy return, 
 which, like the eifects of light in landscape, bring out the 
 various tints in the richest coloring, and mark more dis- 
 tinctly all that is in shadow. *' I shall at least see," muttered 
 he to himself, '' how far my presence here serves to brighten 
 her daily life, and what amount of gloom my absence will 
 suggest." Cecil Walpole was one of a class, — and I hasten 
 to say it is a class, — who, if not very lavish of their own 
 affections, or accustomed to draw largely on their own emo- 
 tions, are very fond of being loved themselves, and not only 
 are they convinced that as there can be nothing more natural 
 or reasonable than to love them, it is still a highly com- 
 mendable feature in the person who carries that love to the 
 extent of a small idolatry, and makes it the business of a life. 
 To worship the men of this order constitutes in their eyes a 
 species of intellectual superiority for which they are grate- 
 
 24 
 
370 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ful, and this same gratitude represents to themselves all of 
 love their natures are capable of feeling. 
 
 He knew thoroughly that Nina was not alone the most 
 beautiful woman he had ever seen ; that the fascinations of 
 her manner, and her grace of movement and gesture, exer- 
 cised a sway that was almost magic; that in quickness to 
 apprehend and readiness to reply, she scarcely had an equal ; 
 and that whether she smiled, or looked pensive, or listened, 
 or spoke, there was an absorbing charm about her that made 
 one forget all else around her, and unable to see any but 
 her; and yet, with all this consciousness, he recognized no 
 trait about her so thoroughly attractive as that she admired 
 him. 
 
 Let me not be misunderstood. This same sentiment can 
 be at times something very different from a mere egotism, — 
 not that I mean to say it was such in the present case. Cecil 
 Walpole fully represented the order he belonged to, and was 
 a most well-looking, well-dressed, and well-bred young gen- 
 tleman, only suggesting the reflection that, to live amongst 
 such a class pure and undiluted, would be little better than a 
 life passed in the midst of French communism. 
 
 I have said that, after his fashion, he was " in love " with 
 her, and so, after his fashion, he wanted to say that he was 
 going away, and to tell her not to be utterly disconsolate till 
 he came back again. '' I can imagine," thought he, " how 
 I made her life here, how, in developing the features that 
 attract me, I made her a very different creature to herself." 
 
 It was not at all unpleasant to him to think that the people 
 who should surround her were so unlike himself. " The 
 barbarians," as he courteously called them to himself, "will 
 be very hard to endure. Nor am I very sorry for it, only 
 she must catch nothing of their traits in accommodating 
 herself to their habits. On that I must strongly insist. 
 Whether it be by singing their silly ballads, — that four-note 
 melody they call ' Irish music,' — or through mere imitation, 
 she has already caught a slight accent of the country. She 
 must get rid of this. She will have to divest herself of all 
 her ' Kilgobbinries ' ere I present her to my friends in town." 
 Apart from these disparagements, she could, as he expressed 
 it, " hold her own," and people take a very narrow view of 
 
AWAKENINGS. 371 
 
 the social dealings of the world, who fail to see how much 
 occasion a woman has for the exercise of tact and temper 
 and discretion and ready-wittedness and generosity in all the 
 well-bred intercourse of life. Just as Walpole had arrived 
 at that stage of reflection to recognize that she was exactly 
 the woman to suit him and push his fortunes with the world, 
 he reached a part of the w^ood where a little space had been 
 cleared, and a few rustic seats scattered about to make a 
 halting-place. The sound of voices caught his ear, and he 
 stopped, and now, looking stealthily through the brushwood, 
 he saw Gorman O'Shea as he lay in a lounging attitude on a 
 bench and smoked his cigar, while Nina Kostalergi was- 
 busily engaged in pinning up the skirt of her dress in a, 
 festoon fashion, which, to Cecil's ideas at least, displayed 
 more of a marvellously pretty instep and ankle than he 
 thought strictly warranted. Puzzling as this seemed, the 
 first words she spoke gave the explanation. 
 
 " Don't flatter yourself, most valiant soldier, that you are 
 going to teach me the ' Czardasz.' I learned it years ago 
 from Tassilo Esterhazy ; but I asked you to come here to 
 set me right about that 'half-minuet step that begins it. I 
 believe I have got into the habit of doing the man's part, for 
 I used to be Pauline Esterhazy 's partner after Tassilo went 
 away." 
 
 " You had a precious dancing-master in Tassilo," growled 
 out O'Shea. " The greatest scamp in the Austrian army." 
 
 " I know nothing of the moralities of the Austrian army, 
 but the Count was a perfect gentleman, and a special friend 
 of mine." 
 
 '' I am sorry for it," was the gruff rejoinder. 
 
 "You have nothing to grieve for, sir. You have no 
 vested interest to be imperilled by anything that I do." 
 
 "Let us not quarrel, at all events," said he, as he arose 
 with some alacrity and flung away his cigar ; and Walpole 
 turned away, as little pleased with what he had heard, as 
 dissatisfied with himself for having listened. " And we call 
 these things accidents," muttered he ; " but I believe fortune 
 means more generously by us when she crosses our path in 
 this wise. I almost wish I had gone a step further, and 
 stood before them. At least it would have finished this 
 
372 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 episode, and without a word. As it is, a mere phrase will 
 do it, — the simple question as to what progress she makes in 
 dancing will show I know all. But do I know all ? " Thus 
 speculating and ruminating, he went his way till he reached 
 the carriage, and drove off at speed, for the first time in his 
 life really and deeply in love ! 
 
 He made his journey safely, and arrived at Holyhead by 
 daybreak. He had meant to go over deliberately all that he 
 should say to the Viceroy, when questioned, as he expected 
 to be, on the condition of Ireland. It was an old story, and 
 with very few variations to enliven it. 
 
 How was it that, with all his Irish intelligence well 
 arranged in his mind, — the agrarian crime, the ineffective 
 police, the timid juries, the insolence of the popular press, 
 and the arrogant demands of the priesthood ; hoW was it 
 that, ready to state all these obstacles to right government, 
 and prepared to show that it was only by " out-jockeying" 
 the parties, he could hope to win in Ireland still, — that 
 Greek girl, and what he called her perfidy, would occupy a 
 most disproportionate share of his thoughts, and a larger 
 place in his heart also? The simple truth is, that though up 
 to this Walpole found immense pleasure in his flirtation with 
 Nina Kostalergi, yet his feeling for her now was nearer 
 love than anything he had experienced before. The bare 
 suspicion that a woman could jilt him, or the possible thought 
 that a rival could be found to supplant him, gave, by the 
 very pain it occasioned, such an interest to the episode that 
 he could scarcely think of anything else. That the most 
 effectual way to deal with the Greek was to renew his old 
 relations with his cousin Ladj^ Maude was clear enough. 
 *'At least I snail seem to be the traitor," thought he, 
 '' and she shall not glory in the thought of having deceived 
 7ne." While he was still revolving these thoughts he ar- 
 rived at the Castle, and learned as he crossed the door that 
 his Lordship was impatient to see him. 
 
 Lord Danesbury had never been a fluent speaker in public, 
 while in private life a natural indolence of disposition, 
 improved, so to say, by an Eastern life, had made him so 
 sparing of his words that at times when he was ill or indis- 
 posed he could never be said to converse at all, and his talk 
 
AWAKENINGS. 373 
 
 consisted of very short sentences strung loosely together, and 
 not un frequently so ill-connected as to show that an unex- 
 pressed thought very often intervened between the uttered 
 fragments. Except to men who, like Walpole, knew him 
 intimately, he was all but unintelligible. The private secre- 
 tary, however, understood how to fill up the blanks in any 
 discourse, and so follow out indications which, to less prac- 
 tised eyes, left no footmarks behind them. 
 
 His Excellency, slowly recovering from a sharp attack of 
 gout, was propped by pillows, and smoking a long Turkish 
 pipe, as Cecil entered the room and saluted him. '' Come at 
 last," was his Lordship's greeting. "Ought to have been 
 here weeks ago. Read that." And he pushed towards him 
 a " Times," with a mark on the margin : "To ask the 
 Secretary for Ireland whether the statement made by certain 
 newspapers in the North of a correspondence between the 
 Castle authorities and the Fenian leader was true, and whether 
 such correspondence could be laid on the table of the 
 House?" 
 
 " Read it out," cried the Viceroy, as Walpole conned over 
 the paragraph somewhat slowly to himself. 
 
 " I think, my Lord, when you have heard a few words of 
 explanation from me, you will see that this charge has not the 
 gravity these newspaper people would like to attach to it." 
 
 "Can't be explained — nothing could justify — infernal 
 blunder — and must go." 
 
 " Pray, my Lord, vouchsafe me even five minutes." 
 
 "See it all — balderdash — explain nothing — Cardinal 
 more offended than the rest — and here, read." And he 
 pushed a letter towards him, dated Downing Street, and 
 marked private. " The idiot you left behind you has been 
 betrayed into writing to the rebels and making conditions 
 with them. To disown him now is not enough." 
 
 " Really, my Lord, I don't see why I should submit to the 
 indignity of reading more of this." 
 
 His Excellency crushed the letter in his hand, and puffed 
 very vigorously at his pipe, which was nearly extinguished. 
 "Must go," said he, at last, as a fresh volume of smoke 
 rolled forth. 
 
 "That I can believe — that I can understand, my Lord. 
 
874 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 When you tell me you cease to endorse my pledges, I feel I 
 am a bankrupt in your esteem." 
 
 " Others smashed in the same insolvency — inconceivable 
 blunder — where was Cartright? — what was Holmes about? 
 No one in Dublin to keep you out of this cursed folly? " 
 
 "Until your Lordship's patience will permit me to say a 
 few words, I cannot hope to justify my conduct." 
 
 " No justifying — no explaining — no ! regular smash and 
 complete disgrace. Must go." 
 
 " I am quite ready to go. Your Excellency has no need 
 to recall me to the necessity." 
 
 "Knew it all — and against my will, too — said so from 
 the first — thing I never liked — nor see my way in. Must 
 go — must go." 
 
 "I presume, mj^ Lord, I may leave you now. I want a 
 bath and a cup of coffee." 
 
 " Answer that! " was the gruff reply, as he tossed across 
 the table a few lines signed, " Bertie Spencer, Private 
 Secretary." 
 
 " I am directed to request that Mr. Walpole will enable 
 the Right Honorable Mr. Annihough to give the flattest 
 denial to the enclosed." 
 
 "That must be done at once," said the Viceroy, as the 
 other ceased to read the note. 
 
 " It is impossible, my Lord ; I cannot deny my own hand- 
 writing." 
 
 "Annihough will find some road out of it," muttered the 
 other. ^^You were a fool, and mistook your instructions, or 
 the constable was a fool and required a misdirection, or the 
 Fenian was a fool, which he would have been if he gave the 
 pledge you ask for. Must go all the same." 
 
 " But I am quite ready to go, my Lord," rejoined Walpole, 
 angrily. "There is no need to insist so often on that 
 point." 
 
 " Who talks, — who thinks of you, sir?" cried the other, 
 with an irritated manner. " I speak of myself. It is /must 
 resign, — no great sacrifice, perhaps, after all ; stupid oflSce, 
 — false position — impracticable people. Make them all 
 Papists to-morrow, and ask to be Hindoos. They 've got the 
 land, and not content if they can't shoot the landlords ! " 
 
AWAKENINGS. 3T5 
 
 *' If you think, my Lord, that by any personal explanation 
 of mine I could enable the Minister to make his answer in 
 the House more plausible — " 
 
 " Leave the plausibility to himself, sir," and then he 
 added, half aloud; "he'll be unintelligible enough without 
 you. There, go, and get some breakfast, — come back 
 afterwards, and I '11 dictate my letter of resignation. Maude 
 has had a letter from Atlee. Shrewd fellow, Atlee, — done 
 the thing well." 
 
 As Walpole was near the door, his Excellency said, " You 
 can have Guatemala, if they have not given it away. It will 
 get you out of Europe, which is the first thing, and with the 
 yellow fever it may do more." 
 
 '' I am profoundly grateful, my Lord," said he, bowing 
 low. 
 
 " Maude of course would not go, so it ends that.'' 
 
 " I am deeply touched by the interest your Lordship 
 vouchsafes to my concerns." 
 
 '*Try and live five years, and you'll have a retiring allow- 
 ance. The last fellow did, but was eaten by a crocodile out 
 bathing." And with this he resumed his " Times," and 
 turned away, while Walpole hastened off to his room, in a 
 frame of mind very far from comfortable or reassuring. 
 
CHAPTER LII. 
 
 *' A CHANCE AGREEMENT." 
 
 As Dick Kearney and young O'Sbea had never attained any 
 close intimacy, a strange sort of half -jealousy, inexplicable 
 as to its cause, served to keep them apart : it was by mere 
 accident that the two young men met one morning after 
 breakfast in the garden, and, on Kearney's offer of a cigar, 
 the few words that followed led to a conversation. 
 
 '' I cannot pretend to give you a choice Havanna, like one 
 of Walpole's," said Dick, '^ but you'll perhaps find it 
 smokable." 
 
 "I'm not difficult," said the other ; " and as to Mr. Wal- 
 pole's tobacco, I don't think I ever tasted it." 
 
 " And I," rejoined the other, " as seldom as I could; I 
 mean, only when politeness obliged me." 
 
 '' I thought you liked him? " said Gorman, shortly. 
 
 *' I? Far from it. I thought liim a consummate puppy, 
 and I saw that he looked down on us as inveterate savages.'* 
 
 " He was a favorite with your ladies, I think? " 
 
 "Certainly not with my sister, and I doubt very much 
 with my cousin. Do tjou like him ? " 
 
 " No, not at all : but then he belongs to a class of men I 
 neither understand nor sympathize with. Whatever / know 
 of life is associated with downright hard work. As a soldier 
 I had my five hours' daily drill and the care of my equip- 
 ments, as a lieutenant I had to see that my men kept to 
 their duty, and whenever I chanced to have a little leisure I 
 could not give it up to ennui, or consent to feel bored and 
 wearied." 
 
 " And do you mean to say you had to groom your horse 
 and clean your arms when you served in the ranks ? " 
 
"A CHANCE AGREEMENT." 377 
 
 *' Not always. As a cadet I had a soldier-servant, what 
 we call a ' Bursche ; ' but there were periods when I was out 
 of funds, and barely able to grope my way to the next 
 quarter day, and at these times I had but one meal a day, 
 and obliged to draw my waist-belt pretty tight to make me 
 feel I had eaten enough. A Bursche costs very little, but I 
 could not spare even that little." 
 
 " Confoundedly hard that." 
 
 *' All my own fault. By a little care and foresight, even 
 without thrift, I had enough to live as well as I ought ; but 
 a reckless dash of the old spendthrift blood I came of would 
 master me now and then, and I'd launch out into some 
 extravagance that would leave me penniless for months 
 after." 
 
 "I believe I can understand that. One does get horribly 
 bored by the monotony of a well-to-do existence; just as I 
 feel my life here — almost insupportable." 
 
 ''But you are going into Parliament; you are going to 
 be a great public man." 
 
 "That bubble has burst already; don't you know what 
 happened at Birr? They tore down all Miller's notices and 
 mine, they smashed our booths, beat our voters out of the 
 town, and placed Donogan — the rebel Donogan — at the 
 head of the poll, and the Head-Centre is now M.P. for 
 King's County." 
 
 "And has he a right to sit in the House?" 
 
 "There 's the question. The matter is discussed every 
 day in the newspapers, and there are as many for as against 
 him. Some aver that the popular will is a sovereign edict 
 that rises above all eventualities; others assert that the 
 sentence which pronounces a man a felon declares him to be 
 dead in law." 
 
 "And which side do you incline to?" 
 
 "I believe in the latter; he '11 not be permitted to take his 
 seat." 
 
 "You'll have another chance, then?" 
 
 "No; I'll venture no more. Indeed, but for this same;' 
 man Donogan, I had never thought of it. He filled my head 
 with ideas of a great part to be played and a proud place : 
 to be occupied, and that, even without high abilities, a man ' 
 
378 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 of a strong will, a fixed resolve, and an honest conscience, 
 might, at this time, do great things for Ireland." 
 
 *' And then betrayed you ? " 
 
 " No such thing ; he no more dreamed of Parliament him- 
 self than you do now. He knew he was liable to the law, 
 he was hiding from the police, and well aware that there 
 was a price upon his head." 
 
 " But if he was true to you, why did he not refuse this 
 honor ? why did he not decline to be elected ? " 
 
 "They never gave him the choice. Don't you see it is 
 one of the strange signs of the strange times we are living 
 in that the people fix upon certain men as their natural 
 leaders and compel them to march in the van, and that it is 
 the force at the back of these leaders that, far more than 
 their talents, makes them formidable in public life ? " 
 
 "I only follow it in part. I scarcely see what they aim 
 at, and I do not know if they see it more clearly themselves. 
 And now, what will you turn to ? " 
 
 *'I wish you could tell me." 
 
 "About as blank a future as my own," muttered Gor- 
 man. 
 
 "Come, come, you have a career. You are a lieutenant 
 of lancers ; in time you will be a captain, and eventually 
 a colonel, and who knows but a general at last, with 
 Heaven knows how many crosses and medals on your 
 breast." 
 
 "Nothing less likely; the day is gone by when English- 
 men were advanced to places of high honor and trust in the 
 Austrian arm3^ There are no more field-marshals like 
 Nugent than major-generals like O'Connell. I might be 
 made a Rittmeister, and if 1 lived long enough, and was 
 not superannuated, a major; but there my ambition must 
 cease." 
 
 "And you are content with that prospect?" 
 
 "Of course I am not. I go back to it with something 
 little short of despair." 
 
 "Why go back, then?" 
 
 "Tell me what else to do; tell me what other road in life 
 to take; show me even one alternative." 
 
 The silence that now succeeded lasted several minutes, 
 
"A CHANCE AGREEMENT." 379 
 
 each immersed in his own thoughts, and each, doubtless, 
 convinced how little presumption he had to advise or coun- 
 sel the other. 
 
 "Do you know, O'Shea," cried Kearney, "I used to fancy 
 that this Austrian life of yours was a mere caprice; that 
 you took ' a cast, ' as we call it in the hunting-field, amongst 
 those fellows to see what they were like and what sort of an 
 existence was theirs; but that being your aunt's heir, and 
 with a snug estate that must one day come to you, it was a 
 mere ' lark,' and not to be continued beyond a year or 
 two?" 
 
 "Not a bit of it. I never presumed to think I should be 
 my aunt's heir, — and now, less than ever. Do you know 
 that even the small pension she has allowed me hitherto is 
 now about to be withdrawn, and I shall be left to live on 
 my pay?" 
 
 "How much does that mean? " 
 
 "A few pounds more or less than you pay for youi 
 saddle-horse at livery at Dycer's." 
 
 "You don't mean that? " 
 
 "I do mean it; and even that beggarly pittance is 
 stopped when I am on my leave ; so that at this moment my 
 whole worldly wealth is here," and he took from his pocket 
 a handful of loose coin, in which a few gold pieces glittered 
 amidst a mass of discolored and smooth-looking silver. 
 
 "On my oath, I believe you are the richer man of the 
 two," cried Kearney; "for, except a few half-crowns on my 
 dressing-table, and some coppers, I don't believe I am 
 master of a coin with the Queen's image." 
 
 "I say, Kearney, what a horrible take-in we should prove 
 to mothers with daughters to marry ! " 
 
 " Not a bit of it. You may impose upon an}^ one else, 
 — your tailor, your boot-maker, even the horsey gent that 
 jobs your cabriolet, — but you '11 never cheat the mamma 
 who has the daughter on sale." 
 
 Gorman could not help laughing at the more than ordinary 
 irritability with which these words were spoken, and 
 charged him at last with having uttered a personal 
 experience. 
 
 "True, after all," said Dick, half indolently. "I used 
 
380 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 to spoon a pretty girl up in Dublin, ride with her when I 
 could, and dance with her at all the balls; and a certain 
 chum of mine — a Joe Atlee, of whom you may have heard 
 — undertook, simply by a series of artful rumors as to my 
 future prospects, — now extolling me as a man of fortune 
 and a fine estate, to-morrow exhibiting me as a mere pre- 
 tender with a mock title and mock income, — to determine 
 how I should be treated in this family ; and he would say to 
 me, ' Dick, you are going to be asked to dinner on Saturday 
 next; ' or, ' I say, old fellow, they 're going to leave you out 
 of that picnic at Powerscourt. You '11 find the Clancys 
 rather cold at your next meeting.'" 
 
 "And he would be right in his guess?" 
 
 "To the letter! Ay, and I shame to say that the young 
 girl answered the signal as promptly as the mother." 
 
 " I hoped it cured you of your passion ? " 
 
 "I don't know that it did. When you begin to like a 
 girl, and find that she has regularly installed herself in a 
 corner of your heart, there is scarcely a thing she can do 
 you '11 not discover a good reason for; and even when your 
 ingenuity fails, go and pay a visit. There is some artful 
 witchery in that creation you have built up about her, — for 
 I heartily believe most of us are merely clothing a sort of 
 lay figure of loveliness with attributes of our fancy, — and 
 the end of it is, we are about as wise about our idols as the 
 South Sea savages in their homage to the gods of their own 
 carving." 
 
 "I don't think that! " said Gorman, sternly. "I could 
 no more invent the fascination that charms me than I could 
 model a Venus or an Ariadne." 
 
 "I see where your mistake lies. You do all this, and 
 never know you do it. Mind, I am only giving you Joe 
 Atlee' s theory all this time; for, though I believe in, I never 
 invented it." 
 
 "And who is Atlee?" 
 
 " A chum of mine — a clever dog enough — who, as he 
 says himself, takes a very low opinion of mankind, and, in 
 consequence, finds this a capital world to live in." 
 
 "I should hate the fellow." 
 
 "Not if you met him. He can be very companionable. 
 
"A CHANCE AGREEMENT." 381 
 
 though I never saw any one take less trouble to please. He 
 is popular almost everywhere." 
 
 "I know I should hate him." 
 
 ''My cousin Nina thought the same, and declared from 
 the mere sight of his photograph that he was false and 
 treacherous, and Heaven knows what else besides ; and now 
 she '11 not suffer a word in his disparagement. She began 
 exactly as you say you would, by a strong prejudice against 
 him. I remember the day he came down here, — her man- 
 ner towards him was more than distant; and I told my sister 
 Kate how it offended me, and Kate only smiled and said, 
 ' Have a little patience, Dick.' " 
 
 "And you took the advice? You did have a little 
 patience?" 
 
 "Yes ; and the end is they are firm friends. I 'm not sure 
 they don't correspond." 
 
 "Is there love in the case, then?" 
 
 "That is what I cannot make out. So far as I know 
 either of them, there is no trustfulness in their dispositions ; 
 each of them must see into the nature of the other. I have 
 heard Joe Atlee say, ' With that woman for a wife a man 
 might safely bet on his success in life.' And she herself 
 one day owned, ' If a girl was obliged to marry a man with- 
 out sixpence, she might take Atlee.' " 
 
 "So, I have it, they will be man and wife yet! " 
 
 "Who knows ! Have another weed ? " 
 
 Gorman declined the offered cigar, and again a pause in 
 the conversation ' followed. At last he suddenly said, "She 
 told me she thought she would marry Walpole." 
 
 "She told you that? How did it come about to make 
 you such a confidence? " 
 
 "Just this way. I was getting a little — not spooney — 
 but attentive, and rather liked hanging after her; and in 
 one of our walks in the wood — and there was no flirting at 
 the time between us — she suddenly said, 'I don't think you 
 are half a bad fellow. Lieutenant.' ' Thanks for the compli- 
 ment,' said I, coldly. She never heeded my remark, but 
 went on, ' I mean, in fact, that if you had something to live 
 for, and somebody to care about, there is just the sort of 
 stuff in you to make you equal to both. ' Not exactly know- 
 
382 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ing vv^hat I said, and half, only half in earnest, I answered, 
 ' Why can I not have one to care for? ' And I looked ten- 
 derly into her eyes as I spoke. She did not wince under 
 my glance. Her face was calm, and her color did not 
 change; and she was full a minute before she said, with a 
 faint sigh, ' I suppose I shall marry Cecil Walpole.' ' Do 
 you mean,' said I, ' against your will? ' ' Who told you I 
 had a will, sir? ' said she, haughtily; ' or that if I had I 
 should now be walking here in this wood alone with you ? 
 No, no,' added she, hurriedly, ' you cannot understand me. 
 There is nothing to be offended at. Go and gather me 
 some of those wild flowers, and we '11 talk of something 
 else.'" 
 
 "How like her! — how like her!" said Dick, and then 
 looked sad and pondered. "I was very near falling in love 
 with her myself! " said he, after a considerable pause. 
 
 " She has a way of curing a man if he should get into 
 such an indiscretion," muttered Gorman; and there was 
 bitterness in his voice as he spoke. 
 
 "Listen! listen to that!" and from the open window of 
 the house there came the prolonged cadence of a full, sweet 
 voice, as Nina was singing an Irish ballad air. "That's 
 for my father! ' Kathleen Mavourneen ' is one of his favor- 
 ites, and she can make him cry over it." 
 
 "I'm not very soft-hearted," muttered Gorman, "but 
 she gave me a sense of fulness in the throat, like choking, 
 the other day, that I vowed to myself I 'd never listen to 
 that song again." 
 
 "It is not her voice — it is not the music — there is some 
 witchery in the woman herself that does it," cried Dick, 
 almost fiercely. "Take a walk with her in the wood, saun- 
 ter down one of these alleys in the garden, and I '11 be shot 
 if your heart will not begin to beat in another fashion, and 
 your brain to weave all sorts of bright fancies, in which she 
 will form the chief figure; and though you'll be half in- 
 clined to declare your love, and swear that you cannot live 
 without her, some terror will tell you not to break the spell 
 of your delight, but to go on w^alking there at her side, and 
 hearing her words, just as though that ecstasy could last 
 forever." 
 
"A CHANCE AGREEMENT." 383 
 
 "I suspect you are in love with her," said O'Shea, dryly. 
 
 ''Not now, not now; and I'll take care not to have a 
 relapse," said he, gravely. 
 
 "How do you mean to manage that? " 
 
 "The only one way it is possible, — not to see her, nor to 
 hear her; not to live in the same land with her. I have 
 made up my mind to go to Australia. I don't well know 
 what to do when I get there ; but whatever it be, and what- 
 ever it cost me to bear, I shall meet it without shrinking, 
 for there will be no old associates to look on and remark 
 upon my shabby clothes and broken boots." 
 
 "What will the passage cost you?" asked Gorman, 
 eagerly. 
 
 "I have ascertained that for about fifty pounds I can land 
 myself in Melbourne; and if I have a ten-pound note 
 after, it is as much as I mean to provide." 
 
 "If I can raise the money, I '11 go with you," said O'Shea. 
 
 "Will you? is thig serious? is it a promise?" 
 
 "I pledge my word on it. I '11 go over to the Barn to-day 
 and see my aunt. I thought up to this I could not bring 
 myself to go there, but I will now. It is for the last time 
 in my life, and I must say good-bye, whether she helps me 
 or not." 
 
 "You '11 scarcely like to ask her for money," said Dick. 
 
 "Scarcely; at all events, I '11 see her, and I '11 tell her that 
 I 'm going away, with no other thought in my mind than of 
 all the love and affection she had for me ; worse luck mine 
 that I have not got them still." 
 
 "Shall I walk over, with — ? would you rather be alone? " 
 
 "I believe so! I think I should like to be alone." 
 
 "Let us meet, then, on this spot, to-morrow, and decide 
 what is to be done? " 
 
 "Agreed," cried O'Shea, and with a warm shake-hands 
 to ratify the pledge, they parted; Dick towards the lower 
 part of the garden, while O'Shea turned towards the house. 
 
CHAPTER LIII. 
 
 We have all of us felt how depressing is the sensation felt 
 in a family circle in the first meeting after the departure of 
 their guests. The friends who have been staying some time 
 in your house not onl}^ bring to the common stock their share 
 of pleasant converse and companionship, but, in the quality 
 of strangers, they exact a certain amount of effort for their 
 amusement, which is better for him who gives than for the 
 recipient; and they impose that small reserve which 
 excludes the purely personal inconveniences and contrarie- 
 ties, which, unhappily, in strictly family intercourse, have 
 no small space allotted them for discussion. 
 
 It is but right to say that they who benefit most by, and 
 most gratefully acknowledge this boon of the visitors, are 
 the young. The elders, sometimes more disposed to indo- 
 lence than effort, sometimes irritable at the check essen- 
 tially put upon many little egotisms of daily use, and oftener 
 than either, perhaps, glad to get back to the old groove of 
 home discussion, unrestrained by the presence of stran- 
 gers ; the elders, I say, are now and then given to express 
 a most ungracious gratitude for being once again to them- 
 selves, and free to be as confidential, and outspoken, and 
 disagreeable as their hearts desire. 
 
 The dinner at Kilgobbin Castle on the day I speak of, 
 consisted solely of the Kearney family, and, except in the 
 person of the old man himself, no trace of pleasantry could 
 be detected. Kate had her own share of anxieties. A 
 number of notices had been served by refractory tenants 
 for demands they were about to prefer for improvements, 
 under the new land act. The passion for litigation so dear 
 to the Irish peasant's heart, — that sense of having some- 
 thing to be quibbled for, so exciting to the imaginative 
 
"A SCRAPE/' 385 
 
 nature of the Celt, had taken possession of all the tenants 
 on the estate, and even the well-to-do and the satisfied were 
 now bestirring themselves to think if they had not some 
 grievance to be turned into profit, and some possible hard- 
 ship to be discounted into an abatement. 
 
 Dick Kearney, entirely preoccupied by the thought of his 
 intended journey, already began to feel that the things of 
 home touched him no longer. A few months more and he 
 should be far away from Ireland and her interests ; and why 
 should he harass himself about the contests of party or the 
 balance of factions, which never again could have any bear- 
 ing on his future life ? His whole thought was what arrange- 
 ment he could make with his father by which, for a little 
 present assistance, he might surrender all his right on the 
 entail, and give up Kilgobbin forever. 
 
 As for Nina, her complexities were too many and too 
 much interwoven for our investigation, and there were 
 thoughts of all the various persons she had met in Ireland, 
 mingled with scenes of the past, and, more strangely still, 
 the people placed in situations and connections which by 
 no likelihood should they ever have occupied. The thought 
 that the little comedy of every-day life, which she relished 
 immensely, was now to cease for lack of actors, made her 
 serious, almost sad, — and she seldom spoke during the 
 meal. 
 
 At Loi'd Kilgobbin 's request, that they would not leave 
 him to take his wine alone, they drew their chairs round the 
 dining-room fire; but, except the bright glow of the ruddy 
 turf and the pleasant look of the old man himself, there was 
 little that smacked of the agreeable fireside. 
 
 ''What has come over you girls this evening? " said the 
 old man. "Are you in love, or has the man that ought to 
 be in love with either of you discovered it was only a mis- 
 take he was making ? " 
 
 "Ask Nina, sir," said Kate, gravely. 
 
 "Perhaps you are right, uncle," said Nina, dreamily. 
 
 "In which of my guesses, — the first or the last? " 
 
 "Don't puzzle me, sir, for I have no head for a subtle 
 distinction. I only meant to say it is not so easy to be in 
 love without mistakes. You mistake realities and traits 
 
 25 
 
386 LORD KILGOBBIX. 
 
 for something not a bit like them, and you mistake yourself 
 by imagining that you mind them." 
 
 "I don't think I understand you," said the old man. 
 
 "Very likely not, sir. I do not know if I had a meaning 
 that I could explain." 
 
 " Nina wants to tell you, my Lord, that the right man has 
 not come forward yet, and she does not know whether she '11 
 keep the place open in her heart for him any longer," said 
 Dick, with a half malicious glance. 
 
 "That terrible Cousin Dick! nothing escapes him," said 
 Nina, with a faint smile. 
 
 "Is there any more in the newspapers about that scandal 
 of the Government?" cried the old man, turning to Kate. 
 "Is there not going to be some inquiry as to whether his 
 Excellency wrote to the Fenians ? " 
 
 "There are a few words here, papa," cried Kate, opening 
 the paper. " ' In reply to the question of Sir Barnes Malone 
 as to the late communications alleged to have passed be- 
 tween the head of the Irish Government and the Head- 
 Centre of the Fenians, the Right Honorable the First Lord 
 of the Treasury said, "That the question would be more 
 properly addressed to the noble Lord the Secretary for Ire- 
 land, who was not then in the House. Meanwhile, sir,'* 
 continued he, "I will take on myself the responsibility of 
 saying that in this, as in a variety of other cases, the zeal 
 of- party has greatly outstripped the discretion tl\at should 
 govern political warfare. The exceptional state of a nation, 
 in which the administration of justice mainly depends on 
 those aids which a rigid morality might disparage; the 
 social state of a people whose integrity calls for the appli- 
 cation of means the most certain to disseminate distrust and 
 disunion, — are facts which constitute reasons for political 
 action that, however assailable in the mere abstract, the 
 mind of statesmanlike form will at once accept as solid and 
 effective, and to reject which would only show that, in over- 
 looking the consequences of sentiment, a man can ignore 
 the most vital interests of his country.'"" 
 
 "Does he say that they wrote to Donogan? " cried Kilgob- 
 bin, whose patience had been sorely pushed by the Premier's 
 exordium. 
 
"A SCRAPE.'* 387 
 
 "Let me read on, papa." 
 
 "Skip all that, and get down to a simple question and 
 answer, Kitty; don't read the long sentences." 
 
 ''This is how he winds up, papa. ' " I trust I have now, 
 sir, satisfied the House that there are abundant reasons why 
 this correspondence should not be produced on the table, 
 while I have further justified my noble friend for a course 
 of action in which the humanity of the man takes no lustre 
 from the glory of the statesman," — then there are some 
 words in Latin, — ' and the Right Honorable gentleman 
 resumed his seat amidst loud cheers, in which some of the 
 Opposition were heard to join. ' " 
 
 " I want to be told, after all, did they write the letter to 
 say Donogan was to be let escape? " 
 
 "Would it have been a great crime, uncle?" said Nina, 
 artlessly. 
 
 " I'm not going into that. I 'm only asking what the 
 people over us say is the best way to govern us. I 'd like 
 to know, once for all, what was wrong and what was right 
 in Ireland." 
 
 "Has not the Premier just told you, sir," replied Nina, 
 "that it is always the reverse of what obtains everywhere 
 else?" 
 
 "I have had enough of it, anyhow," cried Dick, who, 
 though not intending it before, now was carried away by a 
 momentary gust of passion to make the avowal. 
 
 "Have you been in the Cabinet all this time, then, with- 
 out our knowing it?" asked Nina, archly. 
 
 "It is not of the Cabinet I was speaking. Mademoiselle. 
 It was of the country." And he answered haughtily. 
 
 "And where would you go, Dick, and find better?" said 
 Kate. 
 
 "Anywhere. I should find better in America, in Canada, 
 in the Far West, in New Zealand, — but I mean to try in 
 Australia." 
 
 " And what will you do when you get there ? " asked Kil- 
 gobbin, with a grim humor in his look. 
 
 "Do tell me, Cousin Dick; for who knows that it might 
 not suit me also." 
 
 Young Kearney filled his glass, and drained it without 
 
388 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 speaking. At last he said, "It will be for you, sir, to say 
 if I make the trial. It is clear enough, I have no course 
 open to me here. For a few hundred pounds, or, indeed, 
 for anything you like to give me, you get rid of me forever. 
 It will be the one piece of economy my whole life 
 comprises." 
 
 "Stay at home, Dick, and give to your own country the 
 energy you are willing to bestow on a strange land," said 
 Kate. 
 
 "And labor side by side with the peasant I have looked 
 down upon since I was able to walk." 
 
 "Don't look down on him, then; do it no longer. If you 
 would treat the first stranger you met in the bush as your 
 equal, begin the Christian practice in your own country." 
 
 "But he needn't do that at all,'* broke in the old man. 
 "If he would take to strong shoes and early rising here at 
 Kilgobbin, he need never go to Geelong for a living. Your 
 great-grandfathers lived here for centuries, and the old 
 house that sheltered them is still standing." 
 
 "What should I stay for — ? " He had got thus far when 
 his eyes met Nina's, and he stopped and hesitated; and, 
 as a deep blush covered his face, faltered out, "Gorman 
 O'Shea sajjs he is ready to go with me, and two fellows with 
 less to detain them in their own country would be hard to 
 find." 
 
 "O'Shea will do well enough," said the old man; "be was 
 not brought up to kid-leather boots and silk linings in his 
 great-coat. There 's stuff in him ; and if it comes to sleep- 
 ing under a haystack or dining on a red-herring, he '11 not 
 rise up with rheumatism or heart-burn. And what 's better 
 than all, he '11 not think himself a hero because he mends his 
 own boots or lights his own kitchen-fire." 
 
 "A letter for your honor," said the servant, entering with 
 a very informal-looking note on coarse paper, and fastened 
 with a wafer. "The gossoon, sir, is waiting for an answer; 
 he run every mile from Moate." 
 
 "Read it, Kitty," said the old man, not heeding the ser- 
 vant's comment. 
 
 "It is dated 'Moate Jail, seven o'clock,'" said Kitty, as 
 she read : " ' Dear Sir, — I have got into a stupid scrape, 
 
"A SCRAPE." 389 
 
 and have been committed to jail. Will you come, or send 
 some one to bail me out. The thing is a mere trifle, but the 
 " being locked up " is very hard to bear. Yours always, — 
 G. O'Shea.' " 
 
 '' Is this more Fenian work? " cried Kilgobbin. 
 
 " I 'm certain it is not, sir," said Dick. " Gorman O'Shea 
 has no liking for them, nor is he the man to sympathize 
 with what he owns he cannot understand. It is a mere 
 accidental row." 
 
 "At all events we must see to set him at liberty. Order 
 the gig, Dick, and while they are putting on the harness I '11 
 finish this decanter of port. If it was n't that we 're getting 
 retired shopkeepers on the bench we'd not see an O'Shea 
 sent to prison like a gossoon that stole a bunch of turnips." 
 
 "What has he been doing, I wonder?" said Nina, as she 
 drew her arm within Kate's and left the room. 
 
 "Some loud talk in the bar-parlor, perhaps," was Kate's 
 reply, and the toss of her head as she said it implied more 
 even than the words. 
 
CHAPTER LIV. 
 
 *' HOW IT BEFELL." 
 
 While Lord Kilgobbin and his son are plodding along 
 towards Moate with a horse not long released from the 
 harrow, and over a road which the late rains had sorely 
 damaged, the moment is not inopportune to explain the 
 nature of the incident, small enough in its way, that called 
 on them for this journey at nightfall. It befell that when 
 Miss Betty, indignant at her nephew's defection, and out- 
 raged that he should descend to call at Kilgobbin, determined 
 to cast him off forever, she also resolved upon a project 
 over which she had long meditated, and to which the con- 
 versation at her late dinner greatly predisposed her. 
 
 The growing unfertility of the land, the sturdy rejection 
 of the authority of the Church, manifested in so man}^ ways 
 by the people, had led Miss O'Shea to speculate more on the 
 insecurity of landed property in Ireland than all the long 
 list of outrages scheduled at Assizes, or all the burning 
 haggards that ever flared in a wintry sky. Her notion was 
 to retire into some religious sisterhood, and, away from life 
 and its cares, to pass her remaining years in holy meditation 
 and piety. She would have liked to have sold her estate and 
 endowed some house or convent with the proceeds ; but there 
 w^ere certain legal difficulties that stood in the way, and her 
 law agent, McKeown, must be seen and conferred with 
 about these. 
 
 Her moods of passion were usually so very violent that 
 she would stop at nothing ; and in the torrent of her anger 
 she would decide on a course of action which would color a 
 whole lifetime. On the present occasion her first step was to 
 write and acquaint McKeown that she would be at Moodie's 
 
"HOW IT BEFELL." 391 
 
 Hotel, Dominick Street, the same evening, and begged he 
 might call there at eight or nine o'clock, as her business with 
 him was pressing. Her next care was to let the house and 
 lands of O'Shea's Barn to Peter Gill, for the term of one 
 year, at a rent scarcely more than nominal, the said Gill 
 binding himself to maintain the gardens, the shrubberies, 
 and all the ornamental plantings in their accustomed order 
 and condition. In fact, the extreme moderation of the rent 
 was to be recompensed by the large space allotted to unprofit- 
 able land, and the great care he was pledged to exercise in 
 its preservation, and while nominally the tenant, so manifold 
 were the obligations imposed on him, he was in reality very 
 little other than the care-taker of O'Shea's Barn and its de- 
 pendencies. No fences were to be altered, or boundaries 
 changed. All the copses of young timber were to be care- 
 fully protected by palings as heretofore, and even the or- 
 namental cattle — the short-horns, and the Alderneys — and 
 a few favorite "Kerries" were to be kept on the allotted 
 paddocks ; and to old Kattoo herself was allotted a loose box, 
 with a small field attached to it, where she might saunter at 
 will, and ruminate over the less happy quadrupeds that had 
 to work for their subsistence. 
 
 Now, though Miss Betty, in the full torrent of her anger, 
 had that much of method in her madness to remember the 
 various details, whose interests were the business of her 
 daily life, and so far made provision for the future of her 
 pet cows and horses and dogs and guinea-fowls, so that if 
 she should ever resolve to return she should find all as she 
 had left it, — the short paper of agreement by which she ac- 
 cepted Gill as her tenant was drawn up by her own hand, 
 unaided by a lawyer; and, whether from the intemperate 
 haste of the moment, or an unbounded confidence in Gill's 
 honesty and fidelity, was not only carelessly expressed, but 
 worded in a way that implied how her trustfulness exone- 
 rated her from anything beyond the expression of what she 
 wished for and what she believed her tenant would strictly 
 perform. Gill's repeated phrase of ' ' Whatever her honor's 
 ladyship liked " had followed every sentence as she read 
 the document aloud to him ; and the only real puzzle she 
 had was to explain to the poor man's simple comprehension 
 
392 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 that she was not making a hard bargain with him, but treat- 
 ing him handsomely and in all confidence. 
 
 Shrewd and sharp as the old lady was, versed in the habits 
 of the people, and long trained to suspect a certain air of 
 dulness, by which, when asking the explanation of a point, 
 they watch, with a native casuistry, to see what flaw or 
 chink may open an equivocal meaning or intention, — she 
 was thoroughly convinced b}^ the simple and unreasoning 
 concurrence this humble man gave to every proviso, and 
 the hearty assurance he always gave ''that her honor knew 
 what was best. God reward and keep her long in the way 
 to do it ! " — with all this. Miss O'Shea had not accomplished 
 the first stage of her journey to Dublin, when Peter Gill was 
 seated in the office of Pat McEvoy, the attorney at Moate, 
 — a smart practitioner, who had done more to foster litiga- 
 tion between tenant and landlord than all the "grievances'* 
 that ever were placarded by the press. 
 
 " When did you get this, Peter? " said the attorney, as he 
 looked about, unable to find a date. 
 
 " This morning, sir, just before she started." 
 
 ''You'll have to come befor.e the magistrate and make 
 an oath of the date, and, by my conscience, it's worth 
 the trouble." 
 
 " Why, sir, what 's in it? " cried Peter, eagerly. 
 
 " 1 'm no lawyer if she has n't given you a clear possession 
 of the place, subject to certain trusts, and even for the non- 
 performance of these there is no penalty attached. When 
 Councillor Holmes comes down at the Assizes, I '11 lay a case 
 before him, and I '11 wager a trifle, Peter, you will turn out 
 to be an estated gentleman." 
 
 " Blood alive ! " was all Peter could utter. 
 
 Though the conversation that ensued occupied more than 
 an hour, it is not necessary that we should repeat what 
 occurred, nor state more than the fact that Peter went 
 home fully assured that if O'Shea's Barn was not his own 
 indisputably, it would be very hard to dispossess him, and 
 that, at all events, the occupation was secure to him for 
 the present. The importance that the law always attaches 
 to possession Mr. McEvoy took care to impress on Gill's 
 mind, and he fully convinced him that a forcible seizure 
 
"HOW IT BEFELL." 393 
 
 of the premises was far more to be apprehended than the 
 slower process of a suit and a verdict. 
 
 It was about the third week after this opinion had been 
 given, when young O'Shea walked over from Kilgobbin 
 Castle to the Barn, intending to see his aunt and take his 
 farewell of her. 
 
 Though he had steeled his heart against the emotion such 
 a leave-taking was likely to evoke, he was in nowise prepared 
 for the feelings the old place itself would call up, and as he 
 opened a little wicket that led by a shrubbery walk to the 
 cottage, he was glad to throw himself on the first seat he 
 could find, and wait till his heart could beat more meas- 
 uredly. What a strange thing was life, — at least that 
 conventional life we make for ourselves, — was his thought 
 now. "Here am I ready to cross the globe, to be the 
 servant, the laborer of some rude settler in the wilds of 
 Australia, and yet I cannot be the herdsman here, and 
 tend the cattle in the scenes that I love, where every tree, 
 every bush, every shady nook, and every running stream is 
 dear to me. I cannot serve my own kith and kin, but 
 must seek my bread from the stranger! This is our glo- 
 rious civilization. I should like to hear in what consists 
 its marvellous advantage." 
 
 And then he began to think of those men of whom he 
 had often heard, — gentlemen and men of refinement, — 
 who had gone out to Australia, and who, in all the drudg- 
 ery of daily labor, — herding cattle on the plains or 
 conducting droves of horses long miles of way, — still 
 managed to retain the habits of their better days, and, by 
 the instinct of the breeding which had become a nature, 
 to keep intact in their hearts the thoughts and the sym- 
 pathies and the affections that made them gentlemen. 
 
 "If my dear aunt only knew me as I know myself, she 
 would let me stay here and serve her as the humblest 
 laborer on her land. I can see no indignity in being poor 
 and faring hardly. I have known coarse food and coarse 
 clothing, and I never found that they either damped my 
 courage or soured my temper." 
 
 It might not seem exactly the appropriate moment to have 
 bethought him of the solace of companionship in such pov- 
 
394 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 erty, but somehow his thoughts did take that flight, and 
 unwarrantable as was the notion, he fancied himself return- 
 ing at nightfall to his lowly cabin, and a certain girlish 
 figure, whom our reader knows as Kate Kearney, standing 
 watching for his coming. 
 
 There was no one to be seen about as he approached the 
 house. The hall door, however, lay open. He entered and 
 passed on to the little breakfast-parlor on the left. The 
 furniture was the same as before, but a coarse fustian 
 jacket was thrown on the back of a chair, and a clay pipe 
 and a paper of tobacco stood on the table. While he was 
 examining these objects with some attention, a very ragged 
 urchin, of some ten or eleven years, entered the room with 
 a furtive step, and stood watching him. From this fellow 
 all that he could hear was that Miss Betty was gone away, 
 and that Peter was at the Kilbeggan Market, and though 
 he tried various questions, no other answers than these 
 were to be obtained. Gorman now tried to see the draw- 
 ing-room and the library, but these, as well as the dining- 
 room, were all locked. He next essayed the bedrooms, 
 but with the same unsuccess. At length he turned to his 
 own well-known corner, — the well-remembered little " green- 
 room," — which he loved to think his own. This, too, was 
 locked ; but Gorman remembered that by pressing the door 
 underneath with his walking-stick he could lift the bolt 
 from the old-fashioned receptacle that held it, and open the 
 door. Curious to have a last look at a spot dear by so 
 many memories, he tried the old artifice and succeeded. 
 
 He had still on his watch-chain the little key of an old 
 marquetrie cabinet, where he was wont to write, and now 
 he was determined to write a last letter to his aunt from 
 the old spot, and send her his good-bye from the very cor- 
 ner where he had often come to wish her " good-night." 
 
 He opened the window and walked out on the little 
 wooden balcony, from which the view extended over the 
 lawn and the broad belt of wood that fenced the demesne. 
 The Sliebh Bloom Mountain shone in the distance, and in 
 the calm of an evening sunlight the whole picture had 
 something in its silence and peacefulness of almost raptur- 
 ous charm. 
 
"HOW IT BEFELL." 395 
 
 Who is there amongst us that has not felt, in walking 
 through the room of some uninhabited house, with every 
 appliance of human comfort strewn about, ease and luxury 
 within, wavy trees and sloping lawn or eddying waters 
 without, — who, in seeing all these, has not questioned him- 
 self as to why this should be deserted? and why is there 
 none to taste and feel all the blessedness of such a lot 
 as life here should offer? Is not the world full of these 
 places? is not the puzzle of this query of all lands and of 
 all peoples? That ever-present delusion of what we should 
 do, what be if we were aught other than ourselves, — 
 how happy, how contented, how unrepining, and how good, 
 — ay, even our moral nature comes into the compact, — 
 this delusion, I say, besets most of us through life, and we 
 never weary of believing how cruelly fate has treated us, 
 and how unjust destiny has been to a variety of good gifts 
 and graces which are doomed to die unrecognized and 
 unrequited. 
 
 I will not go to the length of saying that Gorman 
 C Shea's reflections went thus far, though they did go to 
 the extent of wondering why his aunt had left this lovely 
 spot, and asked himself, again and again, where she could 
 possibly have found anything to replace it. 
 
 "My dearest aunt," wrote he, "in my own old room at the 
 dear old desk, and on the spot knitted to my heart by happiest 
 memories, I sit down to send you my last good-bye ere I leave Ireland 
 forever. 
 
 " It is in no mood of passing fretfulness or impatience that I 
 resolve to go and seek my fortune in Australia. As I feel now, 
 believing you are displeased with me, I have no heart to go further 
 into the question of my own selfish interests, nor say why I resolve 
 to give up soldiering, and why I turn to a new existence. Had I 
 been to you what I have hitherto been, had I the assurance that I 
 possessed the old claim on your love which made me regard you as 
 a dear mother, I should tell you of every step that has led me to this 
 determination, and how carefully and anxiously I tried to study what 
 might be the turning-point of my life." 
 
 When he had written thus far and his eyes had already 
 grown glassy with the tears which would force their way 
 across them, a heavy foot was heard on the stairs, the 
 
396 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 door was burst rudely open, and Peter Gill stood before 
 him. 
 
 No longer, however, the old peasant in shabby clothes 
 and with his look half-shy, half-sycophant, but vulgarly 
 dressed in broadcloth and bright buttons, a tall hat on 
 his head, and a crimson cravat round his neck. His face 
 was flushed, and his eye flashing and insolent, so that 
 O'Shea only feebly recognized him by his voice. 
 
 "You thought you'd be too quick for me, j^oung man," 
 said the fellow, and the voice in its thickness showed he had 
 been drinking, "and that you would do your bit of writ- 
 ing there before I'd be back; but I was up to you." 
 
 " I really do not know what you mean," cried O'Shea, 
 rising ; " and as it is only too plain you have been drinking, 
 I do not care to ask you." 
 
 ' ' Whether 1 was drinking or no is my own business ; 
 there 's none to call me to account now. I am here in my 
 own house, and I order you to leave it, and if you don't go 
 by the way you came in, by my soul you '11 go by that win- 
 dow ! " A loud bang of his stick on the floor gave the 
 emphasis to the last words ; and whether it was the action or 
 the absurd figure of the man himself overcame O'Shea, he 
 burst out in a hearty laugh as he surveyed him. " I '11 make 
 it no laughing matter to you," cried Gill, wild with passion ; 
 and, stepping to the door, he cried out, "Come up, boys, 
 every man of ye; come up and see the chap that's trying to 
 turn me out of my holding." 
 
 The sound of voices and the tramp of feet outside now 
 drew O'Shea to the window, and, passing out on the balcony, 
 he saw a considerable crowd of country people assembled 
 beneath. They were all armed with sticks, and had that 
 look of mischief and daring so unmistakable in a mob. As 
 the young man stood looking at them, some one pointed him 
 out to the rest, and a wild yell, mingled with hisses, now 
 broke from the crowd. He was turning away from the spot 
 in disgust when he found that Gill had stationed himself at 
 the window, and barred the passage. 
 
 " The boys want another look at ye," said Gill, insolently ; 
 " go back and show yourself: it is not every day they see 
 an informer." 
 
■£/P/^£l£^ 
 
OF THE ^ 
 
 UNIVERSITY // 
 
 OF 
 
"HOW IT BEFELL." 397 
 
 " Stand back, you old fool, and let me pass," cried 
 O'Shea. 
 
 " Touch me if you dare ; only lay one finger on me in my 
 own house," said the fellow ; and he grinned almost in his 
 face as he spoke. 
 
 " Stand back," said Gorman, and, suiting the action to the 
 word, he raised his arm to make space for him to pass out. 
 Gill, no sooner did he feel the arm graze his chest, than he 
 struck O'Shea across the face ; and though the blow was that 
 of an old man, the insult was so maddening that O'Shea, 
 seizing him by the arms, dragged him out upon the balcony. 
 
 " He 's going to throw the old man over," cried several of 
 those beneath; and, amidst the tumult of voices, a number 
 soon rushed up the stairs and out on the balcony, where the 
 old fellow was clinging to O'Shea's legs in his despairing 
 attempt to save himself. The struggle scarcely lasted many 
 seconds ; for the rotten wood-work of the balcony creaked 
 and trembled, and at last gave way with a crash, bringing 
 the whole party to the ground together. 
 
 A score of sticks rained their blows on the luckless young 
 man, and each time that he tried to rise he was struck back 
 and rolled over by a blow or a kick, till at length he lay 
 still and senseless on the sward, his face covered with blood 
 and his clothes in ribbons. 
 
 " Put him in a cart, boys, and take him off to the jail," 
 said the attorney, McEvoy. " We'll be in a scrape about 
 all this, if we don't make him in the wrong." 
 
 His audience fully appreciated the counsel, and while a 
 few were busied in carrying old Gill to the house — for a 
 broken leg made him unable to reach it alone — the others 
 placed O'Shea on some straw in a cart, and set out with him 
 to Kilbeggan. 
 
 " It is not a trespass at all," said McEvoy. " I'll make 
 it a burglary and forcible entry, and if he recovers at all, 
 I '11 stake my reputation I transport him for seven years." 
 
 A hearty murmur of approval met the speech ; and the 
 procession, with the cart at their head, moved on towards 
 the town. 
 
CHAPTER LV. 
 
 TWO J. P.'S. 
 
 It was the Tory magistrate, Mr. Flood, — the same who had 
 ransacked Walpole's correspondence, — before whom the in- 
 formations were sworn against Gorman O'Shea ; and the old 
 justice' of the peace was, in secret, not sorry to see the ques- 
 tion of land-tenure a source of dispute and quarrel amongst 
 the very party who were always inveighing against the 
 landlords. 
 
 When Lord Kilgobbiu arrived at Kilbeggan, it was nigh 
 midnight ; and as young OShea was at that moment a patient 
 in the jail infirmary, and sound asleep, it was decided 
 between Kearney and his son that they would leave him 
 undisturbed till the following morning. 
 
 Late as it was, Kearney was so desirous to know the exact 
 narrative of events that he resolved on seeing Mr. Flood at 
 once. Though Dick Kearney remonstrated with his father, 
 and reminded him that old Tom Flood, as he was called, was 
 a bitter Tory, had neither a civil word nor a kind thought for 
 his adversaries in politics, Kearney was determined not to be 
 turned from his purpose by any personal consideration, and 
 being assured by the innkeeper that he was sure to find Mr. 
 Flood in his dining-room and over his wine, he set out for 
 the snug cottage at the entrance of the town, where the old 
 justice of the peace resided. 
 
 Just as he had been told, Mr. Flood was still in the dinner- 
 room, and with his guest, Tony Adams, the Rector, seated 
 with an array of decanters between them. 
 
 ''Kearney — Kearney! " cried Flood, as he read the card 
 the servant handed him. ' "Is it the fellow who calls himself 
 Lord Kilgobbin, I wonder?" 
 
 " May be so," growled Adams, in a deep guttural, for he 
 disliked the effort of speech. 
 
TWO J. p/s. 399 
 
 " I don't know him, nor do I want to know him. He is 
 one of your half-and-half Liberals that, to my thinking, are 
 worse than the rebels themselves ! What is this here in 
 pencil on the back of the card ? ' Mr. K. begs to apologize 
 for the hour of his intrusion, and earnestly entreats a few 
 minutes from Mr. Flood.' Show him in, Philip, show him 
 in, and bring some fresh glasses." 
 
 Kearney made his excuses with a tact and politeness which 
 spoke of a time when he mixed freely with the world, and 
 old Flood was so astonished by the ease and good breeding 
 of his visitor that his own manner became at once courteous 
 and urbane. 
 
 "Make no apologies about the hour, Mr. Kearney," said 
 he. *' An old bachelor's house is never very tight in 
 discipline. Allow me to introduce Mr. Adams, Mr. Kearney, 
 the best preacher in Ireland, and as good a judge of port 
 wine as of theology." 
 
 The responsive grunt of the parson was drowned in the 
 pleasant laugh of the others, as Kearney sat down and filled 
 his glass. In a very few words he related the reason of his 
 visit to the town, and asked Mr. Flood to tell him what he 
 knew of the late misadventure. 
 
 " Sworn information, drawn up by that worthy man Pat 
 McEvoy, the greatest rascal in Europe ; and I hope I don't 
 hurt you by saying it, Mr. Kearney. Sworn information 
 of a burglarious entry, and an aggravated assault on the 
 premises and person of one Peter Gill, another local bless- 
 ing, — bad luck to him. The aforesaid — if I spoke of 
 him before — Gorman O'Shea, having, suadente diaholo^ 
 smashed down doors and windows, palisadings and palings, 
 and broke open cabinets, chests, cupboards, and other con- 
 trivances. In a word, he went into another man's house, 
 and when asked what he did there, he threw the proprietor 
 out of the window. There 's the whole of it." 
 
 " Where was the house? " 
 
 " O'Shea's Barn." 
 
 " But surely O'Shea's Barn being the residence and prop- 
 erty of his aunt, there was no impropriety in his going 
 there?" 
 
 ''The informant states that the place was in the tenancy 
 
400 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 of this said Gill, one of your own people, Mr. Kearney. I 
 wish you luck of him." 
 
 "I disown him. Root and branch; he is a disgrace to 
 any side. And where is Miss Betty O'Shea? " 
 
 " In a convent or a monastery, they say. She has turned 
 abbess or monk; but, upon my conscience, from the little 
 I 've seen of her, if a strong will and a plucky heart be the 
 qualifications, she might be the Pope ! " 
 
 *' And are the young man's injuries serious, — is he badly 
 hurt? for they would not let me see him at the jail." 
 
 " Serious, I believe they are. He is cut cruelly about the 
 face and head, and his body bruised all over. The finest 
 peasantry have a taste for kicking with strong brogues on 
 them, Mr. Kearney, that cannot be equalled." 
 
 ' ' I wish with all my heart they 'd kick the English out of 
 Ireland ! " cried Kearney, with a savage energy. 
 
 "Faith! if they go on governing us in the present 
 fashion, I do not say I '11 make any great objection. Eh, 
 Adams?" 
 
 "May be so! " was the slow and very guttural reply, as 
 the fat man crossed his hands on his waistcoat. 
 
 " I'm sick of them all, Whigs and Tories," said Kearney. 
 
 " Is not every Irish gentleman sick of them, Mr. Kearney? 
 Ain't you sick of being cheated and cajoled, and ain't we 
 sick of being cheated and insulted? They seek to conciliate 
 you by outraging us. Don't you think we could settle our 
 own differences better amongst ourselves? It was Philpot 
 Curran said of the fleas in Manchester, that if they'd all 
 pull together, they 'd have pulled him out of bed. Now, Mr. 
 Kearney, what if we all took to ' pulling together ' ? " 
 
 "We cannot get rid of the notion that we'd be out- 
 jockeyed," said Kearney, slowly. 
 
 "We A;7ioz^;," cried the other, "that we should be out- 
 numbered, and that is worse. Eh, Adams? " 
 
 " Ay ! " sighed Adams, who did not desire to be appealed 
 to by either side. 
 
 "Now we 're alone here, and no eavesdropper near us, tell 
 me fairly, Kearney, are you better because we are brought 
 down in the world ? Are you richer, — are you greater, — 
 are you happier?" 
 
TWO J. P.'S. 401 
 
 " I believe we are, Mr. Flood, and I'll tell you why I say 
 so." 
 
 "I'll be shot if I hear you, that's all. Fill your glass. 
 That 's old port that John Beresford tasted in the Custom 
 House Docks seventy-odd years ago, and you are the only 
 Whig living that ever drank a drop of it ! " 
 
 '' 1 am proud to be the first exception, and I go so far as 
 to believe I shall not be the last ! " 
 
 " I '11 send a few bottles over to that boy in the infirmary. 
 It cannot but be good for him," said Flood. 
 
 " Take care, for heaven's sake, if he be threatened with 
 inflammation. Do nothing without the doctor's leave." 
 
 " I wonder why the people who are so afraid of inflamma- 
 tion are so fond of rebellion," said he, sarcastically. 
 
 "• Perhaps I could tell you that, too — " 
 
 ' ' No ; do not — do not, I beseech you ; reading the Whig 
 Ministers' speeches has given me such a disgust to all expla- 
 nations, I 'd rather concede anything than hear how it could 
 be defended ! Apparently Mr. Disraeli is of my mind also, 
 for he won't support Paul Hartigan's motion." 
 
 *' What was Hartigan's motion? " 
 
 *' For the papers, or the correspondence, or whatever they 
 called it, that passed between Danesbury and Dan Donogan.'* 
 
 " But there was none." 
 
 •' Is that all you know of it? They were as thick as two 
 thieves. It was ' Dear Dane,' and ' Dear Dan,' between 
 them. ' Stop the shooting. We want a light calendar at 
 the summer assizes,' says one. ' You shall have forty 
 thousand pounds yearly for a Catholic college, if the House 
 will let us.' ' Thank you for nothing for the Catholic col- 
 lege,' says Dan. ' We want our own parliament and our 
 own militia; free pardon for political offences.' What 
 would you say to a bill to make landlord-shooting man- 
 slaughter, Mr. Kearney?" 
 
 "Justifiable homicide, Mr. Bright called it years ago; but 
 the judges did n't see it." 
 
 " This Danesbury • muddle,' for that is the name they give 
 it, will be hushed up ; for he has got some Tory connections, 
 and the Lords are never hard on one of their ' order,' so I 
 hear. Hartigan is to be let have his talk out in the House ; 
 
 26 
 
402 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 and as he is said to be violent and indiscreet, the Prime 
 Minister will only reply to the violence and the indiscretion, 
 and he will conclude by saying that the noble Viceroy has 
 begged her Majesty to release him of the charge of the 
 Irish Government; and though the Cabinet have urgently 
 entreated him to remain and carry out the wise policy of 
 conciliation so happily begun in Ireland, he is rooted in his 
 resolve, and he will not stay ; and there will be cheers ; and 
 when he adds that Mr. Cecil Walpole, having shown his 
 great talents for intrigue, will be sent back to the fitting 
 sphere, — his old profession of diplomacy, — there will be 
 laughter ; for as the Minister seldom jokes, the House will 
 imagine this to be a slip, and then, with every one in good 
 humor, — but Paul Hartigan, who will have to withdraw his 
 motion, — the right honorable gentleman will sit down, well 
 pleased at his afternoon's work." 
 
 Kearney could not but laugh at the sketch of a debate 
 given with all the mimicry of tone and mock solemnity of 
 an old debater ; and the two men now became, by the bond 
 of their geniality, like old acquaintances. 
 
 " Ah, Mr. Kearney, I won't say we 'd do it better on Col- 
 lege Green, but we 'd do it more kindly, more courteously, 
 and, above all, we 'd be less hypocritical in our inquiries. I 
 believe we try to cheat the devil in Ireland just as much 
 as our neighbors. But we don't pretend that we are arch- 
 bishops all the time we 're doing it. There 's where we 
 differ from the English." 
 
 " And who is to govern us," cried Kearney, "if we have 
 no Lord-Lieutenant? " 
 
 " The Privy Council, the Lords Justices, or may be the 
 Board of Works ; who knows? When you are going over to 
 Holyhead in the packet, do you ever ask if the man at the 
 wheel is decent, or a born idiot, and liable to fits? Not a 
 bit of it. You know that there are other people to look to 
 this, and you trust, besides, that they'll land you all safe." 
 
 "That's true," said Kearney, and he drained his glass; 
 " and now tell me one thing more. How will it go with 
 young O'Shea about this scrimmage, — will it be serious? " 
 
 " Curtis, the chief constable, says it will be an ugly affair 
 enough. They'll swear hard, and they'll try to make out a 
 
TWO J. p.'s. 403 
 
 title to the land through the action of trespass ; and if, as I 
 hear, the young fellow is a scamp and a bad lot — " 
 
 "Neither one nor the other," broke in Kearney; ''as fine 
 a boy and as thorough a gentleman as there is in Ireland." 
 
 "And a bit of a Fenian, too," slowly interposed Flood. 
 
 "Not that I know. I 'm not sure that he follows the dis- 
 tinctions of party here ; he is little acquainted with Ireland." 
 
 "Ho, ho! a Yankee sympathizer?" 
 
 "Not even that; an Austrian soldier, a young lieutenant 
 of Lancers over here for his leave. " 
 
 "And why could n't he shoot, or course, or kiss the girls, 
 or play at football, and not be burning his fingers with the 
 new land laws? There 's plenty of ways to amuse yourself 
 in Ireland without throwing a man out of window, — eh, 
 Adams?" 
 
 And Adams bowed his assent, but did not utter a word. 
 
 "You are not going to open more wine?" remonstrated 
 Kearney, eagerly. 
 
 "It's done. Smell that, Mr. Kearney," cried Flood, as 
 he held out a fresh-drawn cork at the end of the screw. 
 "Talk to me of clove-pinks and violets and carnations 
 after that? I don't know whether you have any prayers in 
 your Church against being led into temptation.'* 
 
 "Haven't we! " sighed the other. 
 
 "Then all I say is. Heaven help the people at Oporto; 
 they '11 have more to answer for even than most men." 
 
 It was nigh dawn when they parted ; Kearney muttering 
 to himself as he sauntered back to the inn, "If port like 
 that is the drink of the Tories, they must be good fellows, 
 with all their prejudices." 
 
 "I '11 be shot if I don't like that rebel," said Flood, as he 
 went to bed. 
 
CHAPTER LVI. 
 
 BEFORE THE DOOR. 
 
 Though Lord Kilgobbin, when he awoke somewhat late in 
 the afternoon, did not exactly complain of headache, he 
 was free to admit that his faculties were slightly clouded, 
 and that his memory was not to the desired extent retentive 
 of all that passed on the preceding night. Indeed, beyond 
 the fact — which he reiterated with great energy — that "old 
 Flood, Tory though he was, was a good fellow, an excellent 
 fellow, and had a marvellous bin of port wine," his son 
 Dick was totally unable to get any information from him. 
 " Bigot, if you like, or Blue Protestant, and all the rest of 
 it; but a fine, hearty old soul, and an Irishman to the 
 heart's core!" That was the sum of information which a 
 two hours' close cross-examination elicited ; and Dick was 
 sulkily about to leave the room in blank disappointment 
 when the old man suddenly amazed him by asking, "And 
 do you tell me that you have been lounging about the town 
 all the morning and have learned nothing? Were you down 
 to the jail? Have you seen O'Shea? What's his account 
 of it? Who began the row? Has he any bones broken? 
 Do you know anything at all ? " cried he, as the blank look 
 of the astonished youth seemed to imply utter ignorance as 
 well as dismay. 
 
 "First of all," said Dick, drawing a long breath, "I 
 have not seen O'Shea; nobody is admitted to see him. 
 His injuries about the head are so severe the doctors are in 
 dread of erysipelas." 
 
 "What if he had? Have not every one of us had the 
 erysipelas some time or other; and, barring the itching, 
 what 's the great harm? " 
 
BEFORE THE DOOR. 405 
 
 "The doctors declare that if it come they will not answer 
 for his life." 
 
 "They know best, and I'm afraid they know why, also. 
 Oh dear, oh dear! if there 's anything the world makes no 
 progress in, it 's the science of medicine. Everybody now 
 dies of what we all used to have when I was a boy! Sore 
 throats, small-pox, colic, are all fatal since they 've found 
 out Greek names for them, and with their old vulgar titles 
 they killed nobody." 
 
 ''Gorman is certainly in a bad way, and Dr. Rogan says 
 it will be some days before he could pronounce him out of 
 danger." 
 
 "Can he be removed? Can we take him back with us to 
 Kilgobbin?" 
 
 "That is utterly out of the question; he cannot be stirred, 
 and requires the most absolute rest and quiet. Besides 
 that, there is another difficulty, — I don't know if they 
 would permit us to take him away." 
 
 "What! do you mean refuse our bail?" 
 
 "They have got affidavits to show old Gill's life's in 
 danger; he is in high fever to-day, and raving furiously; 
 and if he should die, McEvoy declares that they '11 be able 
 to send bills for manslaughter, at least, before the grand 
 jury." 
 
 "There's more of it!" cried Kilgobbin, with along 
 whistle. "Is it Rogan swears the fellow is in danger?" 
 
 "No; it 's Tom Price, the dispensary doctor; and as Miss 
 Betty withdrew her subscription last year, they say he swore 
 he 'd pay her ok for it." 
 
 "I know Tom, and I '11 see to that," said Kearney. "Are 
 the affidavits sworn?" 
 
 "No; they are drawn out. McEvoy is copying them 
 now; but they '11 be ready by three o'clock." 
 
 " I '11 have Rogan to swear that the boy must be removed 
 at once. We '11 take him over with us ; and once at Kilgob- 
 bin, they '11 want a regiment of soldiers if they mean to take 
 him. It is nigh twelve o'clock, now, is it not?" 
 
 "It is on the stroke of two, sir." 
 
 "Is it possible? I believe I overslept myself in the 
 strange bed. Be alive now, Dick, and take the 2.40 train 
 
406 LORD KILGOBBIK 
 
 to town. Call on McKeown, and find out where Miss Betty 
 is stopping ; break this business to her gently, — for with 
 all that damnable temper she has a fine womanly heart; tell 
 her the poor boy was not to blame at all ; that he went over 
 to see her, and knew nothing of the place being let out 
 or hired; and tell her, besides, that the blackguards that 
 beat him were not her own people at all, but villains from 
 another barony that old Gill brought over to work on short 
 wages. Mind that you say that, or we '11 have more law 
 and more trouble, — notices to quit, and the devil knows 
 what. I know Miss Betty well, and she 'd not leave a man 
 on a townland if they raised a finger against one of her 
 name! There, now, you know what to do; go and do 
 it! " 
 
 To hear the systematic and peremptory manner in which 
 the old man detailed all his directions, one would have pro- 
 nounced him a model of orderly arrangement and rule. 
 Having despatched Dick to town, however, he began to 
 bethink him of all the matters on which he was desirous to 
 learn Miss O' Shea's mind. Had she really leased the Barn 
 to this man Gill; and if so, for what term? And was her 
 quarrel with her nephew of so serious a nature that she 
 might hesitate as to taking his side here, — at least, till she 
 knew he was in the right; and then, was he in the right? 
 That was, though the last, the most vital consideration of 
 all. 
 
 "I 'd have thought of all these if the boy had not flurried 
 me so. These hot-headed fellows have never room in their 
 foolish brains for anything like consecutive thought; they 
 can just entertain the one idea, and till they dismiss that 
 they cannot admit another. Now, he '11 come back by the 
 next train, and bring me the answer to one of my que- 
 ries, if even that?" sighed he, as he went on with his 
 dressing. 
 
 "All this blessed business," muttered he to himself, 
 *' comes of this blundering interference with the land laws. 
 Paddy hears that they have given him some new rights and 
 privileges, and *no mock modesty of his own will let him 
 lose any of them, and so he claims everything. Old expe- 
 rience had taught him that with a bold heart and a blunder- 
 
BEFORE THE DOOR. 407 
 
 buss he need not pay much rent; but Mr. Gladstone 
 — long life to him — had said, ' We must do something for 
 you.* Now what could that be? He'd scarcely go so 
 far as to give them out Minie rifles or Chassepots, though 
 arms of precision, as they call them, would have put many 
 a poor fellow out of pain; as Bob Magrath said, when he 
 limped into the public-house with a ball in his back, ' It 's 
 only a "healing measure; " don't make a fuss about it.' " 
 
 "Mr. Flood wants to see your honor when you 're dressed," 
 said the waiter, interrupting his soliloquy. 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 "Walking up and down, sir, forenent the door." 
 
 "Will ye say I'm coming down? I'm just finishing a 
 letter to the Lord Lieutenant," said Kilgobbin, with a sly 
 look to the man, who returned the glance with its rival, and 
 then left the room. 
 
 " Will you not come in and sit down ? " said Kearney, as 
 he cordially shook Flood's hand. 
 
 "I have only five minutes to stay, and with your leave, 
 Mr. Kearney, we'll pass it here;" and taking the other's 
 arm, he proceeded to walk up and down before the door of 
 the inn. 
 
 "You know Ireland well, — few men better, I am told, — 
 and you have no need, therefore, to be told how the rumored 
 dislikes of party, the reported jealousies and rancors of 
 this set to that, influence the world here. It will be a fine 
 thing, therefore, to show these people here that the Liberal, 
 Mr. Kearney, and that bigoted old Tory, Tom Flood, were 
 to be seen walking together and in close confab. It will 
 show them, at all events, that neither of us wants to make 
 party capital out of this scrimmage, and that he who wants 
 to affront one of us cannot, on that ground at least, count 
 upon the other. Just look at the crowd that is watching us 
 already! There 's a fellow neglecting the sale of his pig to 
 stare at us, and that young woman has stopped gartering 
 her stocking for the last two minutes in sheer curiosity 
 about us." 
 
 Kearney laughed heartily as he nodded assent. 
 
 ' ' You follow me, don ' t you ? " asked Flood. ' ' Well, then, 
 grant me the favor I 'm about to ask, and it will show me 
 
408 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 that you see all these things as I do. This row may turn 
 out more seriously than we thought for. That scoundrel 
 Gill is in a high fever to-day; I would not say that just out 
 of spite the fellow would not die. Who knows if it may 
 not become a great case at the assizes ; and if so, Kearney, 
 let us have public opinion with us. There are scores of 
 men who will wait to hear what you and I say of this 
 business. There are hundreds more who will expect us to 
 disagree. Let us prove to them that this is no feud between 
 Orange and Green ; this is nothing of dispute between Whig 
 and Tory, or Protestant and Papist, but a free fight where, 
 more shame to them, fifty fell upon one. Now what you 
 must grant me is leave to send this boy back to Kilgobbin 
 in my own carriage and with my oWn liveries. There is 
 not a peasant cutting turf on the bog will not reason out his 
 own conclusions when he sees it. Don't refuse me, for I 
 have set my heart on it." 
 
 " I 'm not thinking of refusing. I was only wondering to 
 myself what my daughter Kitty will say when she sees me 
 sitting behind the blue and orange liveries." 
 
 "You may send me back with the green flag over me the 
 next day I dine with you, " cried Flood ; and the compact 
 was ratified. 
 
 "It is more than half-past already," said Flood. "We 
 are to have a full bench at three ; so be ready to give your 
 bail, and I '11 have the carriage at the corner of the street, 
 and you shall set off with the boy at once." 
 
 "I must say," said Kearney, "whatever be your Tory 
 faults, lukewarmness is not one of them ! You stand to me 
 like an old friend in all this trouble." 
 
 "Maybe it 's time to begin to forget old grudges. Kear- 
 ney, I believe in my heart neither of us is as bad as the 
 other thinks him. Are you aware that they are getting 
 aflSdavits to refuse the bail?" 
 
 "I know it all; but I have sent a man to McEvoy about 
 a case that will take all his morning ; and he '11 be too late 
 with his affidavits." 
 
 "By the time he is ready you and your charge will be 
 snug in Kilgobbin ; and another thing, Kearney, — for I 
 have thought of the whole matter, — you '11 take out with 
 
BEFORE THE DOOR. 409 
 
 you that little vermin Price, the doctor, and treat him well. 
 He '11 be as indiscreet as you wish; and be sure to give him 
 the opportunity. There, now, give me your most affec- 
 tionate grasp of the hand, for there 's an attentive public 
 watching us.'* 
 
CHAPTER LVII. 
 
 A DOCTOR. 
 
 Young O'Shea made the journey from Kilbeggan to Kil- 
 gobbio Castle in total unconsciousness. The symptoms had 
 now taken the form which doctors call concussion; and 
 though to a first brief question he was able to reply reason- 
 ably and well, the effort seemed so exhausting that to all 
 subsequent queries he appeared utterly indifferent; nor did 
 he even by look acknowledge that he heard them. 
 
 Perfect and unbroken quiet was enjoined as his best, if 
 not his only, remedy ; and Kate gave up her own room for 
 the sick man, as that most remote from all possible disturb- 
 ance, and away from all the bustle of the house. The 
 doctors consulted on his case in the fashion that a country 
 physician of eminence condescends to consult with a small 
 local practitioner. Dr. Rogan pronounced his opinion, pro- 
 phetically declared the patient in danger, and prescribed his 
 remedies ; while Price, agreeing with everything, and even 
 slavishly abject in his manner of concurrence, went about 
 amongst the underlings of the household, saying, "There 's 
 two fractures of the frontal bone. It's trepanned he ought 
 to be; and when there's an inquest on the body, I'll 
 declare I said so." 
 
 Though nearly all the care of providing for the sick man's 
 nursing fell to Kate Kearney, she fulfilled the duty without 
 attracting any notice whatever, or appearing to feel as if 
 any extra demand were made upon her time or her atten- 
 tion; so much so, that a careless observer might have 
 thought her far more interested in providing for the recep- 
 tion of the aunt than in cares for the nephew. 
 
 Dick Kearney had written to say that Miss Betty was so 
 overwhelmed with afl^iction at young Gorman's mishap 
 
A DOCTOR. 411 
 
 that she had taken to bed, and could not be expected to be 
 able to travel for several days. She insisted, however, on 
 two telegrams daily to report on the boy's case, and asked 
 which of the great Dublin celebrities of physic should be 
 sent down to see him. 
 
 "They 're all alike to me," said Kilgobbin; "but if I was 
 to choose, I think I 'd say Dr. Chute." 
 
 This was so far unlucky, since Dr. Chute had then been 
 dead about forty years ; scarcely a junior of the profession 
 having so much as heard his name. 
 
 "We really want no one," said Rogan. "We are doing 
 most favorably in every respect. If one of the young 
 ladies would sit and read to him, but not converse, it would 
 be a service. He made the request himself this morning, 
 and I promised to repeat it." 
 
 A telegram, however, announced that Sir St. Xavier 
 Brennan would arrive the same evening; and as Sir X. 
 was physician-in-chief to the nuns of the Bleeding Heart, 
 there could be little doubt whose orthodoxy had chosen him. 
 
 He came at nightfall, — a fat, comely-looking, somewhat 
 unctuous gentleman, with excellent teeth and snow-white 
 hands, symmetrical and dimpled like a woman's. He saw 
 the patient, questioned him slightly, and divined, without 
 waiting for it, what the answer should be ; he was delighted 
 with Rogan, pleased with Price; but he grew actually 
 enthusiastic over those charming nurses, Nina and Kate. 
 
 "With such sisters of charity to tend me, I 'd consent to 
 pass my life as an invalid," cried he. 
 
 Indeed, to listen to him, it would seem that, whether from 
 the salubrity of the air, the peaceful quietude of the spot, 
 the watchful kindness and attention of the surrounders, or 
 a certain general air, — an actual atmosphere of benevolence 
 and contentment around, — there was no pleasure of life 
 could equal the delight of being laid up at Kilgobbin. 
 
 "I have a message for you from my old friend Miss 
 O'Shea," said he to Kate the first moment he had the oppor- 
 tunity of speaking with her alone. " It is not necessary to 
 tell you that I neither know, nor desire to know, its import. 
 Her words were thes^, — ' Tell my godchild to forgive me if 
 she still has any memory for some very rude words I once 
 
412 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 spoke. Tell her that I have been sorely punished for them 
 since, and that till I know I have her pardon I have no 
 courage to cross her doors.' This was my message, and I 
 was to bring back your answer." 
 
 "Tell her," cried Kate, warmly, "I have no place in my 
 memory but for the kindnesses she has bestowed on me, and 
 that I ask no better boon from fortune than to be allowed to 
 love her, and to be worthy of her love." 
 
 "I will repeat every word you have told me; and I am 
 proud to be bearer of such a speech. May I presume, upon 
 the casual confidence I have thus acquired, to add one word 
 for myself; and it is as the doctor I would speak." 
 
 "Speak freely. What is it? " 
 
 "It is this, then: you young ladies keep your watches in 
 turn in the sick-room. The patient is unfit for much excite- 
 ment, and, as I dare not take the liberty of imposing a line 
 of conduct on Mademoiselle Kostalergi, I have resolved to 
 run the hazard with you ! Let hers be the task of entertain- 
 ing him; let her be the reader — and he loves being read 
 to — and the talker, and the narrator of whateyer goes on. 
 To you be the part of quiet watchfulness and care, to bathe 
 the heated brow or the burning hand, to hold the cold cup 
 to the parched lips, to adjust the pillow, to temper the light 
 and renew the air of the sick-room ; but to speak seldom, if 
 at all. Do you understand me ? " 
 
 "Perfectly; and you are wise and acute in your distribu- 
 tion of labor, — each of us has her fitting station." 
 
 "I dared not have said this much to her; my doctor's 
 instinct told me I might be frank with you.'' 
 
 "You are safe in speaking to me," said she, calmly. 
 
 "Perhaps I ought to say that I give these suggestions 
 without any concert with my patient. I have not only 
 abstained from consulting, but — " 
 
 "Forgive my interrupting you. Sir X. It was quite 
 unnecessary to tell me this." 
 
 "You are not displeased with me, dear lady? " said he, in 
 his softest of accents. 
 
 "No; but do not say anything which might make me 
 so." 
 
 The doctor bowed reverentially, crossed his white hands 
 
A DOCTOR. 413 
 
 on his waistcoat, and looked like a saint ready for mar- 
 tyrdom. 
 
 Kate frankly held out her hand in token of perfect cor- 
 diality, and her honest smile suited the action well. 
 
 "Tell Miss Betty that our sick charge shall not be neg- 
 lected, but that we want her here herself to help us." 
 
 "I shall report your message word for word," said he, as 
 he withdrew. 
 
 As the doctor drove back to Dublin, he went over a variety 
 of things in his thoughts. There were serious disturbances 
 in the provinces: those ugly outrages which forerun long 
 winter nights, and make the last days of October dreary and 
 sad-colored. Disorder and lawlessness were abroad; and 
 that want of something remedial to be done, which, like the 
 thirst in fever, is fostered and fed by partial indulgence. 
 Then he had some puzzling cases in hospital, and one or two 
 in private practice, which harassed him; for some had 
 reached that critical stage where a false move would be 
 fatal, and it was far from clear which path should be 
 taken. Then there was that matter of Miss O'Shea herself, 
 who, if her nephew were to die, would most likely endow 
 that hospital in connection with the Bleeding Heart, and of 
 which he was himself the founder; and that this fate was 
 by no means improbable, Sir X. persuaded himself, as he 
 counted over all the different stages of peril that stood be- 
 tween him and convalescence. " We have now the concus- 
 sion, with reasonable prospect of meningitis ; then there may 
 come on erysipelas from the scalp wounds, and high fever, 
 with all its dangers ; next there maj^ be a low typhoid state, 
 with high nervous excitement; and through all these the 
 passing risks of the wrong food or drink, the imprudent 
 revelations, or the mistaken stimulants. Heigho! " said he, 
 at last; "we come through storm and shipwreck, forlorn 
 hopes, and burning villages, and we succumb to ten drops 
 too much of a dark brown liquor, or the improvident rash- 
 ness that reads out a note to us incautiously! 
 
 "Those young ladies thought to mystify me," said he 
 aloud, after a long revery. "I was not to know which of 
 them was in love with the sick boy. I could make nothing 
 of the Greek, I own ; for, except a half-stealthy regard for 
 
414 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 myself, she confessed to nothing, and the other was nearly 
 as inscrutable. It was only the little warmth at last that 
 betrayed her. I hurt her pride ; and as she winced, I said, 
 ' There 's the sore spot; there 's mischief there! ' How the 
 people grope their way through life who have never studied 
 physic nor learned physiology is a puzzle to me ! With all 
 its aid and guidance I find humanity quite hard enough to 
 understand every day I live." 
 
 Even in his few hours' visit, — in which he remarked 
 everything, from the dress of the man who waited at dinner, 
 to the sherry decanter with the smashed stopper, the weak 
 "Gladstone" that did duty as claret, and the cotton lace 
 which Nina sported as "point d'Alengon," and numberless 
 other shifts, such as people make who like to play false 
 money with Fortune, — all these he saw, and he saw that a 
 certain jealous rivalry existed between the two girls; but 
 whether either of them, or both, cared for young O'Shea, he 
 could not declare; and, strange as it may seem, his inability 
 to determine this weighed upon him with all the sense of a 
 defeat. 
 
CHAPTER LVIII. 
 
 IN TURKEY. 
 
 Leaving the sick man to the tender care of those ladies 
 whose division of labor we have just hinted at, we turn 
 to other interests, and to one of our characters, who, 
 though to all seeming neglected, has not lapsed from our 
 memory. 
 
 Joe Atlee had been despatched on a very confidential 
 mission by Lord Danesbury. Not only was he to repossess 
 himself of certain papers he had never heard of, from a 
 man he had never seen, but he was also to impress this 
 unknown individual with the immense sense of fidelity to 
 another who no longer had any power to reward him ; and 
 besides this, to persuade him, being a Greek, that the favor 
 of a great ambassador of England was better than roubles 
 of gold and vases of malachite. 
 
 Modern history has shown us what a great aid to success 
 in life is the contribution of a "light heart," and Joe Atlee 
 certainly brought this element of victory along with him on 
 his journey. 
 
 His instructions were assuredly of the roughest. To im- 
 press Lord Danesbury favorably on the score of his acute- 
 ness he must not press for details, seek for explanations; 
 and, above ^ all, he must ask no questions. In fact, to 
 accomplish that victory which he ambitioned for his clever- 
 ness, and on which his Excellency should say, "Atlee saw 
 it at once, Atlee caught the whole thing at a glance," — Joe 
 must be satisfied with the least definite directions that ever 
 were issued, and the most confused statement of duties and 
 diflSculties that ever puzzled a human intelligence. Indeed, 
 as he himself summed up his instructions in his own room, 
 
416 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 they went no further than this: That there was a Greek, 
 who, with a number of other names, was occasionally called 
 Speridionides, — a great scoundrel, and with every good 
 reason for not being come at, — who was to be found some- 
 where in Stamboul, — probably at the bazaar at nightfall. 
 He was to be bullied or bribed or wheedled or menaced 
 to give up some letters which Lord Danesbury had once 
 written to him, and to pledge himself to complete secrecy 
 as to their contents ever after. From this Greek, whose 
 perfect confidence Atlee was to obtain, he was to learn 
 whether Kulbash Pasha, Lord Danesbury 's sworn friend 
 and ally, was not lapsing from his English alliance and 
 inclining towards Russian connections. To Kulbash him- 
 self Atlee had letters, accrediting him as the trusted and 
 confidential agent of Lord Danesbury ; and with the Pasha 
 Joe was instructed to treat with an air and bearing of 
 unlimited trustfulness. He was also to mention that his 
 Excellency was eager to be back at his old post as ambas- 
 sador, that he loved the country, the climate, his old col- 
 leagues in the Sultan's service, and all the interests and 
 questions that made up their political life. 
 
 Last of all, Atlee was to ascertain every point on which 
 any successor to Lord Danesbury was likely to be mistaken, 
 and how a misconception might be ingeniously widened into 
 a grave blunder ; and by what means such incidents should 
 be properly commented on by the local papers, and unfavor- 
 able comparisons drawn between the author of these meas- 
 ures and ''the great and enlightened statesman " who had 
 so lately left them. 
 
 In a word, Atlee saw that he was to personate the char- 
 acter of a most unsuspecting, confiding young gentleman, 
 who possessed a certain natural aptitude for affairs of impor- 
 tance, and that amount of discretion such as suited him to 
 be employed confidentially; and to perform this part he 
 addressed himself. 
 
 The Pasha liked him so much that he invited him to be 
 his guest while he remained at Constantinople, and soon 
 satisfied that he was a guileless youth fresh to the world 
 and its ways, he talked very freely before him, and affect- 
 ing to discuss mere possibilities, actually sketched events 
 
IN TURKEY. 417 
 
 and consequences which Atlee shrewdly guessed to be all 
 within the range of casualties. 
 
 Lord Danesbury's post at Constantinople had not been filled 
 up, except by the appointment of a Charg6-d' Affaires ; it being 
 one of the approved modes of snubbing a government to ac- 
 credit a person of inferior rank to its court. Lord Danes- 
 bury detested this man with a hate that only official life 
 comprehends ; the mingled rancor, jealousy, and malice sug- 
 gested by a successor being a combination only known to 
 men who serve their country. 
 
 " Find out what Brumsey is doing ; he is said to be'doing 
 wrong. He knows nothing of Turkey. Learn his blunders, 
 and let me know them." 
 
 This was the easiest of all Atlee's missions, for Brumsey 
 was the weakest and most transparent of all imbecile Whigs. 
 A junior diplomatist of small faculties and great ambitions, 
 he wanted to do something, not being clear as to what, which 
 should startle his chiefs, and make "the Office " exclaim : 
 " See what Sam Brumsey has been doing ! Has n't Brumsey 
 hit the nail on the head 1 Brumsey's last despatch is the 
 finest state paper since the days of Canning ! " Now no one 
 knew the short range of this man's intellectual tether better 
 than Lord Danesbury, — since Brumsey had been his own 
 private secretary once, and the two men hated each other as 
 only a haughty superior and a craven dependant know how 
 to hate. 
 
 The old ambassador was right. Russian craft had dug 
 many a pitfall for the English diplomatist, and Brumsey had 
 fallen into every one of them. Acting on secret information, 
 — all ingeniously prepared to entrap him, — Brumsey had 
 discovered a secret demand made by Russia to enable one of 
 the Imperial family to make the tour of the Black Sea with 
 a ship-of-war. Though it might be matter of controversy 
 whether Turkey herself could, without the assent of the 
 other Powers to the Treaty of Paris, give her permission, 
 Brumsey was too elated by his discovery to hesitate about 
 this, but at once communicated to the Grand Vizier a 
 formal declaration of the displeasure with which England 
 would witness such an infraction of a solemn engage- 
 ment. 
 
 27 
 
418 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 As no such project had ever been entertained, no such 
 demand ever made, Kulbash Pasha not only laughed heartily 
 at the mock thunder of the Englishman, but at the energy 
 with which a small official always opens fire, and in the jocu- 
 larity of his Turkish nature, — for they are jocular, these 
 children of the Koran, — he told the whole incident to 
 Atlee. 
 
 "Your old master, Mr. Atlee," said he, "would scarcely 
 have read us so sharp a lesson as that; but," he added, " we 
 always hear stronger language from the man who couldn't 
 station a gunboat at Pera than from the ambassador who 
 could call up the Mediterranean squadron from Malta." 
 
 If Atlee's first letter to Lord Danesbury admitted of a 
 certain disappointment as regarded Speridionides, it made 
 ample compensation by the keen sketch it conveyed of 
 how matters stood at the Porte, the uncertain fate of Kul- 
 bash Pasha's policy, and the scarcely credible blunder of 
 Brumsey. 
 
 To tell the English ambassador how much he was regretted 
 and how much needed, how the partisans of England felt 
 themselves deserted and abandoned by his withdrawal, and 
 how gravely the best interests of Turkey itself were compro- 
 mised for want of that statesmanlike intelligence that had up 
 to this guided the counsels of the Divan, — all these formed 
 only a part of Atlee's task ; for he wrote letters and leaders, 
 in this sense, to all the great journals of London, Paris, and 
 Vienna : so that when the " Times " and the " Post" asked the 
 English people whether they were satisfied that the benefit 
 of the Crimean war should be frittered away by an incompe- 
 tent youth in the position of a man of high ability, the 
 "Debats" commented on the want of support France suf- 
 fered at the Porte by the inferior agency of England, and 
 the " Neue Presse" of Vienna more openly declared that if 
 England had determined to annex Turkey and govern it 
 as a Crown colony, it would have been at least courtesy to 
 have informed her co-signatories of the fact. 
 
 At the same time an Irish paper in the national interest 
 quietly desired to be informed how was it that the man who 
 made such a mull of Ireland could be so much needed in 
 Turkey, aided by a well-known fellow-citizen, more cele- 
 
IN TURKEY. 419 
 
 brated for smashing lamps and wringing off knockers than 
 for administering the rights of a colony ; and by which of 
 his services, ballad-writing or beating the police, he had 
 gained the favor of the present Cabinet. " In fact," con- 
 cluded the writer, "if we hear more of this appointment, 
 we promise our readers some biographical memoirs of the 
 respected individual, which may serve to show the rising 
 youth of Ireland by what gifts success in life is most surely 
 achieved, as well as what peculiar accomplishments find 
 most merit with the grave-minded men who rule us." 
 
 A Cork paper announced on the same day, amongst the 
 promotions, that Joseph Atlee had been made C. B., and 
 mildly inquired if the honor were bestowed for that paper 
 on Ireland in the last " Quarterly," and dryly wound up by 
 saying, "We are not selfish, whatever people may say of 
 us. Our friends on the Bosphorus shall have the noble lord 
 cheap ! Let his Excellency only assure us that he will return 
 with his whole staff, and not leave us Mr. Cecil Walpole, or 
 any other like incapacity, behind him, as a director of the 
 Poor Law Board, or inspector-general of jails, or deputy- 
 assistant-secretary anywhere, and we assent freely to the 
 change that sends this man to the East and leaves us here to 
 flounder on with such aids to our mistakes as a Liberal 
 Government can safely afford to spare us." 
 
 A paragraph in another part of the same paper, which 
 asked if the Joseph Atlee who, it was rumored, was to go 
 out as Governor to Labuan, could be this man, had, it is 
 needless to say, been written by himself. 
 
 The " Levant Herald" contented itself with an authorized 
 contradiction to the report that Sir Joseph Atlee — the Sir 
 was an ingenious blunder — had conformed to Islamism, and 
 was in treaty for the palace of Tashkir Bey at Therapia. 
 
 With a neatness and tact all his own, Atlee narrated 
 Brumsey's blunder in a tone so simple and almost deferential 
 that Lord Danesbury could show the letter to any of his 
 colleagues. The whole spirit of the document was regret 
 that a very well-intentioned gentleman of good connections 
 and irreproachable morals should be an ass ! Not that he 
 employed the insufferable designation. 
 
 The Cabinet at home were on thorns lest the press — the 
 
420 LORD KILGOBBIN. « 
 
 vile Tory organs — should get wind of the case, and cap the 
 blundering government of Ireland with the almost equally 
 gross mistake in diplomacy. 
 
 " We shall have the ' Standard' at us," said the Premier. 
 
 ''Far worse," replied the Foreign Secretary. ''I shall 
 have Brunow here in a white passion to demand an apology 
 and the recall of our man at Constantinople." 
 
 To accuse a well-known housebreaker of a burglary that 
 he had not committed, nor had any immediate thought of 
 committing, is the very luckiest stroke of fortune that could 
 befall him. He comes out not alone innocent, but injured. 
 The persecutions by which bad men have assailed him for 
 years have at last their illustration, and the calumniated 
 saint walks forth into the world, his head high and his port 
 erect, even though a crowbar should peep out from his coat- 
 pocket, and the jingle of false keys go with him as he 
 went. 
 
 Far too astute to make the scandal public by the news- 
 papers, Atlee only hinted to his chief the danger that might 
 ensue if the secret leaked out. He well knew that a press 
 scandal is a nine-day fever, but a menaced publicity is a 
 chronic malady that may go on for years. 
 
 The last lines of his letter were : "I have made a curious 
 and interesting acquaintance, — a certain Stephanotis Bey, 
 governor of Scutari in Albania, a very venerable old fellow, 
 who was never at Constantinople till now. The Pasha tells 
 me in confidence that he is enormously wealthy. His for- 
 tune was made by brigandage in Greece, from which he re- 
 tired a few years ago, shocked by the sudden death of his 
 brother, who was decapitated at Corinth with five others. 
 The Bey is a nice, gentle-mannered, simple-hearted old man, 
 kind to the poor, and eminently hospitable. He has invited 
 me down to Prevesa for the pig-shooting. If I have your 
 permission to accept the invitation, I shall make a rapid visit 
 to Athens, and make one more effort to discover Speridioni- 
 des. Might I ask the favor of an answer by telegraph? 
 So many documents and archives were stolen here at the 
 time of the fire of the Embassy, that, by a timely measure 
 of discredit, we can impair the value of all papers whatever, 
 and I have already a mass of false despatches, notes, and 
 
IN TURKEY. 421 
 
 telegrams ready for publication, and subsequent denial, if 
 you advise it. In one of these I have imitated Walpole's 
 style so well that I scarcely think he will read it without 
 misgivings. With so much ' bad bank paper' in circulation, 
 Speridionides is not likely to set a high price on his own 
 scrip.' " 
 
CHAPTER LIX. 
 
 A LETTER-BAG. 
 
 Lord Danesbury read Atlee's letter with an enjoyment not 
 unlike the feeling an old sportsman experiences in discov- 
 ering that his cover hack — an animal not worth twenty- 
 pounds — was a capital fencer ; that a beast only destined 
 to the commonest of uses should actually have qualities that 
 recalled the steeple-chaser, — that the scrubby little creature 
 with the thin neck and the shabby quarters should have a 
 turn of speed and a " big jump " in him, was something 
 scarcely credible and highly interesting. 
 
 Now political life has its handicaps like the turf, and 
 that old jockey of many Cabinets began seriously to think 
 whether he might not lay a little money on that dark horse 
 Joe Atlee, and make something out of him before he was 
 better known in " the ring." 
 
 He was smarting, besides, under the annoyances of that 
 half-clever fellow Walpole, when Atlee's letter reached him ; 
 and though the unlucky Cecil had taken ill and kept his 
 room ever since his arrival, his Excellency had never for- 
 given him, nor by a word or sign showed any disposition 
 to restore him to favor. 
 
 That he was himself overwhelmed by a correspondence, 
 and left to deal with it almost alone, scarcely contributed 
 to reconcile him to a youth more smarting, as he deemed 
 it, under a recent defeat than really ill ; and he pointed to 
 the mass of papers which now littered his breakfast-table, 
 and querulously asked his niece if that brilliant young gen- 
 tleman upstairs could be induced to postpone his sorrows 
 and copy a despatch. 
 
 "If it be not something very difficult or requiring very 
 uncommon care, perhaps I could do it myself." 
 
A LETTER-BAG. 423 
 
 "So you could, Maude, but I want you too, — I shall 
 want you to copy out parts of Atlee's last letter, which 
 I wish to place before the Foreign Office Secretary. He 
 ought to see what his protege Brumsey is making of it. 
 These are the idiots who get us into foreign wars, or those 
 apologetic movements in diplomacy which are as bad as 
 lost battles. What a contrast to Atlee — a rare clever 
 dog, Atlee — and so awake, not only to one, but to every 
 contingency of a case. 1 like that fellow — I like a fellow 
 that stops all the earths! Your half -clever ones never do 
 that ; they only do enough to prolong the race ; they don't 
 win it. That bright relative of ours — Cecil — is one of 
 those. Give Atlee Walpole's chances, and where would 
 he be?" 
 
 A very faint color tinged her cheek as she listened, but 
 did not speak. 
 
 "That's the real way to put it," continued he, more 
 warmly. " Say to Atlee, ' You shall enter public life with- 
 out any pressing need to take office for a livelihood ; you 
 shall have friends able to push you with one party, and 
 relations and connections with the opposition, to save you 
 from unnecessary cavil or question ; you shall be well in- 
 troduced socially, and have a seat in the House before — ' 
 What's his age? five-and-twenty? " 
 
 " I should say about three-and-twenty, my Lord; but it 
 is a mere guess." 
 
 " Three-and-twenty is he? I suspect you are right, — he 
 can't be more. But what a deal the fellow has crammed 
 for that time, — plenty of rubbish, no doubt : old drama- 
 tists and such like : but he is well up in his treaties ; and 
 there 's not a speaker of eminence in the House that he 
 cannot make contradict himself out of Hansard." 
 
 "Has he any fortune?" sighed she, so lazily that it 
 scarcely sounded as a question. 
 
 " I suppose not." 
 
 "Nor any family?" 
 
 " Brothers and sisters he may have, — indeed, he is sure 
 to have ; but if you mean connections, — belonging to per- 
 sons of admitted station, — of course he has not. The 
 name alone might show it." 
 
424 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Another little sigh^ fainter than before, followed, and all 
 was still. 
 
 " Five years hence, if even so much, the plebeian name and 
 the unknown stock will be in his favor; but we have to 
 wade through a few dreary measures before that. I wish he 
 was in the House, — he ought to be in the House." 
 
 " Is there a vacancy? " said slie, lazily. 
 
 '' Two. There is Cradford, and there is that Scotch place, 
 
 — the something-Burg, which, of course, one of their own 
 people will insist on." 
 
 ''Couldn't he have Cradford?" asked she, with a very 
 slight animation. 
 
 " He might — at least if Brand knew him, he 'd see he was 
 the man they wanted. I almost think I '11 write a line to 
 Brand, and send him some extracts of the last letter. I will, 
 
 — here goes." 
 
 " If you '11 tell me — " 
 
 " Dear B,, — Read the enclosed, and say have! you anybody better 
 than the writer for your ancient borough of Cradford ? The fellow 
 can talk, and I am sure he can speak as well as he writes. He is 
 well up in all Irish press iniquities. Better than all, he has neither 
 prejudices nor principles, nor, as I believe, a five-pound note in the 
 world. He is now in Greece, but I '11 have him over by telegraph 
 if you give me encouragement. 
 
 "Tell Tycross at F. O. to send Walpole to Guatemala, and order 
 him to his post at once. G. will have told you that I shall not go 
 back to Ireland. The blunder of my ever seeing it was the black- 
 est in the life of yours, 
 
 "Danesbury.'* 
 
 The first letter his Lordship opened gave him very little 
 time or inclination to bestow more thought on Atlee. It was 
 from the head of the Cabinet, and in the coldest tone imagi- 
 nable. The writer directed his attention to what had occurred 
 in the House the night before, and how impossible it was for 
 any Government to depend on colleagues whose administra- 
 tion had been so palpably blundering and unwise. 
 
 " Conciliation can only succeed by the good faith it inspires. 
 Once that it leaks out you are more eager to achieve a gain than 
 confer a benefit, you cease to conciliate, and you only cajole. Now, 
 
A LETTER-BAG. 425 
 
 your Lordship might have apprehended that, in this especial game, 
 the Popish priest is your master and mine — not to add that he gives 
 an undivided attention to a subject which we have to treat as one 
 amongst many, and with the relations and bearings which attach it 
 to other questions of state. 
 
 " That you cannot, with advantage to the Crown, or, indeed, to 
 your own dignity, continue to hold your present office, is clear 
 enough ; and the only question now is in what way, consistent with 
 the safety of the Administration, and respect for your Lordship's 
 high character, the relinquishment had best be made. The debate 
 has been, on Gregory's motion, adjourned. It will be continued on 
 Tuesday, and my colleagues opine that if your resignation was in 
 their hands before that day, certain leaders of the Opposition would 
 consent to withdraw their motion. I am not wholly agreed with 
 the other members of the Cabinet on this point ; but, without em- 
 barrassing you by the reasons which sway my judgment, I will 
 simply place the matter before you for your own consideration, per- 
 fectly assured, as I am, that your decision will be come to only 
 on consideration of what you deem best for the interests of the 
 country. 
 
 " My colleague at the Foreign Office will write to-day or to-morrow 
 with reference to your former post, and I only allude to it now to 
 say the unmixed satisfaction it would give the Cabinet to find that 
 the greatest interests of Eastern Europe were once more in the keep- 
 ing of the ablest diplomatist of the age, and one of the most far- 
 sighted of modern statesmen. 
 
 " A motion for the abolition of the Irish viceroyalty is now on the 
 notice paper, and it will be matter for consideration whether we 
 may not make it an open question in the Cabinet. Perhaps your 
 Lordship would favor me with such opinions on the subject as your 
 experiences suggest. 
 
 " The extra session has wearied out every one, and we can with 
 difficulty make a house. Yours sincerely, 
 
 «G. Annivey." 
 
 The next he opened was briefer. It ran thus : — 
 
 " Dear Danrsbury, — You must go back at once to Turkey. 
 That inscrutable idiot Brumsey has discovered another mare's nest, 
 and we are lucky if Gortchakoff does not call upon us for public 
 apology. Brunow is outrageous, and demands B.'s recall. I sent 
 off the despatch while he was with me. Leflo Pasha is very ill, they 
 say dying, so that you must haste back to your old friend (query : 
 which is he?) Kulbash, if it be not too late, as Apponyi thinks. 
 
 " Yours, G. 
 
426 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 '' P. S. — Take none of your Irish suite with you to the East. 
 The papers are sure to note the names, and attacls you if you should. 
 They shall be cared for somehow, if there be any who interest 
 you. 
 
 " You have seen that the House was not over civil to you on 
 Saturday night, though A. thinks you got off well." 
 
 '' Resign ! " cried he, aloud, as he dashed the letter on the 
 table. *' I think I would resign ! If they asked what would 
 tempt me to go back there, I should be sorely puzzled to 
 name it. No ; not the blue ribbon itself would induce me to 
 face that chaos once more. As to the hint about my Irish 
 staff, it was quite unnecessary. Not very likely, Maude, we 
 should take Walpole to finish in the Bosphorus what he has 
 begun on the Liffey." 
 
 He turned hastily to the "Times," and threw his eyes 
 over the summary of the debate. It was acrimonious and 
 sneery. The Opposition leaders, with accustomed smooth- 
 ness, had made it appear that the Viceroy's Eastern expe- 
 rience had misled him, and that he thought " Tipperary was 
 a Pashalick ! " Imbued with notions of wholesale measures 
 of government, so applicable to Turkey, it was easy to see 
 how the errors had affected his Irish policy. " There was," 
 said the speaker, " somebody to be conciliated in Ireland, 
 and some one to be hanged ; and what more natural than that 
 he should forget which, or that he should make the mistake 
 of keeping all the flattery for the rebel, and the rope for the 
 priest." The neatness of the illustration took with the 
 House, and the speaker was interrupted by " much laughter." 
 And then he went on to say that, " as with those well-known 
 ointments or medicines whose specific virtues lay in the enor- 
 mous costliness of some of the constituents, so it must give 
 unspeakable value to the efficacy of those healing measures 
 for Ireland, to know that the whole British Constitution was 
 boiled down to make one of them ; and every right and 
 liberty brayed in the mortar to furnish even one dose of this 
 precious elixir." And then there was " laughter " again. 
 
 " He ought to be more merciful to charlatans. Dogs do 
 not eat dogs," muttered his Lordship to himself, and then 
 asked his niece to send Walpole to him. 
 
 It was some time before Walpole appeared, and when he 
 
A LETTER-BAG. 427 
 
 did it was with such a wasted look and careworn aspect as 
 might have pleaded in his favor. 
 
 " Maude told me you wished to see me, my Lord," said he, 
 half diffidently. 
 
 *'Did I? eh? Did I say so? I forget all about it. 
 What could it be? Let us see. Was it this stupid row 
 they were making in the House? Have you read the 
 debate?" 
 
 *' No, my Lord ; not looked at a paper." 
 
 *'0f course not; you have been too ill, too weak. Have 
 you seen a doctor ? " 
 
 *' I don't care to see a doctor ; they all say the same thing. 
 I onlj' need rest and quiet." 
 
 "Only that! Why, they are the two things nobody can 
 get. Power cannot have them, nor money buy them. The 
 retired tradesman, — I beg his pardon, the cheesemonger, — 
 he is always a cheesemonger now who represents vulgarity 
 and bank stock, — he may have his rest and quiet ; but a 
 Minister must not dream of such a luxury, nor any one who 
 serves a Minister. Where 's the quiet to come from, I ask 
 you, after such a tirade of abuse as that? " And he pointed 
 to the '' Times." " There 's ' Punch,' too, with a picture of 
 me measuring out ' Danesbury's drops to cure loyalty.* 
 That slim youth handing the spoon is meant for you^ 
 Walpole." 
 
 " Perhaps so, my Lord," said he, coldly. 
 
 *'They haven't given you too much leg, Cecil," said the 
 other, laughing; but Cecil scarcely relished the joke. 
 
 " I say, Piccadilly is scarcely the place for a man after 
 that; — I mean, of course, for a while," continued he. 
 " These things are not eternal; they have their day. They 
 had me last week travelling in Ireland on a camel ; and I 
 was made to say, ' That the air of the desert always did me 
 good! ' Poor fun, was it not?" 
 
 '' Very poor fun, indeed ! " 
 
 "And you were the boy preparing my chibouque; and, I 
 must say, devilish like." 
 
 " I did not see it, my Lord." 
 
 "That's the best way. Don't look at the caricatures; 
 don't read the ' Saturday Review ; ' never know there is any- 
 
428 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 thing wrong with you ; nor, if you can, that anything dis- 
 agrees with you." 
 
 " I should like the last delusion best of all," said he. 
 
 "Who would not?" cried the old Lord. "The way I 
 used to eat potted prawns at Eton, and peach jam after 
 them, and iced guavas, and never felt better ! And now 
 everything gives acidity." 
 
 "Just because our fathers and grandfathers would have 
 those potted prawns you spoke of." 
 
 "No, no; you are all wrong. It's the new race, — it's 
 the new generation. They don't bear reverses. Whenever 
 the world goes wrong with them, they talk as they feel, they 
 lose appetite, and they fall down in a state like your — a — 
 Walpole — like your own ! " 
 
 " Well, my Lord, I don't think I could be called captious 
 for saying that the world has not gone over well with 
 me." 
 
 "Ah — hum. You mean — no matter — I suppose the 
 luckiest hand is not all trumps ! The thing is to score the 
 trick ; that 's the point, Walpole, to score the trick ! " 
 
 " Up to this, T have not been so fortunate." 
 
 "Well, who knows what's coming! I have just asked 
 the Foreign Office people to give you Guatemala ; not a bad 
 thing, as times go." 
 
 " Why, my Lord, it's banishment and barbarism together. 
 The pay is miserable! It is far away, and it is not Pall 
 Mall or the Rue Rivoli." 
 
 "No, not that. There is twelve hundred for salary, and 
 something for a house, and something more for a secretary 
 that you don't keep, and an office that you need not have. 
 In fact, it makes more than two thousand ; and for a single 
 man in a place where he cannot be extravagant, it will 
 suffice." 
 
 "Yes, my Lord; but I was presumptuous enough to 
 imagine a condition in which I should not be a single man, 
 and I speculated on the possibility that another might 
 venture to share even poverty as my companion." 
 
 " A woman would n't go there, — at least, she ought not. 
 It 's all bush life, or something like it. Why should a 
 woman bear that, or a man ask her to do so?" 
 
A LETTER-BAG. 429 
 
 " You seem to forget, my Lord, that affections may be 
 engaged, and pledges interchanged." 
 
 " Get a bill of indemnity, therefore, to release you ; better 
 that than wait for yellow fever to do it." 
 
 ''I confess that your Lordship's words give me great 
 discouragement; and if I could possibly believe that Lady 
 Maude was of your mind — " 
 
 "Maude! Maude! why, you never imagined that Lady 
 Maude would leave comfort and civilization for this bush 
 life, with its rancheros and rattlesnakes. I confess," said 
 he, with a bitter laugh, " I did not think either of you were 
 bent on being Paul or Virginia." 
 
 " Have I your Lordship's permission to ask her own 
 judgment in the matter ; I mean with the assurance of its 
 not being biassed by you ? " 
 
 "Freely, most freely do I give it. She is not the girl I 
 believe her if she leaves you long in doubt. But I prejudge 
 nothing, and I influence nothing." 
 
 "Am 1 to conclude, my Lord, that I am sure of this 
 appointment?" 
 
 " I almost believe I can say you are. I have asked for 
 a reply by telegraph, and I shall probably have one to- 
 morrow." 
 
 ' ' You seemed to have acted under the conviction that I 
 should be glad to get this place." 
 
 "Yes, such was my conclusion. After that 'fiasco' in 
 Ireland you must go somewhere, for a time at least, out of 
 the way. Now, as a man cannot die for half-a-dozen years 
 and come back to life when people have forgotten his 
 unpopularity, the next best thing is South America. Bo- 
 gota and the Argentine Republic have whitewashed many a 
 reputation." 
 
 " I will remember your Lordship's wise words." 
 
 " Do so," said my Lord, curtly, for he felt offended at the 
 flippant tone in which the other spoke. "I don't mean to 
 say that I 'd send the writer of that letter yonder to Yucatan 
 or Costa Rica." 
 
 " Who may the gifted writer be, my Lord? " 
 
 " Atlee, Joe Atlee ; the fellow you sent over here." 
 
 " Indeed ! " was all that Walpole could utter. 
 
480 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Just take it to your room and read it over. You will 
 be astonished at the thing. The fellow has got to know the 
 bearings of a whole set of new questions, and how he under- 
 stands the men he has got to deal with ! " 
 
 " With your leave I will do so," said he, as he took the 
 letter and left the room. 
 
CHAPTER LX. 
 
 A DEFEAT. 
 
 Cecil Walpole's Italian experiences had supplied him with 
 an Italian proverb which says, '^ Tutto il mal non vien per 
 nuocere," or, in other words, that no evil comes unmixed 
 with good ; and there is a marvellous amount of wisdom in 
 the adage. 
 
 That there is a deep philosophy, too, in showing how 
 carefully we should sift misfortune to the dregs, and ascertain 
 what of benefit we might rescue from the dross, is not to be 
 denied ; and the more we reflect on it, the more should we 
 see that the germ of all real consolation is intimately bound 
 up in this reservation. 
 
 No sooner, then, did Walpole, in novelist phrase, " realize 
 the fact " that he was to go to Guatemala, than he set very 
 practically to inquire what advantages, if any, could be 
 squeezed out of this unpromising incident. 
 
 The creditors — and he had some — would not like it ! 
 The dreary process of dunning a man across half the globe, 
 the hopelessness of appeals that took two months to come to 
 hand, and the inefficacy of threats that were wafted over 
 miles of ocean ! And certainly he smiled as he thought of 
 these, and rather maliciously bethought him of the truculent 
 importunity that menaced him with some form of publicity 
 in the more insolent appeal to some Minister at home. " Our 
 tailor will moderate his language, our jeweller will appreci- 
 ate the merits of polite letter-writing," thought he. "A few 
 parallels of latitude become a great schoolmaster." 
 
 But there were greater advantages even than these. This 
 banishment — for it was nothing else — could not by any 
 possibility be persisted in, and if Lady Maude should con- 
 sent to accompany him, would be very short-lived. 
 
432 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "The women will take it up," said he, "and with that 
 charming clanship that distinguishes them, will lead the 
 Foreign Secretary a life of misery, till he gives us some- 
 thing better. ' Maude says the thermometer has never been 
 lower than 132 deg., and that there is no shade. The nights 
 have no breeze, and are rather hotter than the days. She 
 objects seriously to be waited on by people in feathers, and 
 very few of them, and she remonstrates against alligators in 
 the kitchen-garden, and wild cats coming after the canaries 
 in the drawing-room.' 
 
 "I hear the catalogue of misfortunes, which begins with 
 nothing to eat, plus the terror of being eaten. I recognize 
 the lament over lost civilization and a wasted life, and I see 
 Downing Street besieged with ladies in deputations, declaring 
 that they care nothing for party or politics, but a great deal 
 for the life of a dear young creature who is to be sacrificed 
 to appease some people belonging to the existing Ministry. 
 I think 1 know how beautifully illogical they will be, but 
 how necessarily successful ; and now for Maude herself." 
 
 Of Lady Maude Bickerstaffe Walpole had seen next to 
 nothing since his return; his own ill health had confined 
 him to his room, and her inquiries after him had been cold 
 and formal ; and though be wrote a tender little note and 
 asked for books, slyly hinting what measure of bliss a five 
 minutes' visit would confer on him, the books he begged for 
 were sent, but not a line of answer accompanied them. On 
 the whole, he did not dislike this little show of resentment. 
 What he really dreaded was indifference. So long as a 
 woman is piqued with you, something can always be done ; 
 it is only when she becomes careless and unmindful of what 
 you do or say or look or think that the game looks hopeless. 
 Therefore it was that he regarded this demonstration of 
 anger as rather favorable than otherwise. ' 
 
 " Atlee has told her of the Greek! Atlee has stirred up 
 her jealousy of the Titian girl. Atlee has drawn a long 
 indictment against me, and the fellow has done me good 
 service in giving me something to plead to. Let me have 
 a charge to meet, and I have no misgivings. What really 
 unmans me is the distrust that will not even utter an allega- 
 tion, and the indifference that does not want disproof." 
 
"A DEFEAT." 433 
 
 He learned that her Ladyship was in the garden, and he 
 hastened down to meet her. In his own small way Walpole 
 was a clever tactician ; and he counted much on the ardor 
 with which he should open his case, and the amount of im- 
 petuosity that would give her very little time for reflection. 
 
 " I shall at once assume that her fate is irrevocably knitted 
 to my own, and I shall act as though the tie was indissoluble. 
 After all, if she puts me to the proof, I have her letters, — cold 
 and guarded enough, it is true. No fervor, no gush of any 
 kind, but calm dissertations on a future that must come, and 
 a certain dignified acceptance of her own part in it. Not the 
 kind of letters that a Q. C. could read with much rapture 
 before a crowded court, and ask the assembled grocers, 
 * What happiness has life to offer to the man robbed of those 
 precious pledges of affection, — how was he to face the 
 world, stripped of every attribute that cherished hope and 
 fed ambition ? ' " 
 
 He was walking slowly towards her when he first saw her, 
 and he had some seconds to prepare himself ere they met. 
 
 *' I came down after you, Maude," said he, in a voice 
 ingeniously modulated between the tone of old intimacy and 
 a slight suspicion of emotion. " I came down to tell you my 
 news — " he waited, and then added, " my fate! " 
 
 Still she was silent, the changed word exciting no more 
 interest than its predecessor. 
 
 *' Feeling as I do," he went on, " and how we stand to- 
 wards each other, I cannot but know that my destiny has 
 nothing good or evil in it, except as it contributes to your 
 happiness." He stole a glance at her, but there was nothing 
 in that cold, calm face that could guide him. With a bold 
 effort, however, he went on: " My own fortune in life has 
 but one test, — is my existence to be shared with you or 
 not? With your hand in mine, Maude," — and he grasped 
 the marble-cold fingers as he spoke — ' ' poverty, exile, hard- 
 ships, and the world's neglect have no terrors for me. 
 With your love, every ambition of my heart is gratified. 
 Without it — " 
 
 "Well, without it — what?" said she, with a faint smile. 
 
 "You would not torture me by such a doubt? Would you 
 rack ray soul by a misery I have not words to speak of ? " 
 
 28 
 
434 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I thought you were going to say what it might be, when 
 I stopped you." 
 
 *'0h, drop this cold and bantering tone, dearest Maude. 
 Remember the question is now of my very life itself. If 
 you cannot be affectionate, at least be reasonable ! " 
 
 "I shall try," said she, calmly. 
 
 Stung to the quick by a composure which he could not 
 Imitate, he was able, however, to repress every show of 
 anger, and with a manner cold and measured as her own, he 
 went on: "My Lord advises that I should go back to diplo- 
 macy, and has asked the Ministers to give me Guatemala. 
 It is nothing very splendid. It is far away in a remote part 
 of the world; not over- well paid, but, at least, I shall be 
 Charge-d' Affaires, and by three years — four, at most — 
 of this banishment I shall have a claim for something 
 better." 
 
 "I hope you may, I'm sure," said she, as he seemed to 
 expect something like a remark. 
 
 "That is. not enough, Maude, if the hope be not a wish, 
 — and a wish that includes self-interest." 
 • "1 am so dull, Cecil; tell me what you mean? " 
 
 "Simply this, then: does your heart tell you that you 
 could share this fortune, and brave these hardships; in 
 one word, will you say what will make me regard this fate 
 as the happiest of my existence? Will you give me this 
 dear hand as my own, — my own? " and he pressed his lips 
 upon it rapturously as he spoke. 
 
 She made no effort to release her hand ; nor for a second 
 or two did she say one word. At last, in a very measured 
 tone, she said, "I should like to have back my letters." 
 
 "Your letters? Do you mean, Maude, that — that you 
 would break with me? " 
 
 "I mean, certainl}^, that I should not go to this horrid 
 place — " 
 
 "Then I shall refuse it," broke he in, impetuously. 
 
 "Not that only, Cecil," said she, for the first time falter- 
 ing; "but except being very good friends, I do not desire 
 that there should be more between us." 
 
 "No engagement? " 
 
 "No, no engagement. I do not believe there ever was an 
 
"A DEFEAT." 435 
 
 actual promise, at least on my part. Other people had no 
 right to promise for either of us ; and — and, in fact, the 
 present is a good opportunity to end it." 
 
 ''To end it," echoed he, in intense bitterness, — "to 
 end it?" 
 
 "And I should like to have my letters," said she, calmly, 
 while she took some freshly plucked flowers from a basket 
 on her arm, and appeared to seek for something at the 
 bottom of the basket. 
 
 "I thought you would come down here, Cecil," said she, 
 "when you had spoken to my uucle. Indeed, I was sure 
 you would, and so I brought these with me." And she drew 
 forth a somewhat thick bundle of notes and letters tied with 
 a narrow ribbon. "These are yours," said she, handing 
 them. 
 
 Far more piqued by her cold self-possession than really 
 wounded in feeling, he took the packet without a word. 
 At last he said, "This is your own wish, — your own, un- 
 prompted by others ? " 
 
 She stared almost insolently at him for answer. 
 
 " I mean, Maude, — oh, forgive me if I utter that dear 
 name once more, — I mean there has been no influence used 
 to make you treat me thus ? " 
 
 "You have known me to very little purpose all these years, 
 Cecil Walpole, to ask me such a question." 
 
 "I am not sure of that. I know too well what misrepre- 
 sentation and calumny can do anywhere; and I have been 
 involved in certain difficulties which, if not explained away, 
 might be made accusations, — grave accusations." 
 
 "1 make none; I listen to none." 
 
 "I have become an object of complete indifference, then? 
 You feel no interest in me either way. If I dared, Maude, 
 I should like to ask the date of this change, — when it 
 began ? " 
 
 "I don't well know what you mean. There was not, so 
 far as I am aware, anything between us, except a certain 
 esteem and respect, of which convenience was to make 
 something more. Now convenience has broken faith with 
 us; but we are not the less verv ^ood friends, — excellent 
 friends, if you lik© " 
 
436 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Excellent friends! I could swear to the friendship!" 
 said he, with a malicious energy. 
 
 "So, at least, I mean to be," said she, calmly. 
 
 "I hope it is not I shall fail in the compact. And now 
 will my quality of friend entitle me to ask one question, 
 Maude?" 
 
 "I am not sure till I hear it." 
 
 "I might have hoped a better opinion of my discretion; 
 at all events, I will risk my question. What I would ask is, 
 how far Joseph Atlee is mixed up with your judgment of 
 me? Will you tell me this? " 
 
 "I will only tell you, sir, that you are over-vain of that 
 discretion you believe you possess." 
 
 "Then I am right," cried he, almost insolently. "I have 
 hit the blot." 
 
 A glance, a mere glance of haughty disdain, was the only 
 reply she made. 
 
 *'I am shocked, Maude," said he at last. "I am ashamed 
 that we should spend in this way perhaps the very last few 
 minutes we shall ever pass together. Heart-broken as I 
 am, I should desire to carry away one memory, at least, of 
 her whose love was the loadstar of my existence." 
 
 ''I want my letters, Cecil," said she, coldly. 
 
 *'So that you came down here with mine, prepared for 
 this rupture, Maude? It was all prearranged in your 
 mind." 
 
 ''More discretion; more discretion, or good taste, — 
 which is it? " 
 
 "I ask pardon, most humbly I ask it; your rebuke was 
 quite just. I was presuming upon a past which has no rela- 
 tion to the present. I shall not offend any more. And 
 now what was it you said ? " 
 
 "I want my letters." 
 
 "They are here," said he, drawing a thick envelope fully 
 crammed with letters from his pocket, and placing it in her 
 hand. "Scarcely as carefully or as nicely kept as mine, for 
 they have been read over too many times ; and with what 
 rapture, Maude! How pressed to my heart and to my lips, 
 how treasured ! Shall I tell you ? " 
 
 There was that of exaggerated passion — almost rant — in 
 
"A DEFEAT." 437 
 
 these last words that certainly did not impress them with 
 reality ; and either Lady Maude was right in doubting their 
 sincerity, or cruelly unjust, for she smiled faintly as she 
 heard them. 
 
 "No, don't tell me," said she, faintly. "I am already so 
 much flattered by courteous anticipation of my wishes that I 
 ask for nothing more." 
 
 He bowed his head lowly ; but his smile was one of tri- 
 umph, as he thought how, this time at least, he had 
 wounded her. 
 
 ''There are some trinkets, Cecil," said she, coldly, 
 "which I have made into a packet, and you will find them 
 on your dressing-table. And — it may save you some dis- 
 comfort if I say that you need not give yourself trouble to 
 recover the little ring with an opal I once gave you, for I 
 have it now." 
 
 "May I dare?" 
 
 "You may not dare. Good-bye." 
 
 And she gave her hand ; he bent over it for a moment, 
 scarcely touched it with his lips, and turned away. 
 
CHAPTER LXI. 
 
 Of all the discomfitures in life there was one which Cecil 
 Walpole did not believe could possibly befall him. Indeed, 
 if it could have been made a matter of betting, he would 
 have wagered all he had in the world that no woman should 
 ever be able to say she refused his offer of marriage. 
 
 He had canvassed the matter very often with himself, and 
 always arrived at the same conclusion, — that if a man were 
 not a mere coxcomb, blinded by vanity and self-esteem, he 
 could always know how a woman really felt towards him ; 
 and that where the question admitted of a doubt, where, 
 indeed, there was even a flaw in the absolute certainty, no 
 man with a due sense of what was owing to himself would 
 risk his dignity by the possibility of a refusal. It was a 
 part of his peculiar ethics that a man thus rejected was 
 damaged, pretty much as a bill that has been denied accept- 
 ance. It was the same wound to credit, the same outrage 
 on character. Considering, therefore, that nothing obliged 
 a man to make an offer of his hand till he had assured him- 
 self of success, it was to his thinking a mere gratuitous 
 pursuit of insult to be refused. That no especial delicacy 
 kept these things secret, that women talked of them freely, 
 — ay, triumphantly, — that they made the staple of conver- 
 sation at afternoon tea and the club, with all the flippant 
 comments that dear friends know how to contribute as to 
 your vanity and presumption, he was well aware. Indeed, 
 he had been long an eloquent contributor to that scandal 
 literature which amuses the leisure of fashion and helps on 
 the tedium of an ordinary dinner. How Lady Maude 
 would report the late scene in the garden to the Countess of 
 Mecherscrof t, who would tell it to her company at her 
 
A "CHANGE OF FRONT." 439 
 
 country-house! — How the Lady Georginas would discuss it 
 over luncheon, and the Lord Georges talk of it out shooting ! 
 \Yhat a host of pleasant anecdotes would be told of his inor- 
 dinate puppyism and self-esteem! How even the dullest 
 fellows would dare to throw a stone at him ! What a target 
 for a while he would be for every marksman at any range 
 to shoot at! All these his quick-witted ingenuity pictured 
 at once before him. 
 
 "I see it all," cried he, as he paced his room in self- 
 examination. " 1 have suffered myself to be carried away 
 by a burst of momentary impulse. I brought up all my 
 reserves, and have failed utterly. Nothing can save me now 
 but a ' change of front.' It is the last bit of generalship 
 remaining, — a change of front, a change of front! " And 
 he repeated the words over and over, as though hoping they 
 might light up his ingenuity. "I might go and tell her 
 that all I had been saying was mere jest ; that I could never 
 have dreamed of asking her to follow me into barbarism; 
 that to go to Guatemala was equivalent to accepting a 
 yellow fever, — it was courting disease, perhaps death; 
 that my insistence was a mere mockery, in the worst pos- 
 sible taste; but that I had already agreed with Lord Danes- 
 bury, our engagement should be cancelled ; that his Lord- 
 ship's memory of our conversation would corroborate me in 
 saying I had no intention to propose such a sacrifice to her ; 
 and, indeed, I had but provoked her to say the very things 
 and use the very arguments I had already employed to my- 
 self as a sort of aid to my own heartfelt convictions. Here 
 would be a ' change of front ' with a vengeance. 
 
 "She will already have written off the whole interview; 
 the despatch is finished," cried he, after a moment. "It is 
 a change of front the day after the battle. The people will 
 read of my manoeuvre with the bulletin of victory before 
 them. 
 
 "Poor Frank Touchet used to say," cried he, aloud, 
 '' ' Whenever they refuse my checks at the Bank, I always 
 transfer my account ; ' and, fortunately, the world is big 
 enough for these tactics for several years. That 's a 
 change of front, too, if I knew how to adapt it. I must 
 marry another woman; there's nothing else for it. It is 
 
440 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 the only escape; and the question is, Who shall she be?" 
 The more he meditated over this change of front the more 
 he saw that his destiny pointed to the Greek. If he could 
 see clearly before him to a high career in diplomacy, the 
 Greek girl, in everything but fortune, would suit him well. 
 Her marvellous beauty, her grace of manner, her social tact 
 and readiness, her skill in languages, were all the very qual- 
 ities most in request. Such a woman would make the full 
 complement, by her fascinations, of all that her husband 
 could accomplish by his abilities. The little indiscretions 
 of old men — especially old men — with these women, the 
 lapses of confidence they made them, the dropping admis- 
 sions of this or that intention, made up what Walpole knew 
 to be high diplomacy. 
 
 ''Nothing worth hearing is ever got by a man," was an 
 adage he treasured as deep wisdom. Why Kings resort to 
 that watering-place, and accidentally meet certain Ministers 
 going somewhere else; why Kaisers affect to review troops 
 here, that they maybe able to talk statecraft there; how 
 princely compacts and contracts of marriage are made at 
 sulphur springs, — all these and such like leaked out as small 
 talk with a young and pretty woman, whose frivolity of 
 manner went bail for the safety of the confidence, and 
 went far to persuade Walpole that though Bank Stock might 
 be a surer investment, there were paying qualities in certain 
 women that in the end promised larger returns than mere 
 money, and higher rewards than mere wealth. "Yes," cried 
 he to himself, " this is the real change of front ; this has all 
 in its favor." 
 
 Nor yet all. Strong as Walpole's self-esteem was, and 
 high his estimate of his own capacity, he had — he could 
 not conceal it — a certain misgiving as to whether he really 
 understood that girl or not. "I have watched many a bolt 
 from her bow," said he, "and think I know their range. 
 But now and then she has shot an arrow into the clear sky, 
 and far beyond my sight to follow it." 
 
 That scene in the wood, too. Absurd enough that it 
 should obtrude itself at such a moment ; but it was the sort 
 of indication that meant much more to a man like Walpole 
 than to men of other experiences. Was she flirting with 
 
A "CHANGE OF FRONT." 441 
 
 this youDg Austrian soldier? No great harm if she were; 
 but still there had been passages between himself and her 
 which should have bound her over to more circumspection. 
 Was there not a shadowy sort of engagement between 
 them? Lawyers deem a mere promise to grant a lease as 
 equivalent to a contract. It would be a curious question in 
 morals to inquire how far the licensed perjuries of court- 
 ship are statutory offences. Perhaps a sly consciousness on 
 his own part that he was not playing perfectly fair made 
 him, as it might do, more than usually tenacious that his 
 adversary should be honest. What chance the innocent 
 public would have with two people who were so adroit with 
 each other was his next thought ; and he actually laughed 
 aloud as it occurred to him. ''I only wish my Lord would 
 invite us here before we sail. If I could but show her to 
 Maude, half an hour of these women together would be the 
 heaviest vengeance I could ask her ! I wonder how could 
 that be managed? " 
 
 ''A despatch, sir, his Lordship begs you to read," said a 
 servant, entering. It was an open envelope, and contained 
 these words on a slip of paper: — 
 
 "W. shall have Guatemala. He must go out by the mail 
 of November 15. Send him here for instructions." Some 
 words in cipher followed, and an under-secretary's initials. 
 
 "Now, then, for the ' change of front.' I '11 write to Nina 
 by this post. I '11 ask my Lord to let me tear off this por- 
 tion of the telegram, and I shall enclose it." 
 
 The letter was not so easily written as he thought; at 
 least, he made more than one draught, and was at last in 
 great doubt whether a long statement or a few and very 
 decided lines might be better. How he ultimately deter- 
 mined, and what he said, cannot be given here; for, unhap- 
 pily, the conditions of my narrative require I should ask my 
 reader to accompany me to a very distant spot, and other 
 interests which were just then occupying the attention of 
 an almost forgotten acquaintance of ours, the redoubted 
 Joseph Atlee. 
 
CHAPTER LXII. 
 
 WITH A PASHA. 
 
 Joseph Atlee had a very busy morning of it on a certain 
 November day at Pera, when the post brought him tidings 
 that Lord Danesbury had resigned the Irish Viceroyalty, 
 and had been once more named to his old post as Ambassa- 
 dor at Constantinople. 
 
 "My uncle desires me," wrote Lady Maude, "to impress 
 you with the now all-important necessity of obtaining the 
 papers you know of, and, so far as you are able, to secure 
 that no authorized copies of them are extant. Kulbash 
 Pasha will, my Lord says, be very tractable when once 
 assured that our return to Turkey is a certainty ; but should 
 you detect signs of hesitation or distrust in the Grand 
 Vizier's conduct, you will hint that the investigation as to 
 the issue of the Galatz shares — ' preference shares ' — may 
 be re-opened at any moment, and that the Ottoman Bank 
 agent, Schaffer, has drawn up a memoir which my uncle 
 now holds. I copy my Lord's words for all this, and sin- 
 cerely hope you will understand it, which, I confess, / do 
 not at all. My Lord cautioned me not to occupy your time 
 or attention by any reference to Irish questions, but leave 
 you perfectly free to deal with those larger interests of the 
 East that should now engage you. I forbear, therefore, to 
 do more than mark with a pencil the part in the debates 
 which might interest you, especially, and merely add the 
 fact, otherwise, perhaps, not very credible, that Mr. Wal- 
 pole did write the famous letter imputed to him, did prom- 
 ise the amnesty, or whatever be the name of it, and did 
 pledge the honor of the Government to a transaction with 
 these Fenian leaders. With what success to his own pros- 
 
WITH A PASHA. 443 
 
 pects the ' Gazette ' will speak, that announces his appoint- 
 ment to Guatemala. 
 
 "I am myself very far from sorry at our change of desti- 
 nation. I prefer the Bosphorus to the Bay of Dublin, and 
 like Pera better than the Phoenix. It is not alone that the 
 interests are greater, the questions larger, and the conse- 
 quences more important to the world at large, but that, as 
 my uncle has just said, you are spared the peddling imper- 
 tinence of Parliament interfering at every moment, and 
 questioning your conduct, from an invitation to Cardinal 
 Cullen to the dismissal of a chief constable. Happily, the 
 gentlemen at Westminster know nothing about Turkey, and 
 have the prudence not to ventilate their ignorance, except in 
 secret committee. I am sorry to have to tell you that my 
 Lord sees great difficulty in what you propose as to yourself. 
 F. O., he says, would not easily consent to your being 
 named even a third secretary without your going through 
 the established grade of attache. All the unquestionable 
 merits he knows you to possess would count for nothing 
 against an official regulation. The course my Lord would 
 suggest is this: To enter now as mere attache, to continue in 
 this position some three or four months, come over here for 
 the general election in February, get into ' the House,' and 
 after some few sessions — one or two — rejoin diplomacy, to 
 which you might be appointed as a secretary of legation. 
 My uncle named to me three, if not four, cases of this kind. 
 One, indeed, stepped at once into a mission and became a 
 minister; and though, of course, the Opposition made a 
 fuss, they failed in their attempt to break the appointment, 
 and the man will probably be soon an ambassador. l| 
 accept the little yataghan, but sincerely wish the present] 
 had been of less value. There is one enormous emerald in! 
 the handle which I am much tempted to transfer to a ring.^ 
 Perhaps I ought, in decency, to have your permission for! 
 the change. The burnous is very beautiful, but I could not' 
 accept it; an article of dress is in the category of things, 
 impossible. Have you no Irish sisters, or even cousins? 
 Pray give me a destination to address it to in your next. 
 
 "My uncle desires me to say that, all invaluable as your 
 services have become where you are, he needs you greatly 
 
444 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 here, and would hear with pleasure that you were about to 
 return. He is curious to know who wrote ' L'Orient et Lord 
 D. ' in the last ' Revue des Deux Mondes. ' The savagery of 
 the attack implies a personal rancor. Find out the author, 
 and reply to him in the ' Edinburgh. ' My Lord suspects 
 he may have had access to the papers he has already alluded 
 to, and is the more eager to repossess them." 
 
 A telegraphic despatch in cipher was put into his hands 
 as he was reading. It was from Lord Danesbury, and said, 
 ''Come back as soon as you can, but not before making K. 
 Pasha know his fate is in my hands." 
 
 As the Grand Vizier had already learned from the Otto- 
 man Ambassador at London the news that Lord Danesbury 
 was about to resume his former post at Constantinople, his 
 Turkish impassiveness was in no way imperilled by Atlee's 
 abrupt announcement. It is true he would have been 
 pleased had the English Government sent out some one new 
 to the East and a stranger to all Oriental questions. He 
 would have liked one of those veterans of diplomacy versed 
 in the old-fashioned ways and knaveries of German courts, 
 and whose shrewdest ideas of a subtle policy are centred 
 in a few social spies and a "Cabinet Noir." The Pasha 
 had no desire to see there a man who knew all the secret 
 machinery of a Turkish administration, what corruption 
 could do, and where to look for the men who could 
 employ it. 
 
 The thing was done, however, and with that philosophy 
 of resignation to a fact in which no nation can rival his own, 
 he muttered his polite congratulations on the event, and 
 declared that the dearest wish of his heart was now accom- 
 plished. 
 
 "We had half begun to believe you had abandoned us, 
 Mr. Atlee," said he. "When England commits her inter- 
 ests to inferior men, she usually means to imply that they 
 are worth nothing better. I am rejoiced to see that we are, 
 at last, awakened from this delusion. With his Excellency 
 Lord Danesbury here, we shall be soon once more where we 
 have been." 
 
 "Your fleet is in effective condition, well armed and well 
 disciplined? " 
 
WITH A PASHA. 445 
 
 "All, all," smiled the Pasha. 
 
 "The army reformed, the artillery supplied with the most 
 efficient guns, and officers of European services encouraged 
 to join your staff ? " 
 
 "All." 
 
 "Wise economies in your financial matters, close super- 
 vision in the collection of the revenue, and searching inqui- 
 ries where abuses exist?" 
 
 "All." 
 
 "Especial care that the administration of justice should 
 be beyond even the malevolence of distrust, that men of 
 station and influence should be clear-handed and honorable, 
 not a taint of unfairness to attach to them? " 
 
 "Be it all so," ejaculated the Pasha, blandly. 
 
 "By the way, I am reminded by a line I have just 
 received from his Excellency with reference to Sulina, or 
 was it Galatz ? " 
 
 The Pasha could not decide, and he went on : — 
 
 " I remember, it is Galatz. There is some curious ques- 
 tion there of a concession for a line of railroad, which a 
 Servian commissioner had the skill to obtain from the 
 Cabinet here, by a sort of influence which our Stock 
 Exchange people in London scarcely regard as regular." 
 
 The Pasha nodded to imply attention, and smoked on as 
 before. 
 
 "But I weary your Excellency," said Atlee, rising, "and 
 my real business here is accomplished." 
 
 "Tell my Lord that I await his arrival with impatience; 
 that of all pending questions none shall receive solution till 
 he comes; that I am the very least of his servants." And 
 with an air of most dignified sincerity he bowed him out; 
 and Atlee hastened away to tell his chief that he had 
 "squared the Turk," and would sail on the morrow. 
 
CHAPTER LXIII. 
 
 ATLEE ON HIS TRAVELS. 
 
 On board the Austrian Lloyd's steamer in which he sailed 
 from Constantinople, Joseph Atlee employed himself in the 
 composition of a small volume purporting to be " The 
 Experiences of a Two Years' Residence in Greece." In an 
 opening chapter of this work he had modestly intimated 
 to the reader how an intimate acquaintance with the lan- 
 guage and literature of modern Greece, great opportunities 
 of mixing with every class and condition of the people, 
 a mind well stored with classical acquirements and thor- 
 oughly versed in antiquarian lore, a strong poetic temper- 
 ament and the feeling of an artist for scenery, had all 
 combined to give him a certain fitness for his task ; and 
 by the extracts from his diary it would be seen on what 
 terms of freedom he conversed with ministers and ambas- 
 sadors, even with royalty itself. 
 
 A most pitiless chapter was devoted to the exposure of the 
 mistakes and misrepresentations of a late " Quarterly" arti- 
 cle called "Greece and her Protectors," whose statements 
 were the more mercilessly handled and ridiculed that the 
 paper in question had been written by himself, and the 
 sarcastic allusions to the sources of the information not the 
 less pungent on that account. 
 
 That the writer had been admitted to frequent audi- 
 ences of the king; that he had discussed with his Majesty 
 the cutting of the Isthmus of Corinth ; that the king had 
 seriously confided to him his belief that in the event of 
 his abdication the Ionian Islands must revert to him as a 
 personal appanage, the terms on which they were annexed 
 to Greece being decided by lawyers to bear this interpre- 
 
ATLEE ON HIS TRAVELS. 447 
 
 tation, — all these Atlee denied of his own knowledge, and 
 asked the reader to follow him into the royal cabinet for 
 his reasons. 
 
 When, therefore, he heard that from some damage to 
 the machinery the vessel must be detained some days at 
 Syra to refit, Atlee was scarcely sorry that necessity gave 
 him an opportunity to visit Athens. 
 
 A little about Ulysses and a good deal about Lord Byron, 
 a smattering of Grote, and a more perfect memory of 
 About were, as he owned to himself, all his Greece; but 
 he could answer for what three days in the country would 
 do for him, particularly with that spirit of candid inquiry 
 he could now bring to his task, and the genuine fairness 
 with which he desired to judge the people. 
 
 ''The two years' resident" in Athens must doubtless 
 often have dined with his Minister, and so Atlee sent his 
 card to the Legation. 
 
 Mr. Brammell, our " present Minister at Athens," as the 
 "Times" continued to designate him, as though to imply 
 that the appointment might not be permanent, was an 
 excellent man, of that stamp of which diplomacy has more, 
 — who consider that the court to which they are accred- 
 ited concentrates for the time the political interests of the 
 globe. That any one in Europe thought, read, spoke, or 
 listened to anything but what was then happening in Greece, 
 Mr. Brammell could not believe. That France or Prussia, 
 Spain or Italy, could divide attention with this small king- 
 dom ; that the great political minds of the Continent were 
 not more eager to know what Comoundouros thought and 
 Bulgaris required, than all about Bismarck and Gortchakoff, 
 he could not be brought to conceive; and in consequence 
 of these convictions he was an admirable Minister, and 
 fully represented all the interests of his countr3^ 
 
 As that admirable public instructor, the "Levant Her- 
 ald," had frequently mentioned Atlee's name, now as the 
 guest of Kulbash Pasha, now as having attended some 
 public ceremony with other persons of importance, and 
 once as " our distinguished countryman, whose wise suof- 
 gestions and acute observations have been duly accepted 
 by the imperial cabinet," Brammell at once knew that this 
 
448 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 distinguished countryman should be entertained at dinner, 
 and he sent him an invitation. That habit — so popular 
 of late years — to send out some man from ICngland to do 
 something at a foreign court that the British Ambassa- 
 dor or Minister there either has not done, or cannot do, 
 possibly ought never to do, had invested Atlee in Bram- 
 mell's eyes with the character of one of those semi-accred- 
 ited inscrutable people whose function it would seem 
 to be to make us out the most meddlesome people in 
 Europe. 
 
 Of course Brammell was not pleased to see him at Athens, 
 and he ran over all the possible contingencies he might 
 have come for. It might be the old Greek loan which 
 was to be raked up again as a new grievance. It might 
 be the pensions that they would not pay, or the brigands 
 that they would not catch, — pretty much for the same 
 reasons, — that they could not. It might be that they 
 wanted to hear what Tsousicheff, the new Russian Minis- 
 ter, was doing, and whether the farce of the " Grand Idea" 
 was advertised for repetition. It might be Crete was on 
 the tapis^ or it might be the question of the Greek envoy 
 to the Porte that the Sultan refused to receive, and which 
 promised to turn out a very pretty quarrel if only adroitly 
 treated. 
 
 The more Brammell thought of it, the more he felt 
 assured this must be the reason of Atlee's visit, and the 
 more indignant he grew that extra-official means should be 
 employed to investigate what he had written seventeen 
 despatches to explain, — seventeen despatches, with nine 
 ''enclosures," and a "private and confidential," about to 
 appear in a blue-book. 
 
 To make the dinner as confidential as might be, the only 
 guests besides Atlee were a couple of yachting Englishmen, 
 a German Professor of Archaeology, and the American 
 Minister, who, of course, speaking no language but his 
 own, could always be escaped from by a digression into 
 French, German, or Italian. 
 
 Atlee felt, as he entered the drawing-room, that the com- 
 pany was what he irreverently called afterwards a scratch 
 team ; and with an almost equal quickness, he saw that he 
 
ATLEE ON HIS TRAVELS. 449 
 
 himself was the "personage" of the entertainment, the 
 "man of mark" of the party. 
 
 The same tact which enabled him to perceive ail this 
 made him especially guarded in all he said, so that his host's 
 efforts to unveil his intentions and learn what he had come 
 for were complete failures. " Greece was a charming 
 country, — Greece was the parent of any civilization we 
 boasted. She gave us those ideas of architecture with which 
 we raised that glorious temple at Kensington, and that 
 taste for sculpture which we exhibited near Apsley House. 
 Aristophanes gave us our comic drama, and only the defaults 
 of our language made it difficult to show why the Member for 
 Cork did not more often recall Demosthenes." 
 
 As for insolvency, it was a very gentlemanlike failing; 
 while brigandage was only what Shell used to euphemizo as 
 "the wild justice" of noble spirits, too impatient for the 
 sluggard steps of slow redress, and too proud not to be 
 self-reliant. 
 
 Thus excusing and extenuating wherein he could not 
 flatter, Atlee talked on the entire evening, till 'he sent the 
 two Englishmen home heartily sick of a bombastic eulogy on 
 the land where a pilot had run their cutter on a rock, and a 
 revenue officer had seized all their tobacco. The German 
 had retired early, and the Yankee hastened to his lodgings 
 to "jot down" all the fine things he could commit to his 
 next despatch home, and overwhelm Mr. Seward with an 
 array of historic celebrities such as had never been seen 
 at Washington. 
 
 "They're gone at last," said the Minister. "Let us 
 have our cigar on the terrace." 
 
 The unbounded frankness, the unlimited trustfulness that 
 now ensued between these two men, was charming. Bram- 
 mell represented one hard worked and sorely tried in his 
 country's service, — the perfect slave of office, spending 
 nights long at his desk, but not appreciated, not valued at 
 home. It was delightful, therefore, to him to find a man 
 like Atlee, to whom he could tell this, — could tell for what 
 an ungrateful country he toiled, what ignorance he sought 
 to enlighten, what actual stupidity he had to counteract. 
 He spoke of the office, — from his tone of horror it might 
 
 29 
 
450 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 have been the Holy Office, — with a sort of tremulous terror 
 and aversion; the absurd instructions they sent him, the 
 impossible things he was to do, the inconceivable lines of 
 policy he was to insist on ; how but for him the king would 
 abdicate and a Russian protectorate be proclaimed ; how the 
 revolt at Athens would be proclaimed in Thessaly ; how 
 Skulkekoff, the Russian General, was waiting to move into 
 the provinces ' ' at the first check my policy shall receive 
 here," cried he. "I shall show you on this map ; and here 
 are the names, armament, and tonnage of a hundred and 
 ninety-four gunboats now ready at Nicholief to move down 
 on Constantinople." 
 
 Was it not strange, was it not worse than strange, after 
 such a show of unbounded confidence as this, Atlee would 
 reveal nothing ? Whatever his grievances against the people 
 he served, — and who is without them? — he would say 
 nothing, he had no complaint to make. Things he admitted 
 were bad, but they might be worse. The monarchy existed 
 still, and the House of Lords was, for a while at least, 
 tolerated. Ireland was disturbed, but not in open rebellion 
 and if we had no army to speak of, we still had a navy, and 
 even the present Admiralty only lost about five ships a 
 year ! 
 
 Till long after midnight did they fence with each other, 
 with buttons on their foils, — very harmlessly, no doubt, but 
 very uselessly too ; Brammell could make nothing of a man 
 ■vi^ho neither wanted to hear about finance or taxation, court 
 scandal, schools, or public robbery ; and though he could 
 not in so many words ask, What have you come for ? why 
 are you here? he said this in full fifty different ways for 
 three hours and more. 
 
 "You make some stay amongst us, I trust?" said the 
 Minister, as his guest rose to take leave, "You mean 
 to see something of this interesting country before you 
 leave?" 
 
 "I fear not; when the repairs to the steamer enable her 
 to put to sea, they are to let me know by telegraph, and I 
 shall join her." 
 
 " Are you so pressed for time that you cannot spare us a 
 week or two ? " 
 
ATLEE ON HIS TEAVELS. 451 
 
 "Totally impossible! Parliament will sit iu January 
 next, and I must hasten home." 
 
 This was to imply that he was in the House, or that he 
 expected to be, or that he ought to be, and, even if he were 
 not, that his presence in England was all-essential to some- 
 body who was in Parliament, and for whom his information, 
 his explanation, his accusation, or anything else, was all 
 needed, and so Brammell read it and bowed accordingly. 
 
 " By the way," said the Minister, as the other was leaving 
 the room, and with that sudden abruptness of a wayward 
 thought, ' ' we have been talking of all sorts of things and 
 people, but not a word about what we are so full of here. 
 How is this difficulty about the new Greek envoy to the 
 Porte to end? You know of course the Sultan refuses to 
 receive him ? " 
 
 " The Pasha told me something of it, but I confess to have 
 paid little attention. I treated the matter as insignificant." 
 
 "Insignificant! You cannot mean that an affront so 
 openly administered as this, the greatest national offence 
 that could be offered, is insignificant?" and then with a 
 volubility that smacked very little of want of preparation, 
 he showed that the idea of sending a particular man, long 
 compromised by his complicity in the Cretan revolt, to Con- 
 stantinople, came from Russia, and that the opposition of 
 the Porte to accept him was also Russian. "I got to the 
 bottom of the whole intrigue. I wrote home how Tsousicheff 
 was nursing this new quarrel. I told our people facts of 
 the Muscovite policy that they never got a hint of from their 
 ambassador at St. Petersburg." 
 
 "It was rare luck that we had you here; good-night, 
 good-night," said Atlee, as he buttoned his coat. 
 
 " More than that, I said, ' If the Cabinet here persist in 
 sending Kostalergi — ' " 
 
 " Whom did you say? What name was it you said? " 
 
 " Kostalergi — the Prince. As much a prince as you are. 
 First of all, they have no better; and, secondly, this is the 
 most consummate adventurer in the East." 
 
 " I should like to know him. Is he here, — at Athens? " 
 
 " Of course he is. He is waiting till he hears the Sultan 
 will receive him." 
 
452 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 *' I should like to know him," said Atlee, more seriously. 
 
 ** Nothing easier. He comes here every day. Will you 
 meet him at dinner to-morrow ? " 
 
 *' Delighted! but then I should like a little conversation 
 with him in the morning. Perhaps you would kindly make 
 me known to him ? " 
 
 ''With sincere pleasure. I'll write and ask him to dine, 
 and I '11 say that you will wait on him. I '11 say, ' My dis- 
 tinguished friend Mr. Atlee, of whom you have heard, will 
 wait on you about eleven or twelve.' Will that do?" 
 
 "Perfectly. So then I may make my visit on the pre- 
 sumption of being expected ? " 
 
 " Certainly. Not that Kostalergi wants much prepara- 
 tion. He plays baccarat all night, but he is at his desk at 
 six." 
 
 "Is he rich?" 
 
 " Hasn't a sixpence, — but plays all the same ; and what 
 people are more surprised at, pays when he loses. If I had 
 not already passed an evening in your company, I should be 
 bold enough to hint to you the need of caution -^ great 
 caution — in talking with him." 
 
 "I know, — I am aware," said Atlee, with a meaning 
 smile. 
 
 "You will not be misled by his cunning, Mr. Atlee, but 
 beware of his candor." 
 
 " I will be on my guard. Many thanks for the caution. 
 Good-night ! — once more, good-night ! " 
 
CHAPTER LXIV. 
 
 GREEK MEETS GREEK. 
 
 So excited did Atlee feel about meeting the father of Nina 
 Kostalergi, — of whose strange doings and adventurous life 
 he had heard much, — that he scarcely slept the entire night. 
 It puzzled him greatly to determine in what character he 
 should present himself to this crafty Greek. Political 
 amateurship was now so popular in England that he might 
 easily enough pass off for one of those " Bulls" desirous to 
 make himself up on the Greek question. This was a part 
 that offered no difficulty. ''Give me five minutes of any 
 man — a little longer with a woman — and I '11 know where 
 his sympathies incline to." This was a constant boast of 
 his, and not altogether a vain one. He might be an ar- 
 chaeological traveller eager about new-discovered relics, and 
 curious about ruined temples. He might be a yachting man, 
 who only cared for Salamis as good anchorage, nor thought 
 of the Acropolis, except as a point of departure ; or he 
 might be one of those myriads who travel without knowing 
 where or caring why ; airing their enrmi now at Thebes, 
 now at Trolhatten ; a weariful, dispirited race, who rarely 
 look so thoroughl}^ alive as when choosing a cigar or chang- 
 ing their money. There was no reason why the "distin- 
 guished Mr. Atlee " might not be one of these, — he was 
 accredited, too, by his Minister, and his " solidarity," as 
 the French call it, was beyond question. 
 
 While yet revolving these points, a cavass — with much 
 gold in his jacket, and a voluminous petticoat of white calico 
 — came to inform him that his Excellency the Prince hoped 
 to see him at breakfast at eleven o'clock ; and it now only 
 wanted a few minutes of that hour. Atlee detained the 
 messenger to show him the road, and at last set out. 
 
454 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Traversing one dreary, ill-built street after another, they 
 arrived at last at what seemed a little lane, the entrance to 
 which carriages were denied by a line of stone posts, at the 
 extremity of which a small green gate appeared in a wall. 
 Pushing this wide open, the cavass stood respectfully, while 
 Atlee passed in, and found hiniself in what for Greece was 
 a garden. There were two fine palm-trees, and a small 
 scrub of oleanders and dwarf cedars that grew around a little 
 fish-pond, where a small Triton in the middle, with distended 
 cheeks, should have poured forth a refreshing jet of water, 
 but his lips were dry, and his conch-shell empty, and the 
 muddy tank at his feet a mere surface of broad water-lilies 
 convulsively shaken by bull- frogs. A short shady path led 
 to the house, a two-storied edifice, with the external stair of 
 wood that seemed to crawl round it on every side. 
 
 In a good-sized room of the ground floor Atlee found the 
 Prince awaiting him. He was confined to a sofa by a slight 
 sprain, he called it, and apologized for his not being able 
 to rise. 
 
 The Prince, though advanced in years, was still handsome ; 
 his features had all the splendid regularity of their Greek 
 origin ; but in the enormous orbits, of which the tint 
 was nearly black, and the indented temples, traversed by 
 veins of immense size, and the firm compression of his lips, 
 might be read the signs of a man who carried the gambling 
 spirit into every incident of life, one ready "to back his 
 luck," and show a bold front to fortune when fate proved 
 adverse. 
 
 The Greek's manner was perfect. There was all the ease 
 of a man used to society, with a sort of half-sly courtesy, as 
 he said, "This is kindness, Mr. Atlee, — this is real kind- 
 ness. I scarcely thought an Englishman would have the 
 courage to call upon anything so unpopular as I am." 
 
 " I have come to see you and the Parthenon, Prince, and 
 I have begun with you." 
 
 " And you will tell them, when you get home, that I am 
 not the terrible revolutionist they think me ; that I am 
 neither Danton nor Felix Pyat, but a very mild and rather 
 tiresome old man, whose extreme violence goes no further 
 than believing that people ought to be masters in their own 
 
GREEK MEETS GREEK. 455 
 
 house, and that when any one disputes the right, the best 
 thing is to throw him out of the window." 
 
 " If he will not go by the door," remarked Atlee. 
 
 *■ ' No, I would not give him the chance of the door. Other- 
 wise you make no distinction between your friends and your 
 enemies. It is by the mild methods — what you call ' milk- 
 and-water methods ' — men spoil all their efforts for freedom. 
 You always want to cut off somebody's head and spill no 
 blood. There's the mistake of those Irish rebels: they tell 
 me they have courage, but I find it hard to believe them." 
 
 '' Do believe them, then, and know for certain that there is 
 not a braver people in Europe." 
 
 '* How do you keep them down then? " 
 
 '' You must not ask me that, for I am one of them." 
 
 ''You Irish?" 
 
 *' Yes, Irish, — very Irish." 
 
 *'Ah! I see. Irish in an English sense? Just as there 
 are Greeks here who believe in Kulbash Pasha, and would 
 say, Stay at home and till your currant-fields and mind your 
 coasting-trade. Don't try to be civilized, for civilization goes 
 badly with brigandage, and scarcely suits trickery. And you 
 are aware, Mr. Atlee, that trickery and brigandage are more 
 to Greece than olives or dried figs ? " 
 
 There was that of mockery in the way he said this, and 
 the little smile that played about his mouth when he finished, 
 that left Atlee in considerable doubt how to read him. 
 
 "I study your newspapers, Mr. Atlee," resumed he. "I 
 never omit to read your ' Times,' and I see how my old 
 acquaintance. Lord Danesbury, has been making Turkey out 
 of Ireland ! It is so hard to persuade an old ambassador 
 that you cannot do everything by corruption ! " 
 
 " I scarcely think you do him justice." 
 
 " Poor Danesbury ! " ejaculated he, sorrowfully. 
 
 '' You opine that his policy is a mistake? " 
 
 " Poor Danesbury ! " said he again. 
 
 " He is one of our ablest men, notwithstanding. At this 
 moment we have not his superior in anything." 
 
 ' ' I was going to say. Poor Danesbury ! but I now say, 
 Poor England ! " 
 
 Atlee bit his lips with anger at the sarcasm, but went on, 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
456 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " I infer you are not aware of the exact share subordi- 
 nates have had in what you call Lord Danesbury's Irish 
 blunders — " 
 
 " Pardon my interrupting you, but a really able man has 
 no subordinates. His inferior agents are so thoroughly 
 absorbed by his own individuality that they have no wills, 
 no instincts, and therefore they can do no indiscretions. 
 They are the simple emanations of himself in action." 
 
 '' In Turkey, perhaps," said Atlee, with a smile. 
 
 '' If in Turkey, why not in England, or, at least, in Ireland? 
 If you are well served, — and mind, you must be well served, 
 or you are powerless, — you can always in political life see 
 the adversary's hand. That he sees yours, is of course true : 
 the great question then is, how much you mean to mislead him 
 by the showing it? I give you an instance: Lord Danes- 
 bury's cleverest stroke in policy here, the one hit probably 
 he made in the East, was to have a private correspondence 
 with the Khedive made known to the Russian Embassy, and 
 induce Gortschakoff to believe that he could not trust the 
 Pasha! All the Russian preparations to move down on 
 the Provinces were countermanded. The stores of grain 
 that were being made on the Pruth were arrested, and 
 three, nearly four weeks elapsed before the mistake was 
 discovered, and in that interval England had reinforced 
 the squadron at Malta, and taken steps to encourage 
 Turkey, — always to be done by money, or promise of 
 money." 
 
 '' It was a coup of great adroitness," said Atlee. 
 
 " It was more," cried the Greek, with elation. " It was a 
 move of such subtlety as smacks of something higher than 
 the Saxon ! The men who do these things have the instinct 
 of their craft. It is theirs to understand that chemistry of 
 human motives by which a certain combination results in 
 effects totally remote from the agents that produce it. Can 
 you follow me?" 
 
 "I believe I can." 
 
 "I would rather say, Is my attempt at an explanation 
 sufficiently clear to be intelligible?" 
 
 Atlee looked fixedly at him, and he could do so unobserved, 
 for the other was now occupied in preparing his pipe, without 
 
GREEK MEETS GREEK. 457 
 
 minding the question. Therefore Atlee set himself to study 
 the features before him. It was evident enough, from the 
 intensity of his gaze and a certain trembling of his upper 
 lip, that the scrutiny cost him no common effort. It was, in 
 fact, the effort to divine what, if he mistook to read aright, 
 would be an irreparable blunder. 
 
 With the long-drawn inspiration a man makes before he 
 adventures a daring feat, he said: ''It is time I should be 
 candid with you. Prince. It is time I should tell you that I 
 am in Greece only to see you.'' 
 
 " To see me? " said the other, and a very faint flush passed 
 across his face. 
 
 "To see you," said Atlee, slowly, while he drew out a 
 pocket-book and took from it a letter. " This," said he, 
 handing it, "is to your address." The words on the cover 
 were M. Spiridionides. 
 
 "I am Spiridion Kostalergi, and by birth a Prince of 
 Delos," said the Greek, waving back the letter. 
 
 " I am well aware of that, and it is only in perfect confi- 
 dence that I venture to recall a past that your Excellency will 
 see I respect ; " and Atlee spoke with an air of deference. 
 
 " The antecedents of the men who serve this country are 
 not to be measured by the artificial habits of a people who 
 regulate condition by money. Your statesmen have no need 
 to be journalists, teachers, tutors ; Frenchmen and Italians 
 are all these, and on the Lower Danube and in Greece we are 
 these and something more. Nor are we less politicians that 
 we are more men of the world. The little of statecraft that 
 French Emperor ever knew, he picked up in his days of 
 exile." All this he blurted out in short and passionate 
 bursts, like an angry man who was trying to be logical in 
 his anger, and to make an effort of reason subdue his 
 wrath. 
 
 "If I had not understood these things as you yourself 
 understand them, I should not have been so indiscreet as 
 to offer you that letter ; " and once more he proffered it. 
 
 This time the Greek took it, tore open the envelope, and 
 read it through. 
 
 " It is from Lord Danesbury," said he, at length. " When 
 we parted last I was, in a certain sense, my Lord's subor- 
 
458 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 dinate, — that is, there were things none of his staff of 
 secretaries or attaches or dragomen could do, and I could 
 do them. Times are changed ; and if we are to meet again, 
 it will be as colleagues. It is true, Mr. Atlee, the Ambassa- 
 dor of England and the Envoy of Greece are not exactly of 
 the same rank. I do not permit myself many illusions, 
 and this is not one of them; but remember, if Great Britain 
 be a first-rate power, Greece is a volcano. It is for us to 
 say when there shall be an eruption." 
 
 It was evident, from the rambling tenor of this speech, 
 he was speaking rather to conceal his thoughts and give 
 himself time for reflection, than to enunciate any definite 
 opinion ; and so Atlee, with native acuteness, read him, as 
 he simply bowed a cold assent. 
 
 "Why should I give him back his letters?" burst out the 
 Greek, warmly. "What does he offer me in exchange for 
 them? Money! mere money! By what presumption does 
 he assume that I must be in such want of money that the 
 only question should be the sum? May not the time come 
 when I shall be questioned in our chamber as to certain 
 matters of policy, and my only vindication be the documents 
 of this same English ambassador, written in his own hand, 
 and signed with his name? Will you tell me that the trium- 
 phant assertion of a man's honor is not more to him than 
 bank-notes?" 
 
 Though the heroic spirit of this speech went but a short 
 way to deceive Atlee, who only read it as a plea for a 
 higher price, it was his policy to seem to believe every word 
 of it, and he looked a perfect picture of quiet conviction. 
 
 "You little suspect what these letters are?" said the 
 Greek. 
 
 "I believe I know; I rather think I have a catalogue of 
 them and their contents," mildly hinted the other. 
 
 "Ah, indeed! and are you prepared to vouch for the 
 accuracy and completeness of your list?" 
 
 "You must be aware it is only my Lord himself can 
 answer that question." 
 
 " Is there — in your enumeration — is there the letter 
 about Crete, and the false news that deceived the Baron 
 de Baude? Is there the note of my instructions to the 
 
GREEK MEETS GREEK. 459 
 
 Khedive? Is there — I 'm sure there is not — any mention 
 of the negotiation with Stephanotis Bey ? " 
 
 "I have seen Stephanotis myself; I have just come from 
 him," said Atlee, grasping at the escape the name offered. 
 
 ''Ah, you know the old Palikao? " 
 
 "Intimately; we are, I hope, close friends; he was at 
 Kulbash Pasha's while I was there, and we had much talk 
 together." 
 
 "And from him it was you learned that Spiridionides was 
 Spiridion Kostalergi?" said the Greek, slowly. 
 
 "Surely this is not meant as a question; or, at least, 
 a question to be answered?" said Atlee, smiling. 
 
 "No, no, of course not," replied the other, politely. "We 
 are chatting together, if not like old friends, like men who 
 have every element to become dear friends. We see life 
 pretty much from the same point of view, Mr. Atlee, is it 
 not so?" 
 
 "It would be a great flattery to me to think it." And 
 Joe's eyes sparkled as he spoke. 
 
 "One has to make his choice somewhat early in the world, 
 whether he will hunt or be hunted ; I believe that is about 
 the case." 
 
 "X suspect so." 
 
 "I did not take long to decide; /took my place with the 
 wolves ! " Nothing could be more quietly uttered than 
 these words; but there was a savage ferocity in his look as 
 he said them that held Atlee almost spell-bound. "And 
 you, Mr. Atlee? and you? I need scarcely ask where your 
 choice fell ! " 
 
 It was so palpable that the words meant a compliment, 
 Atlee had only to smile a polite acceptance of them. 
 
 "These letters," said the Greek, resuming, and like one 
 who had not mentally lapsed from the theme, — " these letters 
 are all that my Lord deems them. • They are the very stuff 
 that, in your country of publicity and free discussion, 
 would make or mar the very best reputations amongst you. 
 And," added he, after a pause, "there are none of them 
 destroyed, — none ! " 
 
 *''He is aware of that." 
 
 " No, he is not aware of it to the extent I speak of ; for 
 
460 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 many of the documents that he believed he saw burned in 
 his own presence, on his own hearth, are here, — here in 
 the room we sit in! So that I am in the proud position of 
 being able to vindicate his policy in many cases where his 
 memory might prove weak or fallacious." 
 
 "Although I know Lord Danesbury's value for these 
 papers does not bear out your own, I will not suffer myself 
 to discuss the point. I return at once to what I have come 
 for. Shall I make you an offer in money for them, Monsieur 
 Kostalergi ? " 
 
 ''What is the amount you propose? " 
 
 "I was to negotiate for a thousand pounds first. I was 
 to give two thousand at the last resort. I will begin at the 
 last resort and pay you two." 
 
 "Why not piastres, Mr. Atlee? I am sure your instruc- 
 tions must have said piastres." 
 
 Quite unmoved by the sarcasm, Atlee took out his pocket- 
 book and read from a memorandum: " Should M. Kostalergi 
 refuse your offer, or think it insufficient, on no account let 
 the negotiation take any turn of acrimony or recrimination. 
 He has rendered me great services in past times, and it will 
 be for himself to determine whether he should do or say 
 what should in any way bar our future relations together." 
 
 "This is not a menace? " said the Greek, smiling super- 
 ciliously. 
 
 "No. It is simply an instruction," said the other, after 
 a slight hesitation. 
 
 "The men who make a trade of diplomacy," said the 
 Greek, haughtily, "reserve it for their dealings with Cabi- 
 nets. In home or familiar intercourse they are straightfor- 
 ward and simple. Without these papers your noble master 
 cannot return to Turkey as ambassador. Do not interrupt 
 me. He cannot come back as ambassador to the Porte ! It 
 is for him to say how he estimates the post. An ambitious 
 man, with ample reason for his ambition, an able man with 
 a thorough conviction of his ability, a patriotic man, who 
 understood and saw the services he could render to his 
 country, would not bargain at the price the place should 
 cost him, nor say ten thousand pounds too much to pay 
 for it." 
 
GREEK MEETS GREEK. 461 
 
 "Ten thousand pounds!" exclaimed Atlee, but in I'eal 
 and unfeigned astonishment. 
 
 " I have said ten thousand, and I will not say nine, — 
 nor nine thousand nine hundred." 
 
 Atlee slowly arose and took his hat. 
 
 ''I have too much respect for yourself and for your time, 
 M. Kostalergi, to impose any longer on your leisure. I 
 have no need to say that your proposal is totally unac- 
 ceptable." 
 
 " You have not heard it all, sir. The money is but a part 
 of what I insist on. I shall demand, besides, that the 
 British Ambassador at Constantinople shall formally sup- 
 port my claim to be received as Envoy from Greece, and 
 that the whole might of England be pledged to the ratifica- 
 tion of my appointment." 
 
 A very cold but not uncourteous smile was all Atlee' s 
 acknowledgment of this speech. 
 
 "There are small details which regard my title and the 
 rank that I lay claim to. With these I do not trouble you. 
 I will merely say I reserve them if we should discuss this in 
 future." 
 
 "Of that there is little prospect. Indeed, I see none 
 whatever. I may say this much, however, Prince, that I 
 shall most willingly undertake to place your claims to be 
 received as Minister for Greece at the Porte under Lord 
 Danesbury's notice, and, I have every hope, for favorable 
 consideration. We are not likely to meet again; may I 
 assume that we part friends ? " 
 
 "You only anticipate my own sincere desire." 
 
 As they passed slowly through the garden, Atlee stopped 
 and said: "Had I been able to tell my Lord, ' The Prince is 
 just named special envoy at Constantinople. The Turks 
 are offended at something he has done in Crete or Thessaly. 
 Without certain pressure on the Divan they will not receive 
 him. Will your Lordship empower me to say that you will 
 undertake this, and, moreover, enable me to assure him that 
 all the cost and expenditure of his outfit shall be met in a 
 suitable form?' If, in fact, you give me your permission 
 to submit such a basis as this, I should leave Athens far 
 happier than I feel now." 
 
462 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " The Chamber has already voted the outfit. It is very 
 modest, but it is enough. Our national resources are at a 
 low ebb. You might, indeed, — that is, if you still wished 
 to plead my cause, — you might tell my Lord that I had 
 destined this sum as the fortune of my daughter. I have a 
 daughter, Mr. Atlee, and at present sojourning in your own 
 country. And though at one time I was minded to recall 
 her, and take her with me to Turkey, I have grown to doubt 
 whether it would be a wise policy. Our Greek contingen- 
 cies are too many and too sudden to let us project very far 
 in life." 
 
 "Strange enough," said Atlee, thoughtfully, "you have 
 just — as it were, by mere hazard — struck the one chord in 
 the English nature that will always respond to the appeal of 
 a home affection. Were I to say, ' Do you know why 
 Kostalergi makes so hard a bargain? It is to endow a 
 daughter. It is the sole provision he stipulates to make 
 her, — Greek statesmen can amass no fortunes ; this hazard 
 will secure the girl's future! ' On my life, I cannot think 
 of one argument that would have equal weight." 
 
 Kostalergi smiled faintly, but did not speak. 
 
 "Lord Danesbury never married; but I know with what 
 interest and affection he follows the fortunes of men who 
 live to secure the happiness of their children : it is the one 
 plea he could not resist. To be sure, he might say, ' Kosta- 
 lergi told you this, and perhaps at the time he himself 
 believed it; but how can a man who likes the world and its 
 very costliest pleasures guard himself against his own 
 habits? Who is to pledge his honor that the girl will ever 
 be the owner of this sum ? ' " 
 
 "I shall place that beyond a cavil or a question; he shall 
 be himself her guardian. The money shall not leave his 
 hands till she marries. You have your own laws, by w^hich 
 a man can charge his estate with the payment of a certain 
 amount. My Lord, if he assents to this, will know how it 
 may be done. I repeat, I do not desire to touch a drachma 
 of the sum." 
 
 "You interest me immensely. I cannot tell you how 
 intensely I feel interested in all this. In fact, I shall own 
 to you, frankly, that you have at last employed an argu- 
 
GREEK MEETS GREEK. 463 
 
 ment I do not know how, even if I wished, to answer. 
 Am I at liberty to state this pretty much as you have 
 told it?" 
 
 "Every word of it." 
 
 "Will you go further; will you give me a little line, a 
 memorandum in your own hand, to show that I do not mis- 
 state nor mistake you, — that I have your meaning cor- 
 rectly, and without even a chance of error?" 
 
 "I will write it formally and deliberately." 
 
 The bell of the outer door rang at the moment. It was a 
 telegraphic message to Atlee, to say that the steamer had 
 perfected her repairs and would sail that evening. 
 
 "You mean to sail with her?" asked the Greek. "Well, 
 within an hour you shall have my packet. Good-bye. I 
 have no doubt we shall hear of each other again." 
 
 "I think I could venture to bet on it," were Atlee' s last 
 words as he turned away. 
 
CHAPTER LXV. 
 
 Lord Danesbury had arrived at Bruton Street to confer 
 with certain members of the Cabinet who remained in town 
 after the session, chiefly to consult with him. He was 
 accompanied by his niece, Lady Maude, and by Walpole; 
 the latter continuing to reside under his roof, rather from 
 old habit than from any strong wish on either side. 
 
 Walpole had obtained a short extension of his leave, and 
 employed the time in endeavoring to make up his mind 
 about a certain letter to Nina Kostalergi, which he had 
 written nearly fifty times in different versions and destroyed. 
 Neither his Lordship nor his niece ever saw him. They 
 knew he had a room or two somewhere ; a servant was occa- 
 sionally encountered on the way to him with a breakfast- 
 tray and an urn ; his letters were seen on the hall-table ; but, 
 except these, he gave no signs of life, — never appeared at 
 luncheon or at dinner, and as much dropped out of all 
 memory or interest as though he had ceased to be. 
 
 It was one evening, yet early, — scarcely eleven o'clock, 
 — as Lord Danesbury's little party of four Cabinet chiefs 
 had just departed, that he sat at the drawing-room fire with 
 Lady Maude, chatting over the events of the evening's con- 
 versation, and discussing, as men will do at times, the char- 
 acters of their guests. 
 
 "It has been nearly as tiresome as a Cabinet Council, 
 Maude!" said he, with a sigh, ''and not unlike it in one 
 thing, — it was almost always the men who knew least of 
 any matter who discussed it most exhaustively." 
 
 " I conclude you know what you are going out to do, my 
 Lord, and do not care to hear the desultory notions of 
 people who know nothing." 
 
"IN TOWN." 465 
 
 "Just so. What could a First Lord tell me about those 
 Russian intrigues in Albania ; or is it likely that a Home 
 Secretary is aware of what is preparing in Montenegro? 
 They get hold of some crotchet in the ' Revue de Deux 
 Mondes, ' and, assuming it all to be true, they ask defiantly, 
 ' How are you going to deal with that? Why did you not 
 foresee the other?' and such like. How little they know, 
 as that fellow Atlee says, that a man evolves his Turkey 
 out of the necessities of his pocket, and captures his Con- 
 stantinople to pay for a dinner at the ' Freres ' ! What fleets 
 of Russian gunboats have I seen launched to procure a few 
 bottles of champagne ! I remember a chasse of Kersch, with 
 the cafe, costing a whole battery of Krupp's breech- 
 loaders ! " 
 
 ''Are our own journals more correct? " 
 
 "They are more cautious, Maude, — far more cautious. 
 Nine days' wonders with us w^ould be too costly. Nothing 
 must be risked that can affect the funds. The share-list is 
 too solemn a thing for joking." 
 
 ''The Premier was very silent to-night," said she, after a 
 pause. 
 
 "He generally is in company; he looks like a man bored 
 at being obliged to listen to people saying the things that 
 he knows as well, and could tell better than they do." 
 
 "How completely he appears to have forgiven or for- 
 gotten the Irish fiasco ! " 
 
 "Of course he has. An extra blunder in the conduct of 
 Irish affairs is only like an additional mask in a fancy ball, 
 — the whole thing is motley; and asking for consistency 
 would be like requesting the company to behave like 
 archdeacons." 
 
 "And so the mischief has blown over? " 
 
 "In a measure it has. The Opposition quarrelled 
 amongst themselves; and such as were not ready to take 
 office if we were beaten declined to press the motion. The 
 irresponsibles went on, as they always do, to their own 
 destruction. They became violent, and, of course, our 
 people appealed against the violence, and with such temper- 
 ate language and good breeding that we carried the House 
 with us." 
 
 30 
 
466 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 *'I see there was quite a sensation about the word 
 * villain.'" 
 
 "No; 'miscreant.' It was 'miscreant,' — a word very 
 popular in O'Connell's day, but rather obsolete now. When 
 the Speaker called on the member for an apology, we had 
 won the day! These rash utterances in debate are the 
 explosive balls that no one must use in battle; and if we 
 only discover one in a fellow's pouch, we discredit the whole 
 army." 
 
 "I forget; did they press for a division? " 
 
 "No; we stopped them. We agreed to give them a 
 ' special committee to inquire.' Of all devices for secrecy 
 invented, I know of none like a ' special committee of in- 
 quiry.' Whatever people have known beforehand, their 
 faith will now be shaken in, and every possible or acci- 
 dental contingency assume a shape, a size, and a stability 
 beyond all belief. They have got their committee, and I 
 wish them luck of it! The only men who could tell them 
 anything will take care not to criminate themselves, and the 
 report will be a plaintive cry over a country where so few 
 people can be persuaded to tell the truth, and nobody should 
 seem any worse in consequence." 
 
 "Cecil certainly did it," said she, with a certain bitter- 
 ness. 
 
 "I suppose he did. These young players are always 
 thinking of scoring eight or ten on a single hazard; one 
 should never back them ! " 
 
 "Mr. Atlee said there was some female influence at work. 
 He would not tell what nor whom. Possibly he did not 
 know." 
 
 "I rather suspect he did know. They were people, if T 
 mistake not, belonging to that Irish castle, — Kil — Kil- 
 somebody, or Kil-something." 
 
 "Was Walpole flirting there? was he going to marry one 
 of them?" 
 
 "Flirting, I take it, must have been the extent of the 
 folly. Cecil often said he could not marry Irish. I have 
 known men do it! You are aware, Maude," and here he 
 looked with uncommon gravity, "the penal laws have all 
 been repealed." 
 
"IN TOWN." 467 
 
 "I was speaking of society, my Lord, not the statutes,'* 
 said she, resentfully, and half suspicious of a sly jest. 
 
 "Had she money?" asked he, curtly. 
 
 "I cannot tell; I know nothing of these people whatever! 
 I remember something — it was a newspaper story — of 
 a girl that saved Cecil's life by throwing herself before him; 
 a very pretty incident it was. But these things make no 
 figure in a settlement; and a woman may be as bold as 
 Joan of Arc and not have sixpence. Atlee says you can 
 always settle the courage on the younger children." 
 
 "Atlee 's an arrant scamp," said my Lord, laughing. 
 "He should have written some days since." 
 
 " I suppose he is too late for the borough ; the Cradf ord 
 election comes on next week ? " Though there could not 
 be anything more languidly indifferent than her voice in 
 this question, a faint pinkish tinge flitted across her cheek, 
 and left it colorless as before. 
 
 "Yes, he has his address out, and there is a sort of com- 
 mittee — certain licensed-victualler people — to whom he 
 has been promising some especial Sabbath-breaking that 
 they yearn after. I have not read it." 
 
 "I have ; and it is cleverly written, and there is little more 
 radical in it than we heard this very day at dinner. He 
 tells the electors, ' You are no more bound to the support of 
 an army or a navy, if you do not wish to fight, than to 
 maintain the College of Surgeons or Physicians, if you 
 object to take physic' He says, ' To tell me that I, with 
 eight shillings a week, have an equal interest in resisting 
 invasion as your Lord Dido, with eighty thousand per 
 annum, is simply nonsense. If you, ' cries he to one of his 
 supporters, ' were to be offered your life by a highwayman 
 on surrendering some few pence or halfpence you carried 
 in yoitr pocket, you do not mean to dictate what my Lord 
 Marquis might do, who has got a gold watch and a pocket- 
 ful of notes in his. And so I say once more, let the rich 
 pay for the defence of what they value. You and I have 
 nothing worth fighting for, and we will not fight. Then as 
 to religion — ' " 
 
 "Oh, spare me his theology! I can almost imagine it, 
 Maude. I had no conception he was such a radical." 
 
468 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''He is not really, my Lord; but he tells me that we must 
 all go through this stage. It is, as he says, like a course 
 of those waters whose benefit is exactly in proportion to the 
 way they disagree with you at first. He even said, one 
 evening before he went away, ' Take my word for it. Lady 
 Maude, we shall be burning these apostles of ballot and 
 universal suffrage in effigy one day; but I intend to go 
 beyond every one else in the mean while, else the rebound 
 back will lose half its excellence. ' " 
 
 "What is this? "cried he, as the servant entered with a 
 telegram. "This is from Athens, Maude, and in cipher 
 too. How are we to make it out? " 
 
 "Cecil has the key, my Lord. It is the diplomatic 
 cipher." 
 
 "Do you think you could find it in his room, Maude? It 
 is possible this might be imminent." 
 
 "I shall see if he is at home," said she, rising to ring the 
 bell. The servant sent to inquire returned, saying that 
 Mr. Walpole had dined abroad, and not returned since 
 dinner. 
 
 "I 'm sure you could find the book, Maude; and it is a 
 small, square-shaped volume, bound in dark Russia leather, 
 marked with F. O. on the cover." 
 
 "I know the look of it well enough; but I do not fancy 
 ransacking Cecil's chamber." 
 
 "I do not know that I should like to await his return to 
 read my despatch. I can just make out that it comes from 
 Atlee." 
 
 "I suppose I had better go, then," said she, reluctantly, 
 as she rose and left the room. 
 
 Ordering the butler to precede and show her the way. 
 Lady Maude ascended to a story above that she usually 
 inhabited, and found herself in a very spacious chamber, 
 with an alcove, into which a bed fitted, the remaining space 
 being arranged like an ordinary sitting-room. There 
 were numerous chairs and sofas of comfortable form, a 
 well-cushioned ottoman, smelling, indeed, villanously of 
 tobacco, and a neat writing-table, with a most luxurious 
 arrangement of shaded waxlights above it. 
 
 A singularly well-executed photograph of a young and 
 
"IN TOWN." 469 
 
 very lovely woman, with masses of loose hair flowing over 
 her neck and shoulders, stood on a little easel on the desk ; 
 and it was, strange enough, with a sense of actual relief, 
 Maude read the word Titian on the frame. It was a copy 
 of the great master's picture in the Dresden Gallery, and of 
 which there is a replica in the Barberini Palace at Rome; 
 but still the portrait had another memory for Lady Maude, 
 who quickly recalled the girl she had once seen in a crowded 
 assembly, passing through a murmur of admiration that no 
 conventionality could repress, and whose marvellous beauty 
 seemed to glow with the homage it inspired. 
 
 Scraps of poetry, copies of verses, changed and blotted 
 couplets, were scrawled on loose sheets of paper on the 
 desk; but Maude minded none of these, as she pushed them 
 away to rest her arm on the table, while she sat gazing on 
 the picture. 
 
 The face had so completely absorbed her attention — so, 
 to say, fascinated her — that when the servant had found 
 the volume he was in search of, and presented it to her, she 
 merely said, "Take it to my Lord," and sat still, with her 
 head resting on her hands, and her eyes fixed on the 
 portrait. 
 
 "There may be some resemblance; there may be, at 
 least, what might remind people of ' the Laura,' — so was it 
 called ; but who will pretend that she carried her head with 
 that swing of lofty pride, or that her look could rival the 
 blended majesty and womanhood we see here! I do not — 
 I cannot believe it! " 
 
 "What is it, Maude, that you will not or cannot believe? " 
 said a low voice; and she saw Walpole standing beside her. 
 
 "Let me first excuse myself for being here," said she, 
 blushing. " I came in search of that little cipher-book to 
 interpret a despatch that has just come. When Fenton 
 found it, I was so engrossed by this pretty face that I have 
 done nothing but gaze at it." 
 
 "And what was it that seemed so incredible as I came in? " 
 
 "Simply this, then, that any one should be so beautiful." 
 
 "Titian seems to have solved that point; at least, Vasari 
 tells us this was a portrait of a lady of the Guicciardini 
 family." 
 
470 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I know, — I know that," said she, impatiently; "and 
 we do see faces in which Titian or Velasquez have stamped 
 nobility and birth as palpably as they have printed loveli- 
 ness and expression. And such were these women, daugh- 
 ters in a long line of the proud Patricians who once ruled 
 Eome." 
 
 " And yet," said he, slowly, "that portrait has its living 
 counterpart." 
 
 '' I am aware of whom you speak; the awkward angular 
 girl we all saw at Rome, and that young gentlemen called 
 the Tizziana." 
 
 " She is certainly no longer awkward nor angular now, 
 if she were once so, which I do not remember. She is a 
 model of grace and symmetry, and as much more beautiful 
 than that picture as color, expression, and movement are 
 better than a lifeless image." 
 
 "There is the fervor of a lover in your words, Cecil," 
 said she, smiling faintly. 
 
 "It is not often I am so forgetful," muttered he ; " but so 
 it is, our cousinship has done it all, Maude. One revels in 
 expansiveness with his own, and I can speak to you as I 
 cannot speak to another." 
 
 " It is a great flattery to me." 
 
 " In fact, I feel that at last I have a sister, — a dear and 
 loving spirit who will give to true friendship those delightful 
 traits of pity and tenderness, and even forgiveness, of which 
 only the woman's nature can know the needs." 
 
 Lady Maude rose slowly, without a word. Nothing of 
 heightened color or movement of her features indicated 
 anger or indignation ; and though Walpole stood with an 
 affected submissiveness before her, he marked her closely. 
 
 "I am sure, Maude," continued he, "you must often 
 have wished to have a brother." 
 
 " Never so much as at this moment ! " said she, calmly, — 
 and now she had reached the door. "If I had had a 
 brother, Cecil Walpole, it is possible I might have been 
 spared this insult ! " 
 
 The next moment the door closed, and Walpole was alone. 
 
CHAPTER LXVI. 
 
 ATLEE S MESSAGE. 
 
 *' I AM right, Maude," said Lord Danesbury, as his niece re- 
 entered the drawing-room. " This is from Atlee, who is at 
 Athens ; but why there I cannot make out as yet. There 
 are, according to the book, two explanations here. 491 
 means a white dromedary, or the chief clerk, and B + 49 = 
 12 stands for our Envoy in Greece, or a snuffer-dish." 
 
 '^ Don't you think, my Lord, it would be better for you to 
 send this up to Cecil? He has just come in. He has had 
 much experience of these things." 
 
 *'You are quite right, Maude; let Fenton take it up and 
 beg for a speedy transcript of it. I should like to see it at 
 once ! " 
 
 While his Lordship waited for his despatch, he grumbled 
 away about everything that occurred to him, and even, at 
 last, about the presence of the very man, Walpole, who was 
 at that same moment engaged in serving him. 
 
 "Stupid fellow," muttered he, "why does he ask for 
 extension of his leave ? Staying in town here is only another 
 name for spending money. He'll have to go out at last; 
 better do it at once ! " 
 
 " He may have his own reasons, my Lord, for delay," 
 said Maude, rather to suggest further discussion of the 
 point. 
 
 "He may think he has, I've no doubt. These small 
 creatures have always scores of irons in the fire. So it was 
 when I agreed to go to Ireland. There were innumerable 
 fine things and clever things he was to do. There were 
 schemes by which ' the Cardinal' was to be cajoled, and the 
 whole Bar bamboozled. Every one was to have office 
 dangled before his eyes, and to be treated so confidentially, 
 
472 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 and affectionately, under disappointment, that even when a 
 man got nothing he would feel he had secured the regard of 
 the Prime Minister ! If I took him out to Turkey to-morrow, 
 he *d never be easy till he had a plan ' to square ' the Grand 
 Vizier, and entrap Gortchakoff or Miliutin. These men 
 don't know that a clever fellow no more goes in search of 
 rogueries than a fox-hunter looks out for stiff fences. You 
 'take them' when they lie before you, that's all." This 
 little burst of indignation seemed to have the effect on him 
 of a little wholesome exercise, for he appeared to feel him- 
 self better and easier after it. 
 
 " Dear me ! dear me ! " muttered he, '' how pleasant one's 
 life might be if it were not for the clever fellows ! I mean, 
 of course," added he, after a second or two, '' the clever 
 fellows who want to impress us with their cleverness." 
 
 Maude would not be entrapped or enticed into what might 
 lead to a discussion. She never uttered a word, and he was 
 silent. 
 
 It was in the perfect stillness that followed that Walpole 
 entered the room with the telegram in his hand, and advanced 
 to where Lord Danesbury was sitting. 
 
 *' I believe, my Lord, I have made out this message in such 
 a shape as will enable you to divine what it means. It runs 
 thus : * Athens, 5th, 12 o'clock. Have seen S , and con- 
 ferred at length with him. His estimate of value,* or ' his 
 price ' — for the signs will mean either — ' to my thinking 
 enormous. His reasonings certainly strong and not easy to 
 rebut,* That may be possibly rendered, ' demands that might 
 probably be reduced.* ' / leave to-day, and shall be in Eng- 
 land by middle of next iveek. — Atlee.' " 
 
 Walpole looked keenly at the other's face as he read the 
 paper, to mark what signs of interest and eagerness the 
 tidings might evoke. There was, however, nothing to be 
 read in those cold and quiet features. 
 
 ''I am glad he is coming back," said he, at length. 
 "Let us see : he can reach Marseilles by Monday, or even 
 Sunday night. I don't see why he should not be here 
 Wednesday, or Thursday at farthest. By the way, Cecil, tell 
 me something about our friend, — who is he ? " 
 
 " Don't know, my Lord." 
 
ATLEE'S MESSAGE. 473 
 
 ** Don't know ! How came you acquainted with liim? " 
 
 " Met him at a country-house, where I happened to break 
 my arm, and took advantage of this young fellow's skill in 
 surgery to engage his services to carry me to town. There 's 
 the whole of it." 
 
 '' Is he a surgeon?" 
 
 '' No, my Lord, any more than he is fifty other things, of 
 which he has a smattering." 
 
 *' Has he any means, — any private fortune? " 
 
 *' I suspect not." 
 
 ''Who and what are his family? Are there Atlees m 
 Ireland?" 
 
 "There may be, my Lord. There was an Atlee, a 
 college porter, in Dublin; but I heard our friend say that 
 they were only distantly related." 
 
 He could not help watching Lady Maude as he said this, 
 and was rejoiced to see a sudden twitch of her lower lip as 
 if in pain. 
 
 "You evidently sent him over to me, then, on a very 
 meagre knowledge of the man," said his Lordship, rebuk- 
 ingly. 
 
 " I believe, my Lord, I said at the time that I had by me 
 a clever fellow, who wrote a good hand, could copy correctly, 
 and was sufficient of a gentleman in his manners to make 
 intercourse with him easy and not disagreeable." 
 
 "A very guarded recommendation," said Lady Maude, 
 with a smile. 
 
 "Was it not, Maude?" continued he, his eyes flashing 
 with triumphant insolence. 
 
 "/ found he could do more than copy a despatch, — I 
 found he could write one. He replied to an article in the 
 ' Edinburgh ' on Turkey, and I saw him write it as I did not 
 know there was another man but myself in England could 
 have done." 
 
 " Perhaps your Lordship had talked over the subject in 
 his presence or with him ? " 
 
 " And if I had, sir ! and if all his knowledge on a complex 
 question was such as he could carry away from a random 
 conversation, what a gifted dog he must be to sift the wheat 
 from the chaff, — to strip a question of what were mere acci- 
 
474 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 dental elements, and to test a difficulty by its real qualities ! 
 Atlee is a clever fellow, an able fellow, I assure you. That 
 very telegram before us is a proof how he can deal with a 
 matter on which instruction would be impossible." 
 
 "Indeed, my Lord!" said Walpole, with well-assumed 
 innocence. 
 
 " I am right glad to know he is coming home. He must 
 demolish that writer in the ' Revue des Deux Mondes ' at 
 once, — some unprincipled French blackguard, who has been 
 put up to attack me by Thouvenel ! " 
 
 Would it have appeased his Lordship's wrath to know that 
 the writer of this defamatory article was no other than Joe 
 Atlee himself, and that the reply which was to ' ' demolish 
 it " was more than half written in his desk at that moment ? 
 
 "I shall ask," continued my Lord, — "I shall ask him 
 besides to write a paper on Ireland, and thsit fiasco of yours, 
 Cecil." 
 
 *' Much obliged, my Lord ! " 
 
 "Don't be angry or indignant! A fellow with a neat, 
 light hand like Atlee can, even under the guise of allegation, 
 do more to clear you than scores of vulgar apologists. He 
 can, at least, show that what our distinguished head of the 
 Cabinet calls ' the flesh-and-blood argument ' has its full 
 weight with us in our government of Ireland, and that our 
 bitterest enemies cannot say we have no sympathies with the 
 nation we rule over." 
 
 "I suspect, my Lord, that what you have so graciously 
 called ^ my fiasco* is well-nigh forgotten by this time, and 
 wiser policy would say, ' Do not revive it.' " 
 
 " There 's a great policy in saying in ' an article ' all that 
 could be said in ' a debate,' and showing, after all, how little 
 it comes to. Even the feeble grievance-mongers grow 
 ashamed at retailing the review and the newspapers ; but, 
 what is better still, if the article be smartly written, they are 
 sure to mistake the peculiarities of style for points in the 
 argument. I have seen some splendid blunders of that kind 
 when I sat in the Lower House ! I wish Atlee was in 
 Parliament." 
 
 "I am not aware that he can speak, my Lord." 
 
 "Neither am I; but I should risk a small bet on it. 
 
ATLEE'S MESSAGE. 475 
 
 He is a ready fellow, and the ready fellows are many- 
 sided, eh, Maude?" Now, though his Lordship only asked 
 for his niece's concurrence in his own sage remark, Wal- 
 pole affected to understand it as a direct appeal to her 
 opinion of Atlee, and said, '' Is that your judgment of 
 this gentleman, Maude?" 
 
 "I have no prescription to measure the abilities of such 
 men as Mr. Atlee." 
 
 " You find him pleasant, witty, and agreeable, I hope?" 
 said he, with a touch of sarcasm. 
 
 " Yes, I think so." 
 
 ''With an admirable memory and great readiness for an 
 apropos 9 " 
 
 "Perhaps he has." 
 
 " As a retailer of an incident they tell me he has no 
 rival." 
 
 " I cannot say." 
 
 " Of course not. I take it the fellow has tact enough 
 not to tell stories here." 
 
 " What is all that you are saying there? " cried his Lord- 
 ship, to whom these few sentences were an "aside." 
 
 "Cecil is praising Mr. Atlee, my Lord," said Maude, 
 bluntly. 
 
 "I did not know I had been, my Lord," said he. "He 
 belongs to that class of men who interest me very little." 
 
 "What class may that be?" 
 
 " The adventurers, my Lord. The fellows who make the 
 campaign of life on the faith that they shall find their 
 rations in some other man's knapsack." 
 
 "Ha! indeed. Is that our friend's line?" 
 
 "Most undoubtedly, my Lord. I am ashamed to say 
 that it was entirely my own fault if you are saddled with 
 the fellow at all." 
 
 " I do not see the infliction — " 
 
 "I mean, my Lord, that, in a measure, I put him on 
 you without very well knowing what it was that I did." 
 
 "Have you heard — do you know anything of the man 
 that should inspire caution or distrust?" 
 
 " Well, these are strong words," muttered he, hesitatingly. 
 
 But Lady Maude broke in with a passionate tone, " Don't 
 
476 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 you see, my Lord, that he does not know anything to this 
 person's disadvantage, — that it is only my cousin's dip- 
 lomatic reserve, — that commendable caution of his order 
 suggests his careful conduct? Cecil knows no more of 
 Atlee than we do." 
 
 ''Perhaps not so much," said Walpole, with an imper- 
 tinent simper. 
 
 "/ know," said his Lordship, "that he is a monstrous 
 clever fellow. He can find you the passage you want or 
 the authority you are seeking for at a moment ; and when 
 he writes he can be rapid and concise too." 
 
 '' He has many rare gifts, my Lord," said Walpole, with 
 the sly air of one who had said a covert impertinence. " I 
 am very curious to know what you mean to do with him." 
 
 ' ' Mean to do with him ? Why, what should I mean to 
 do with him ? " 
 
 " The very point I wish to learn. A protege, my Lord, 
 is a parasitic plant, and you cannot deprive it of its double 
 instincts, — to cling and to climb." 
 
 " How witty my cousin has become since his sojourn 
 in Ireland ! " said Maude. 
 
 Walpole flushed deeply, and for a moment he seemed 
 about to reply angrily ; but, with an effort, he controlled 
 himself, and, turning towards the timepiece on the chimney c, 
 said, "How late! I could not have believed it was past 
 one ! I hope, my Lord, 1 have made your despatch in- 
 telligible?" 
 
 "Yes, yes; I think so. Besides, he will be here in a 
 day or two to explain." 
 
 "I shall, then, say good-night, my Lord. Good-night, 
 Cousin Maude." But Lady Maude had already left the 
 room unnoticed. 
 
CHAPTER LXVII. 
 
 WALPOLE ALONE. 
 
 Once more in his own room, Walpole returned to the task 
 of that letter to Nina Kostalergi, of which he had made 
 nigh fifty draughts, and not one with which he was satisfied. 
 
 It was not really very easy to do what he wished. He 
 desired to seem a warm, rapturous, impulsive lover, who had 
 no thought in life — no other hope or ambition — than the 
 success of his suit. He sought to show that she had so 
 enraptured and enthralled him that, until she consented 
 to share his fortunes, he was a man utterly lost to life 
 and life's ambitions; and — while insinuating what a tre- 
 mendous responsibility she would take on herself if she 
 should venture by a refusal of him to rob the world of 
 those abilities that the age could ill spare — he also dimly 
 shadowed the natural pride a woman ought to feel in 
 knowing that she was asked to be the partner of such a 
 man, and that one, for whom destiny in all likelihood re- 
 served the highest rewards of public life, was then, with 
 the full consciousness of what he was and what awaited 
 him, ready to share that proud eminence with her, as a 
 prince might have offered to share his throne. 
 
 In spite of himself, in spite of all he could do, it was on 
 this latter part of his letter his pen ran most freely. He 
 could condense his raptures, he could control in most praise- 
 worthy fashion all the extravagances of passion and the 
 imaginative joys of love, but, for the life of him, he could 
 abate nothing of the triumphant ecstasy that must be the 
 feeling of the woman who had won him, — the passionate 
 delight of her who should be his wife, and enter life the 
 chosen one of his affection. 
 
478 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 It was wonderful how glibly he could insist on this to 
 himself ; and, fancying for the moment that he was one of 
 the outer world commenting on the match, say, " Yes, let 
 people decry the Walpole class how they might, — they are 
 elegant, they are exclusive, they are fastidious, they are all 
 tliat you like to call the spoiled children of fortune in their 
 wit, their brilliancy, and their readiness, but they are the 
 only men — the only men in the world who marry — we '11 
 not say for ' love,' for the phrase is vulgar — but who marry 
 to please themselves ! This girl had not a shilling. As to 
 family, all is said when we say she was a Greek ! Is there 
 not something downright chivalrous in marrying such a 
 woman ? Is it the act of a worldly man ? " 
 
 He walked the room, uttering this question to himself 
 over and over. Not exactly that he thought disparagingly 
 of worldliness and material advantages, but he had lashed 
 himself into a false enthusiasm as to qualities which he 
 thought had some special worshippers of their own, and 
 whose good opinion might possibly be turned to profit some- 
 how and somewhere, if he only knew how and where. It 
 was a monstrous fine thing he was about to do ; that he felt. 
 Where was there another man in his position would take a 
 portionless girl and make her his wife? Cadets and cornets 
 in light dragoon regiments did these things ; they liked their 
 '' bit of beauty ; " and there was a sort of mock poetry 
 about these creatures that suited that sort of thing ; but for 
 a man who wrote his letters from Brookes's and whose din- 
 ner invitations included all that was great in town, to stoop 
 to such an alliance was as bold a defiance as one could throw 
 at a world of self-seeking and conventionality. 
 
 " That Emperor of the French did it," cried he. "I can- 
 not recall to my mind another. He did the very same thing 
 I am going to do. To be sure he had the ' pull on me ' in 
 one point. As he said himself, '/am a parvenu.' Now, I 
 cannot go that far ! I must justify my act on other grounds, 
 as I hope I can do," cried he, after a pause; while, with 
 head erect and swelling chest, he went on: "I felt within 
 me the place I yet should occupy. I knew — ay, knew — 
 the prize that awaited me, and I asked myself, ' Do you see 
 in any capital of Europe one woman with whom you would 
 
WALPOLE ALONE. 479 
 
 like to share this fortune? Is there one sufficiently gifted 
 and graceful to make her elevation seem a natural and fitting 
 promotion, and herself appear the appropriate occupant of 
 the station? 
 
 " 'She is wonderfully beautiful: there is no doubt of it. 
 Such beauty as they have never seen here in their lives! 
 Fanciful extravagances in dress and atrocious hair-dressing 
 cannot disfigure her; and by Jove! she has tried both. 
 And one has only to imagine that woman dressed and 
 " coiffeed," as she might be, to conceive such a triumph as 
 London has not witnessed for the century ! And I do long 
 for such a triumph. If my Lord would only invite us here, 
 were it but for a week ! We should be asked to Goreham 
 and the Bexsmiths.' My Lady never omits to invite a great 
 beauty. It 's her way to protest that she is still handsome, 
 and not at all jealous. How are we to get ' asked ' to Bruton 
 Street?" asked he over and over, as though the sounds must 
 secure the answer. *' Maude will never permit it. The 
 unlucky picture has settled that point. Maude will not suffer 
 her to cross the threshold ! But for the portrait I could 
 bespeak my cousin's favor and indulgence for a somewhat 
 countrified young girl, dowdy and awkward. I could plead 
 for her good looks in that ad misericor'diam fashion that 
 disarms jealousy and enlists her generosity for an humble 
 connection she need never see more of ! If I could only 
 persuade Maude that I had done an indiscretion, and that I 
 knew it, I should be sure of her friendship. Once make 
 her believe that I have gone clean head over heels into a 
 mesalliance, and our honeymoon here is assured. I wish I 
 had not tormented her about Atlee. I wish with all my 
 heart I had kept my impertinences to myself, and gone no 
 further than certain dark hints about what I could say, if I 
 were to be evil-minded. What rare wisdom it is not to fire 
 away one's last cartridge ! I suppose it is too late now. 
 She '11 not forgive me that disparagement before my uncle ; 
 that is, if there be anything between herself and Atlee, a 
 point which a few minutes will settle when I see them to- 
 gether. It would not be very difficult to make Atlee regard 
 me as his friend, and as one ready to aid him in this same 
 ambition. Of course he is prepared to see in me the enemy 
 
480 LORD KILGOBBIK 
 
 of all his plans. What would he not give or say or do to 
 find me his aider and abettor? Shrewd tactician as the 
 fellow is, he will know all the value of having an accomplice 
 within the fortress; and it would be exactly from a man 
 like myself he might be disposed to expect the most resolute 
 opposition." 
 
 He thought for a long time over this. He turned it over 
 and over in his mind, canvassing all the various benefits any 
 line of action might promise, and starting every doubt or 
 objection he could imagine. Nor was the thought extra- 
 neous to his calculations that in forwarding Atlee's suit 
 to Maude he was exacting the heaviest "vendetta" for 
 her refusal of himself. 
 
 "There is not a woman in Europe," he exclaimed, "less 
 fitted to encounter small means and a small station, — to 
 live a life of petty economies, and be the daily associate of 
 a snob ! 
 
 " What the fellow may become at the end of the race, — 
 what place he may win after years of toil and jobbery, I 
 neither know nor care ! She will be an old woman by that 
 time, and will have had space enough in the interval to 
 mourn over her rejection of me. 1 shall be a minister, 
 not impossibly at some court of the Continent, Atlee, to 
 say the best, an Under-Secretary of State for something, 
 or a Poor Law or Education Chief. There will be just 
 enough of disparity in our stations to fill her woman's 
 heart with bitterness, — the bitterness of having backed 
 the wrong man ! 
 
 " The unavailing regrets that beset us for not having taken 
 the left-hand road in life instead of the right are our chief 
 mental resources after forty, and they tell me that we men 
 only know half the poignancy of these miserable recollec- 
 tions. Women have a special adaptiveness for this kind of 
 torture, — would seem actually to revel in it." 
 
 He turned once more to his desk and to the letter. Some- 
 how he could make nothing of it. All the dangers that he 
 desired to avoid so cramped his ingenuity that he could 
 say little beyond platitudes ; and he thought with terror 
 of her who was to read them. The scornful contempt 
 with which she would treat such a letter was all before 
 him, and he snatched up the paper and tore it in pieces. 
 
WALPOLE ALONE. 481 
 
 *' It must not be done by writing," cried he at last. '' Who 
 is to guess for which of the fifty moods of such a woman 
 a man's letter is to be composed ? What you could say now 
 you dared not have written half an hour ago. What would 
 have gone far to gain her love yesterday, to-day will show 
 you the door ! It is only by consummate address and skill 
 she can be approached at all, and, without her look and bear- 
 ing, the inflections of her voice, her gestures, her ' pose,' to 
 guide you, it would be utter rashness to risk her humor." 
 
 He suddenly bethought him at this moment that he had 
 many things to do in Ireland ere he left England. He had 
 tradesmen's bills to settle, and "traps" to be got rid of. 
 *' Traps" included furniture and books and horses and 
 horse-gear, — details which at first he had hoped his friend 
 Lockwood would have taken off his hands ; but Lockwood 
 had only written him word that a Jew broker from Liver- 
 pool would give him forty pounds for his house effects, and 
 as for "the screws," there was nothing but an auction. 
 
 Most of us have known at some period or other of our 
 lives what it is to suffer from the painful disparagement 
 our chattels undergo when they become objects of sale; 
 but no adverse criticism of your bed or your book-case, 
 your ottoman or your arm-chair, can approach the sense 
 of pain inflicted by the impertinent comments on your 
 horse. Every imputed blemish is a distinct personality, 
 and you reject the insinuated spavin or the suggested 
 splint as imputations on your honor as a gentleman. In 
 fact, you are pushed into the pleasant dilemma of either 
 being ignorant as to the defects of your beast, or wil- 
 fully bent on an act of palpable dishonesty. When we 
 remember that every confession a man makes of his unac- 
 quaintance with matters " horsey " is, in English accep- 
 tance, a count in the indictment against his claim to be 
 thought a gentleman, it is not surprising that there will 
 be men more ready to hazard their characters than their 
 connoisseurship. 
 
 " I '11 go over myself to Ireland," said he at last ; " and a 
 week will do everything." 
 
 31 
 
CHAPTER LXVIIL 
 
 THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE. 
 
 LocKwooD was seated at his fireside in his quarters, the 
 Upper Castle Yard, when Walpole burst in upon him unex- 
 pectedly. 
 
 "What! you here?" cried the Major. "Have you the 
 courage to face Ireland again?" 
 
 "I see nothing that should prevent my coming here. 
 Ireland certainly cannot pretend to lay a grievance to my 
 charge." 
 
 "Maybe not. I don't understand these things. I only 
 know what people say in the clubs and laugh over at dinner- 
 tables." 
 
 "I cannot affect to be very sensitive as to these Celtic 
 criticisms, and I shall not ask you to recall them." 
 
 "They say that Danesbury got kicked out, all for your 
 blunders ! " 
 
 "Do they?" said Walpole, innocently. 
 
 "Yes; and they declare that if old Daney was n't the most 
 loyal fellow breathing, he 'd have thrown you over, and 
 owned that the whole mess was of your own brewing, and 
 that he had nothing to do with it." 
 
 "Do they, indeed, say that?" 
 
 "That's not half of it, for they have a story about a 
 woman — some woman you met down at Kilgobbin — who 
 made you sing rebel songs and take a Fenian pledge, and 
 give your word of honor that Donogan should be let 
 escape." 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 '^ Is n't it enough? A man must be a glutton for tom- 
 foolery if he could not be satisfied with that." 
 
THOUGHTS ON MARRIAGE. 483 
 
 • *' Perhaps you never heard that the chief of the Cabinet 
 took a very different view of my Irish policy." 
 
 ''Irish policy?" cried the other, with lifted eyebrows. 
 
 "I said 'Irish pcJlicy,' and repeat the words. Whatever 
 line of political action tends to bring legislation into more 
 perfect harmony with the instincts and impulses of a very 
 peculiar people, it is no presumption to call a policy." 
 
 "With all my heart. Do you mean to deal with that old 
 Liverpool rascal for the furniture?" 
 
 "His offer is almost an insult." 
 
 "Well, you'll be gratified to know he retracts it. He 
 feays now he'll only give £35! And as for the screws, 
 Bobbidge, of the Carbineers, will take them both for 
 £50." 
 
 "Why, Lightfoot alone is worth the money! " 
 
 "Minus the sand-crack." 
 
 "I deny the sand-crack. She was pricked in the 
 shoeing." 
 
 "Of course! I never knew a broken knee that was n't got 
 by striking the manger, nor a sand-crack that did n't come 
 of an awkward smith." 
 
 "What a blessing it would be if all the bad reputations in 
 society could be palliated as pleasantly! " 
 
 "Shall I tell Bobbidge you take his offer? He wants 
 an answer at once." 
 
 " My dear Major, don't you know that the fellow who says 
 that simply means to say, ' Don't be too sure that I shall 
 not change my mind ' ? Look out that you take the ball at 
 the hop ! " 
 
 "Lucky if it hops at all." 
 
 "Is that your experience of life?" said Walpole, 
 inquiringly. 
 
 "It is one of them. Will you take £50 for the screws?" 
 
 "Yes; and as much more for the break and the dog-cart. 
 I want every rap I can scrape together, Harry. I 'm going 
 out to Guatemala." 
 
 "I heard that." 
 
 "Infernal place; at least, I believe, in climate, reptiles, 
 fevers, assassination, it stands without a rival." 
 
 "So they tell me." 
 
484 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " It was the only thing vacant ; and they rather affected 
 a difficulty about giving it." 
 
 "So they do when they send a man to the Gold Coast; 
 and they tell the newspapers to say what a lucky dog he is. " 
 
 "I can stand all that. What really kills me is giving a 
 man the C. B. when he is just booked for some home of 
 yellow fever." 
 
 "They do that, too," gravely observed the other, who was 
 beginning to feel the pace of the conversation rather too fast 
 for him. "Don't you smoke? " 
 
 "I 'm rather reducing myself to half batta in tobacco. 
 I 've thoughts of marrying." 
 
 "Don't do that." 
 
 "Why? It's not wrong." 
 
 "No, perhaps not; but it 's stupid." 
 
 "Come, now, old fellow, life out there in the tropics is 
 not so jolly all alone! Alligators are interesting creatures, 
 and chetahs are pretty pets ; but a man wants a little com- 
 panionship of a more tender kind; and a nice girl who 
 would link her fortunes with one's own, and help one 
 through the sultry hours, is no bad thing." 
 
 "The nice girl wouldn't go there." 
 
 "I 'm not so sure of that. With your great knowledge of 
 life you must know that there has been a glut in ' the nice 
 girl ' market these years back. Prime lots are sold for a 
 song, occasionally, and first-rate samples sent as far as 
 Calcutta. The truth is, the fellow who looks like a real 
 buyer may have the pick of the fair, as they call it here." 
 
 "So he ought," growled out the Major. 
 
 "The speech is not a gallant one. You are scarcely com- 
 plimentary to the ladies, Lockwood." 
 
 "It was you that talked of a woman like a cow, or a sack 
 of corn, not I." 
 
 "I employed an illustration to answer one of your own 
 arguments." 
 
 "Who is she to be?" bluntly asked the Major. 
 
 "I '11 tell you whom I mean to ask, for I have not put the 
 question yet." 
 
 A long, fine whistle expressed the other's astonishment. 
 " And are you so sure she '11 say yes ? " 
 
THOUGHTS ON MARKIAGE. 485 
 
 "I have no other assurance than the conviction that a 
 woman might do worse." 
 
 ''Humph ! perhaps she might. I 'm not quite certain ; but 
 who is she to be?" 
 
 "Do you remember a visit we made together to a certain 
 Kilgobbin Castle?" 
 
 "To be sure I do. A rum old ruin it was." 
 
 "Do you remember two young ladies we met there?" 
 
 "Perfectly. Are you going to marry both of them? " 
 
 "My intention is to propose to one, and I imagine I need 
 not tell you which? " 
 
 "Naturally, the Irish girl. She saved your life — " 
 
 " Pray let me undeceive you in a double error. It is not 
 the Irish girl; nor did she save my life." 
 
 "Perhaps not; but she risked her own to save yours. 
 You said so yourself at the time." 
 
 "We '11 not discuss the point now. I hope I feel duly 
 grateful for the young lady's heroism; though it is not 
 exactly my intention to record my gratitude in a special 
 license." 
 
 "A very equivocal sort of repayment," grumbled out 
 Lock wood. 
 
 "You are epigrammatic this evening, Major." 
 
 "So, then, it's the Greek you mean to marry?" 
 
 "It it is the Greek I mean to ask." 
 
 "All right. I hope she'll take you. I think, on the 
 whole, you suit each other. If I were at all disposed to 
 that sort of bondage, I don't know a girl I 'd rather risk the 
 road with than the Irish cousin. Miss Kearney." 
 
 "She is very pretty, exceedingly obliging, and has most 
 winning manners." 
 
 "She is good-tempered, and she is natural; the two best 
 things a woman can be." 
 
 "Why not come down along with me and try your luck? " 
 
 "When do you go? " 
 
 "By the 10.30 train to-morrow. I shall arrive at Moate 
 by four o'clock, and reach the castle to dinner." 
 
 "They expect you? " 
 
 "Only so far that I have telegraphed a line to say I 'm 
 going down to bid ' Good-bye ' before I sail for Guatemala. 
 
486 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 I don't suspect they know where that is; but it's enough 
 when they understand it is far away." 
 
 ''I'll go with you." 
 
 ''Will you, really?" 
 
 " I will. I '11 not say on such an errand as your own, 
 because that requires a second thought or two; but I'll 
 reconnoitre, Master Cecil, — I '11 reconnoitre." 
 
 "I suppose you know there is no money." 
 
 "I should think money most unlikely in such a quarter; 
 and it 's better she should have none than a small fortune. 
 I 'm an old whist-player; and when I play dummy there 's 
 nothing I hate more than to see two or three small trumps 
 in my partner's hand." 
 
 "I imagine you '11 not be distressed in that way here." 
 
 " I ' ve got enough to come through with ; that is, the thing 
 can be done if there be no extravagances." 
 
 "Does one want for more?" cried Walpole, theatrically. 
 
 "I don't know that. If it were only ask and have, I 
 should like to be tempted." 
 
 "I have no such ambition. I firmly believe that the 
 moderate limits a man sets to his daily wants constitute the 
 real liberty of his intellect and his intellectual nature." 
 
 "Perhaps I've no intellectual nature, then," growled out 
 Lockwood; "for I know how I should like to spend fifteen 
 thousand a year. I suppose I shall have to live on as many 
 hundreds." 
 
 "It can be done." 
 
 "Perhaps it may. Have another weed? " 
 
 "No. I told you already I have begun a tobacco refor- 
 mation." 
 
 "Does she object to the pipe?" 
 
 "I cannot tell you. The fact is, Lockwood, my future 
 and its fortunes are just as uncertain as your own. This 
 day week will probably have decided the destiny of each 
 of us." 
 
 "To our success, then! " cried the Major, filling both their 
 glasses. 
 
 "To our success! " said Walpole, as he drained his, and 
 placed it upside down on the table. 
 
CHAPTER LXIX. 
 
 AT KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 
 
 The "Blue Goat " at Moate was destined once more to re- 
 ceive the same travellers whom we presented to our readers 
 at a very early stage of this history. 
 
 "Not much change here," cried Lockwood, as he strode 
 into the little sitting-room and sat down. "I miss the old 
 fellow's picture, that's all." 
 
 "Ah! by the way," said Walpole to the landlord, "you 
 had my Lord Kilgobbin's portrait up there the last time I 
 came through here." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, sir," said the man, smoothing down his 
 hair and looking apologetically. " But the Goats and my 
 Lord, who was the Buck Goat, got into a little disagree- 
 ment, and they sent away his picture, and his Lordship 
 retired from the club ; and — and — that was the way 
 of it." 
 
 "A heavy blow to your town, I take it," said the Major, 
 as he poured out his beer. 
 
 "Well, indeed, your honor, I won't say it was. You 
 see, sir, times is changed in Ireland. We don't care as 
 much as we used about the ' neighboring gentry,' as they 
 called them once; and as for the Lord, there! he doesn't 
 spend a hundred a year in Moate." 
 
 "How is that?" 
 
 "They get what they want by rail from Dublin, your 
 honor; and he might as well not be here at all." 
 
 "Can we have a car to carry us over to the castle?" 
 asked Walpole, who did not care to hear more of local 
 grievances. 
 
 "Sure, isn't my Lord's car waiting for you since two 
 o'clock!" said the host, spitefully, for he was not concil- 
 
488 , LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 iated by a courtesy that was to lose him a fifteen-shilling 
 fare. "Not that there 's much of a horse between the 
 shafts, or that old Daly himself is an elegant coachman," 
 continued the host; "but they're ready in the yard when 
 you want them." 
 
 The travellers had no reason to delay them in their pres- 
 ent quarters, and, taking their places on the car, set out for 
 the castle. 
 
 "I scarcely thought when I last drove this road," said 
 Walpole, " that the next time I was to come should be on 
 such an errand as my present one." 
 
 "Humph!" ejaculated the other. "Our noble relative 
 that is to be does not shine in equipage. That beast is 
 dead lame." 
 
 "If we had our deserts, Lockwood, we should be drawn 
 by a team of doves, with the god Cupid on the box." 
 
 "I'd rather have two posters and a yellow post-chaise." 
 
 A drizzling rain that now began to fall interrupted all 
 conversation, and each sunk back into his own thoughts 
 for the rest of the way. 
 
 Lord Kilgobbin, with his daughter at his side, watched 
 the car from the terrace of the castle as it slowly wound its 
 way along the bog road. 
 
 " As well as I can see, Kate, there is a man on each side 
 of the car," said Kearney, as he handed his field-glass to 
 his daughter. 
 
 "Yes, papa, I see there are two travellers." 
 
 "And I don't well know why there should be even one! 
 There was no such great friendship between us that he need 
 come all this way to bid us good-bye." 
 
 "Considering the mishap that befell him here, it is a 
 mark of good feeling to desire to see us all once more, don't 
 you think so ? " 
 
 "May be so," muttered he, drearily. "At all events, it 's 
 not a pleasant house he 's coming to. Young O'Shea there, 
 upstairs, just out of a fever; and old Miss Betty, that may 
 arrive any moment." 
 
 "There 's no question of that. She says it would be ten 
 days or a fortnight before she is equal to the journey." 
 
 "Heaven grant it! — hem — I mean that she '11 be strong 
 
AT KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 489 
 
 enough for it by that time. At all events, if it is the same 
 as to our fine friend, Mr. Walpole, I wish he 'd have taken 
 his leave of us in a letter." 
 
 "It is something new, papa, to see you so inhospitable." 
 
 "But I am not inhospitable, Kitty. Show me the good 
 fellow that would like to pass an evening with me and think 
 me good company, and he shall have the best saddle of 
 mutton and the raciest bottle of claret in the house. But 
 it 's only mock hospitality to be entertaining the man that 
 only comes out of courtesy and just stays as long as good 
 manners oblige him." 
 
 "I do not know that I should undervalue politeness, 
 especially when it takes the shape of a recognition." 
 
 "Well, be it so," sighed he, almost drearily. "If the 
 young gentleman is so warmly attached to us all that he 
 cannot tear himself away till he has embraced us, I suppose 
 there 's no help for it. Where is Nina? " 
 
 "She was reading to Gorman when I saw her. She had 
 just relieved Dick, who has gone out for a walk." 
 
 "A jolly house for a visitor to come to!" cried he, 
 sarcastically. 
 
 "We are not very gay or lively, it is true, papa; but it 
 is not unlikely that the spirit in which our guest comes here 
 will not need much jollity." 
 
 "I don't take it as a kindness for a man to bring me his 
 depression and his low spirits. I 've always more of my 
 own than I know what to do with. Two sorrows never 
 made a joy, Kitty." 
 
 "There! they are lighting the lamps," cried she, suddenly. 
 "I don't think they can be more than three miles away." 
 
 "Have you rooms ready, if there be two coming? " 
 
 "Yes, papa, Mr. Walpole will have his old quarters; and 
 the stag-room is in readiness if there be another guest." 
 
 "I 'd like to have a house as big as the royal barracks, 
 and every room of it occupied ! " cried Kearney, with a 
 mellow ring in his voice. "They talk of society and pleas- 
 ant company; but for real enjoyment there's nothing to 
 compare with what a man has under his own roof! No 
 claret ever tastes so good as the decanter he circulates him- 
 self. I was low enough half an hour ago; and now the 
 
490 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 mere thought of a couple of fellows to dine with me cheers 
 me up and warms my heart! I '11 give them the green seal, 
 Kitty; and I don't know there's another house in the 
 county could put a bottle of '46 claret before them." 
 
 "So you shall, papa. I'll go to the cellar myself and 
 fetch it." 
 
 Kearney hastened to make the moderate toilet he called 
 dressing for dinner, and was only finished when his old ser- 
 vant informed him that two gentlemen had arrived and gone 
 up to their rooms. 
 
 "I wish it was two dozen had come," said Kearney, as he 
 descended to the drawing-room. 
 
 "It is Major Lockwood, papa," cried Kate, entering 
 and drawing him into a window recess; "the Major Lock- 
 wood that was here before has come with Mr. Walpole. I 
 met him in the hall while I had the basket with the wine in 
 my hand; and he was so cordial and glad to see me you 
 cannot think." 
 
 "He knew that green wax, Kitty. He tasted that * bin ' 
 when he was here last." 
 
 "Perhaps so; but he certainly seemed overjoyed at 
 something." 
 
 "Let me see," muttered he; "wasn't he the big fellow 
 with the long moustaches ? " 
 
 "A tall, very good-looking man; dark as a Spaniard, and 
 not unlike one." 
 
 "To be sure, to be sure. I remember him well. He 
 was a capital shot with the pistol, and he liked his wine. 
 By the way, Nina did not take to him." 
 
 "How do you remember that, papa?" said she, archly. 
 
 "If I don't mistake, she told me so, or she called him a 
 brute, or a savage, or some one of those things a man is 
 sure to be when a woman discovers he will not be her 
 slave." 
 
 Nina, entering at the moment, cut short all rejoinder; and 
 Kearney came forward to meet her, with his hand out. 
 
 "Shake out your lower courses, and let me look at you," 
 cried he, as he walked round her admiringly. " Upon my 
 oath, it's more beautiful than ever you are! I can guess 
 what a fate is reserved for those dandies from Dublin." 
 
AT KILGOBBIN CASTLE. 491 
 
 "Do you like my dress, sir? Is it becoming?" asked 
 she. 
 
 "Becoming it is; but I 'm not sure whether I like it." 
 
 "And how is that, sir? " 
 
 "I don't see how, with all that floating gauze and swelling 
 lace, a man is to get an arm round you at all — " 
 
 "I cannot perceive the necessity, sir;" and the insolent 
 toss of her head, more forcibly even than her words, re- 
 sented such a possibility. 
 
CHAPTER LXX. 
 
 atlee's return. 
 
 When Atlee arrived at Bruton Street, the welcome that met 
 him was almost cordial. Lord Danesbury — not very 
 demonstrative at any time — received him with warmth, 
 and Lady Maude gave him her hand with a sort of signifi- 
 cant cordiality that overwhelmed him with delight. The 
 climax of his enjoyment was, however, reached when Lord 
 Danesbury said to him, "We are glad to see you at home 
 again." 
 
 This speech sunk deep into his heart, and he never wearied 
 of repeating it over and over to himself. When he reached 
 his room, where his luggage had already preceded him, and 
 found his dressing articles laid out, and all the little cares 
 and attentions which well-trained servants understand 
 awaiting him, he muttered, with a tremulous sort of ecstasy, 
 "This is a very glorious way to come home! " 
 
 The rich furniture of the room, the many appliances of 
 luxury and ease around him, the sense of rest and quiet, so 
 delightful after a journey, all appealed to him as he threw 
 himself into a deep-cushioned chair. He cried aloud, 
 "Home! home! Is this, indeed, home? What a different 
 thing from that mean life of privation and penury I have 
 always been associating with this word, — from that per- 
 petual struggle with debt, — the miserable conflict that went 
 on through every day, till not an action, not a thought, 
 remained untinctured with money; and, if a momentary 
 pleasure crossed the path, the cost of it as certain to tarnish 
 all the enjoyment! Such was the only home I have ever 
 known, or, indeed, imagined." 
 
 It is said that the men who have emerged from very 
 humble conditions in life, and occupy places of eminence 
 
ATLEE'S RETURN. 493 
 
 or promise, are less overjoyed at this change of fortune than 
 impressed with a kind of resentment towards the destiny 
 that once had subjected them to privation. Their feeling 
 is not so much joy at the present as discontent with the 
 past. 
 
 "Why was I not born to all this?" cried Atlee, indig- 
 nantly. " What is there in me, or in my nature, that this 
 should be a usurpation? Why was I not schooled at Eton, 
 and trained at Oxford? Why was I not bred up amongst 
 the men whose competitor I shall soon find myself? Why 
 have 1 not their ways, their instincts, their watchwords, 
 their pastimes, and even their prejudices, as parts of my 
 very nature? Why am I to learn these late in life, as a 
 man learns a new language, and never fully catches the 
 sounds or the niceties? Is there any competitorship I 
 should flinch from, any rivalry I should fear, if I had but 
 started fair in the race?" 
 
 This sense of having been hardly treated by fortune at the 
 outset, marred much of his present enjoyment, accompanied 
 as it was by a misgiving that, do what he might, that early 
 inferiority would cling to him like some rag of a garment 
 that he must wear over all his "braverie," proclaiming, as 
 it did to the world, "This is from what 1 sprung originally." 
 
 It was not by any exercise of vanity that Atlee knew he 
 talked better, knew more, was wittier and more ready-witted 
 than the majority of men of his age and standing. The 
 consciousness that he could do scores of things they could 
 not do was not enough, tarnished as it was by a misgiv- 
 ing that, by some secret mystery of breeding, some free- 
 masonry of fashion, he was not one of them, and that this 
 awkward fact was suspended over him for life, to arrest 
 his course in the hour of success, and balk him at the very 
 moment of victory. 
 
 "Till a man's adoption amongst them is ratified by a mar- 
 riage, he is not safe," muttered he. "Till the fate and 
 future of one of their own is embarked in the same boat with 
 himself, they '11 not grieve over his shipwreck." 
 
 Could he but call Lady Maude his wife ! Was this pos- 
 sible ? There were classes in which affections went for much ; 
 where there was such a thing as engaging these same affec 
 
494 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 tions, and actually pledging all hope of happiness in life on 
 the faith of such engagements. These, it is true, were the 
 sentiments that prevailed in humbler walks of life, amongst 
 those lowly-born people whose births and marriages were 
 not chronicled in gilt-bound volumes. The Lady Maudes 
 of the world, whatever imprudences they might permit them- 
 selves, certainl}^ never "fell in love." Condition and place 
 in the world were far too serious things to be made the sport 
 of sentiment. Love was a very proper thing in three-volume 
 novels, and Mr. Mudie drove a roaring trade in it; but in 
 the well-bred world, immersed in all its engagements, triple- 
 deep in its projects and promises for pleasure, where was 
 the time, where the opportunity, for this pleasant fooling? 
 That luxurious selfishness in which people delight to plan a 
 future life, and agree to think that they have in themselves 
 what can confront narrow fortune and difficulty, — these had 
 no place in the lives of persons of fashion ! In that coquetry 
 of admiration and flattery which in the language of slang 
 is called spooning, young persons occasionally got so far 
 acquainted that they agreed to be married, pretty much as 
 they agreed to waltz or to polka together ; but it was always 
 with the distinct understanding that they were doing what 
 mammas would approve of, and family solicitors. t)f good 
 conscience could ratify. No tyrannical sentimentality, no 
 uncontrollable gush of sympathy, no irresistible convic- 
 tions about all future happiness being dependent on one 
 issue, overbore these natures, and made them insensible to 
 title and rank and station and settlements. 
 
 In one word, Atlee, after due consideration, satisfied his 
 mind that, though a man might gain the affections of the 
 doctor's daughter or the squire's niece, and so establish 
 him as an element of her happiness that friends would over- 
 look all differences of fortune, and try to make some sort of 
 compromise with fate, — all these were unsuited to the 
 sphere in which Lady Maude moved. It was, indeed, a 
 realm where this coinage did not circulate. To enable him 
 to address her with any prospect of success, he should be 
 able to show, ay, and to show argumentatively, that she 
 was, in listening to him, about to do something eminently 
 prudent and worldly-wise. She must, in short, be in a posi- 
 
ATLEE'S RETURN. 495 
 
 tion to show her fricDds and " society " that she had not com- 
 mitted herself to anything wilful or foolish, — had not been 
 misled by a sentiment or betrayed by a sympathy ; and that 
 the well-bred questioner who inquired, ''Why did she marry 
 Atlee?" should be met by an answer satisfactory and 
 convincing. 
 
 In the various ways he canvassed the question and re= 
 volved it with himself, there was one consideration which, 
 if I were at all concerned for his character for gallantry, 1 
 should be reluctant to reveal ; but, as I feel little interest on 
 this score, I am free to own was this. He remembered 
 that as Lady Maude was no longer in her first youth, there 
 was reason to suppose she might listen to addresses now 
 which, some years ago, would have met scant favor in her 
 eyes. 
 
 In the matrimonial Lloyd's, if there were such a body, 
 she would not have figured A No. 1 ; and the risks of enter- 
 ing the conjugal state have probably called for an extra 
 premium. Atlee attached great importance to this fact; 
 but it was not the less a matter which demanded the greatest 
 delicacy of treatment. He must know it, and he must not 
 know it. He must see that she had been the belle of many 
 seasons, and he must pretend to regard her as fresh to the 
 ways of life, and new to society. He trusted a good deal 
 to his tact to do this ; for while insinuating to her the pos- 
 sible future of such a man as himself, the high place, and 
 the great rewards which in all likelihood awaited him, there 
 would come an opportune moment to suggest that to any 
 one less gifted, less conversant with knowledge of life than 
 herself, such reasonings could not be addressed. 
 
 ''It could never be," cried he, aloud. "To some miss 
 fresh from the schoolroom and the governess, I could dare 
 to talk a language only understood by those who have been 
 conversant with high questions, and moved in the society of 
 thoughtful talkers." 
 
 There is no quality so dangerous to eulogize as experi- 
 ence, and Atlee thought long over this. One determination 
 or another must speedily be come to. If there was no like- 
 lihood of success with Lady Maude, he must not lose his 
 chances with the Greek girl. The sum, whatever it might 
 
496 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 be, which her father should obtain for his secret papers, 
 would constitute a very respectable portion. "I have a 
 stronger reason to fight for liberal terms," thought he, "than 
 the Prince Kostalergi imagines ; and, fortunately, that fine 
 parental trait, that noble desire to make a provision for his 
 child, stands out so clearly in my brief, 1 should be a sorry 
 advocate if I could not employ it." 
 
 In the few words that passed between Lord Danesbury and 
 himself on arriving, he learned that there was but little 
 chance of winning his election for the borough. Indeed, 
 he bore the disappointment jauntily and good-humoredly. 
 That great philosophy of not attaching too much importance 
 to any one thing in life, sustained him in every venture. 
 "Bet on the field; never back the favorite," was his formula 
 for inculcating the wisdom of trusting to the general game 
 of life, rather than to any particular emergency. "Back 
 the field," he would say, "and you must be unlucky, or 
 you '11 come right in the long run." 
 
 They dined that day alone, — that is, they were but three 
 at table; and Atlee enjoyed the unspeakable pleasure of 
 hearing them talk with the freedom and unconstraint people 
 only indulge in when "at home." Lord Danesbury dis- 
 cussed confidential questions of political importance, told 
 how his colleagues agreed in this, or differed on that; ad- 
 verted to the nice points of temperament which made one 
 man hopeful and that other despondent or distrustful; he 
 exposed the difficulties they had to meet in the Commons, 
 and where the Upper House was intractable ; and even went 
 so far in his confidences as to admit where the criticisms of 
 the Press were felt to be damaging to the administration. 
 
 "The real danger of ridicule," said he, "is not the pun- 
 gency of the satire; it is the facility with which it is remem- 
 bered and circulated. The man who reads the strong leader 
 in the ' Times ' may have some general impression of being 
 convinced, but he cannot repeat its arguments or quote its 
 expressions. The pasquinade or the squib gets a hold on 
 the mind, and in its very drollery will insure its being 
 retained there." 
 
 Atlee was not a little gratified to hear that this opinion 
 was delivered apropos to a short paper of his own, whose 
 
ATLEE'S RETURN. 497 
 
 witty sarcasms on the Cabinet were exciting great amuse- 
 ment in town, and much curiosity as to the writer. 
 
 "He has not seen 'The Whitebait Dinner' yet," said 
 Lady Maude; "the cleverest jeu-d'esprit of the day." 
 
 "Ay, or of any day," broke in Lord Danesbury. "Even 
 the ' Anti-Jacobin ' has nothing better. The notion is this. 
 The Devil happens to be taking a holiday, and he is in town 
 just at the time of the Ministerial dinner, and, hearing that 
 he is at Claridge's, the Cabinet, ashamed at the little atten- 
 tion bestowed on a crowned head, ask him down to Green- 
 wich. He accepts, and to kill an hour, — 
 
 ' He strolled down, of course, 
 To the Parliament House, 
 And heard how England stood. 
 As she has since the Flood, 
 Without ally or friend to assist her. 
 
 But^ while every persuasion 
 
 Was full of invasion 
 
 From Russian or Prussian, 
 
 Yet the only discussion 
 Was, how should a Gentleman marry his sister ? ' " 
 
 "Can you remember anymore of it, my Lord?" asked 
 Atlee, on whose table at that moment were lying the proof- 
 sheets of the production. 
 
 " Maude has it all somewhere. You must find it for him, 
 and let him guess the writer — if he can." 
 
 " What do the clubs say?" asked Atlee. 
 
 " 1 think they are divided between Orlop and Bouverie. 
 I 'm told that the Garrick people say it 's Sankey, a young 
 fellow in F. O." 
 
 " You should see Aunt Jerningham about it, Mr. Atlee, — 
 her eagerness is driving her half mad." 
 
 " Take him out to ' Lebanon ' on Sunday," said my Lord ; 
 and Lady Maude agreed with a charming grace and courtesy, 
 adding as she left the room, " So remember you are engaged 
 for Sunday." 
 
 Atlee bowed as he held the door open for her to pass out, 
 and threw into his glance what he desired might mean homage 
 and eternal devotion. 
 
 "Now then, for a little quiet confab," said my Lord. 
 
 32 
 
(( 
 
 498 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Let me hear what you mean by your telegram. All I 
 could make out was that you found our man." 
 
 "Yes; I found him, and passed several hours in his 
 company.'* 
 
 " Was the fellow very much out at elbows, as usual? " 
 
 " No, my Lord, — thriving, and likely to thrive. He has 
 just been named Envoy to the Ottoman Court." 
 
 " Bah ! " was all the reply his incredulity could permit. 
 True, I assure you. Such is the estimation he is held in 
 the Greeks declare he has not his equal. You 
 are aware that his name is Spiridion Kostalergi, and he 
 claims to be Prince of Delos." 
 
 " With all my heart. Our Hellenic friends never quarrel 
 over their nobility. There are titles and to spare for every 
 one. Will he give us our papers? " 
 
 " Yes ; but not without high terms. He declares, in fact, 
 my Lord, that you can no more return to the Bosphorus 
 without hirn^ than he can go there without you.'' 
 
 " Is the fellow insolent enough to take this ground? " 
 
 "That is he. In fact, he presumes to talk as your Lord- 
 ship's colleague, and hints at the several points in which you 
 may act in concert." 
 
 " It is very Greek all this." 
 
 " His terms are ten thousand pounds in cash, and — " 
 
 " There, there, that will do. Why not fifty, — why not a 
 hundred thousand ? " 
 
 " He affects a desire to be moderate, my Lord." 
 
 " I hope you withdrew at once after such a proposal? I 
 trust you did not prolong the interview a moment longer? " 
 
 " I arose, indeed, and declared that the mere mention of 
 such terms was like a refusal to treat at all." 
 
 " And you retired ? " 
 
 "I gained the dooi;; when he detained me. He has, I 
 must admit, a marvellous plausibility ; for, though at first he 
 seemed to rely on the all-importance of these documents to 
 your Lordship, how far they would compromise you in the 
 past and impede you for the future, how they would impair 
 your influence, and excite the animosity of many who were 
 freely canvassed and discussed in them, yet he abandoned 
 all that at the end of our interview, and restricted himself to 
 
ATLEE'S RETURN. 499 
 
 the plea that the sura, if a large one, could not be a serious 
 difficulty to a great English noble, and would be the crown- 
 ing fortune of a poor Greek gentleman, who merely desired 
 to secure a marriage portion for his only daughter." 
 
 " And you believed this? " 
 
 " I so far believed him that I have his pledge in writing 
 that when he has your Lordship's assurance that you will 
 comply with his terms, — and he only asks that much, — he 
 will deposit the papers in the hands of the Minister at 
 Athens, and constitute your Lordship the trustee of the 
 amount in favor of his daughter, the sum only to be paid 
 on her marriage." 
 
 " How can it possibly concern me that he has a daughter, 
 or why should I accept such a trust?" 
 
 " The proposition had no other meaning than to guarantee 
 the good faith on which his demand is made." 
 
 '' I don't believe in the daughter." 
 
 *' That is, that there is one? " 
 
 ''No. I am persuaded that she has no existence. It is 
 some question of a mistress or a dependant ; and if so, the 
 sentimentality which would seem to have appealed so for- 
 cibly to you fails at once." 
 
 "That is quite true, my Lord; and I cannot pretend to 
 deny the weakness you accuse me of. There may be no 
 daughter in the question." 
 
 ''Ah! You begin to perceive now that you surrendered 
 your convictions too easily, Atlee. You failed in that ele- 
 ment of ' restless distrust ' that Talleyrand used to call the 
 temper of the diplomatist." 
 
 "It is not the first time I have had to feel I am your 
 Lordship's inferior." 
 
 " My education was not made in a day, Atlee. It need be 
 no discouragement to you that you are not as long-sighted as 
 I am. No, no; rely upon it, there is no daughter in the 
 case." 
 
 " With that conviction, my Lord, what is easier than to 
 make your adhesion to his terms conditional on his truth? 
 You agree, if his statement be in all respects verified." 
 
 " Which implies that it is of the least consequence to me 
 whether the fellow has a daughter or not?" 
 
500 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ** It is so only as the guarantee of the man's veracity." 
 
 " And shall I give ten thousand pounds to test that ? " 
 
 " No, my Lord ; but to repossess yourself of what, in very 
 doubtful hands, might prove a great scandal and a great 
 disaster." 
 
 " Ten thousand pounds ! ten thousand pounds ! " 
 
 " Why not eight — perhaps, five? I have not your Lord- 
 ship's great knowledge to guide me, and I cannot tell when 
 these men really mean to maintain their ground. From my 
 own very meagre experiences, I should say he was not a very 
 tractable individual. He sees some promise of better fortune 
 before him, and like a genuine gambler — as I hear he is — 
 he determines to back his luck." 
 
 "Ten thousand pounds!" muttered the other, below his 
 breath. 
 
 ''As regards the money, my Lord, I take it that these 
 same papers were documents which more or less concerned 
 the public service — they were in no sense personal, although 
 meant to be. private; and although in my ignorance I may 
 be mistaken, it seems to me that the fund devoted to secret 
 services could not be more fittingly appropriated than in 
 acquiring documents whose publicity could prove a national 
 injury." 
 
 ' ' Totally wrong, — utterly wrong. The money could never 
 be paid on such a pretence ; the ' Office ' would not sanction 
 — no Minister would dare to advise it." 
 
 "Then I come back to my original suggestion. I should 
 give a conditional acceptance, and treat for a reduction of 
 the amount." 
 
 ' ' You would say five ? " 
 
 " I opine, my Lord, eight would have more chance of 
 success." 
 
 "You are a warm advocate for your client," said his 
 Lordship, laughing ; and though the shot was merely a ran- 
 dom one, it went so true to the mark that Atlee flushed up 
 and became crimson all over. " Don't mistake me, Atlee," 
 said his Lordship, in a kindly tone. " I know thoroughly 
 how viy interests, and only mine, have any claim on your 
 attention. This Greek fellow must be less than nothing to 
 you. Tell me now frankly, do you believe one word he has 
 told you? Is he really named as Minister to Turkey? " 
 
ATLEE'S RETURN. 501 
 
 ** That much I can answer for, — he is." 
 
 *' What of the daughter, — is there a daughter? " 
 
 " I suspect there may be. However, the matter admits of 
 an easy proof. He has given me names and addresses in 
 Ireland of relatives with whom she is living. Now, I am 
 thoroughly conversant with Ireland, and, by the indications 
 in my power, I can pledge myself to learn all, not only about 
 the existence of this person, but of such family circumstances 
 as might serve to guide you in your resolve. Time is wiiat 
 is most to be thought of here. Kostalergi requires a prompt 
 answer, — first of all, your assurance that you will support 
 his claim to be received by the Sultan. Well, my Lord, if 
 you refuse, Mouravieff will do it. You know better than me 
 how impolitic it might be to throw these Turks more into 
 Russian influence — " 
 
 '* Never mind that^ Atlee. Don't distress yourself about 
 the political aspect of the question." 
 
 " I promised a telegraphic line to say, would you or would 
 you not sustain his nomination. It was to be yes or no, — 
 not more." 
 
 "Say? yes. I'll not split hairs about what Greek best 
 represents his nation. Say, yes." 
 
 " I am sure, my Lord, you do wisely. He is evidently a 
 man of ability, and, I suspect, not morally much Worse than 
 his countrymen in general." 
 
 "Say, yes; and then," — he mused for some minutes 
 before he continued, — "and then run over to Ireland, — 
 learn something, if you can, of this girl, with whom she is 
 staying, in what position, what guarantees, if any, could be 
 had for the due employment and destination of a sum of 
 money, in the event of our agreeing to pay it. Mind, it is 
 simply as a gauge of the fellow's veracity that this story 
 has any value for us. Daughter or no daughter, is not of 
 any moment to me ; but I want to test the problem, — can he 
 tell one word of truth about anything? You are shrewd 
 enough to see the bearing of this narrative on all he has told 
 you, — where it sustains, where it accuses him." 
 
 " Shall I set out at once, my Lord? " 
 
 "No. Next week will do. We'll leave him to ruminate 
 over your telegram. That will show him we have entertained 
 
502 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 his project ; and he is too practised a hand not to know the 
 value of an opened negotiation. Cradock and Mellish and 
 one or two more wish to talk with you about Turkey. 
 Gray don, too, has some questions to ask you about Suez. 
 They dine here on Monday. Tuesday we are to have the 
 Hargraves and Lord Masham, and a couple of Under-Secre- 
 taries of State ; and Lady Maude will tell us about Wednes- 
 day, for all these people, Atlee, are coming to meet you. 
 The newspapers have so persistently been keeping you before 
 the world, every one wants to see you." 
 
 Atlee might have told his Lordship — but he did not — 
 by what agency it chanced that his journeys and his jests 
 were so thoroughly known to the press of every capital in 
 Europe. 
 
CHAPTER LXXI. 
 
 THE DRIVE. 
 
 Sunday came, and with it the visit to South Kensington, 
 where Aunt Jerningham lived ; and Atlee found himself 
 seated beside Lady Maude in a fine roomy barouche, whirl- 
 ing along at a pace that our great moralist himself admits to 
 be amongst the very pleasantest excitements humanity can 
 experience. 
 
 " I hope you will add your persuasions to mine, Mr. Atlee, 
 and induce my uncle to take these horses with him to Turkey. 
 You know Constantinople, and can say that real carriage- 
 horses cannot be had there." 
 
 " Horses of this size, shape, and action the Sultan himself 
 has not the equals of." 
 
 *' No one is more aware than my Lord," continued she, 
 " that the measure of an ambassador's influence is, in a great 
 degree, the style and splendor in which he represents his 
 country, and that his household, his equipage, his retinue, 
 and his dinners should mark distinctly the station he assumes 
 to occupy. Some caprice of Mr. Walpole's about Arab 
 horses — Arabs of bone and blood he used to talk of — has 
 taken hold of my uncle's mind, and I half fear that he may 
 not take the English horses wdth him." 
 
 "By the way," said Atlee, half listlessly, "where is 
 Walpole? What has become of him?" 
 
 " He is in Ireland at this moment." 
 
 "In Ireland! Good heavens! has he not had enough of 
 Ireland?" 
 
 " Apparently not. He went over there on Tuesday last." 
 
 " And what can he possibly have to do in Ireland? " 
 
 "I should say that you are more likely to furnish the 
 answer to that question than I. If I 'm not much mistaken, 
 
504 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 his letters are forwarded to the same country house where 
 you first made each other's acquaintance." 
 
 ''What, Kilgobbin Castle?" 
 
 "Yes, it is something Castle, and I think the name you 
 mentioned." 
 
 " And this only puzzles me the more," added Atlee, 
 pondering. 
 
 " His first visit there, at the time I met him, was a mere 
 accident of travel, — a tourist's curiosity to see an old castle 
 supposed to have some historic associations." 
 
 "Were there not some other attractions in the spot?" 
 interrupted she, smiling. 
 
 " Yes, there was a genial old Irish Squire, who did the 
 honors very handsomely, if a little rudely, and there wer 
 two daughters, or a daughter and a niece, I 'm not very clear 
 which, who sang Irish melodies and talked rebellion to 
 match very amusingly." 
 
 "Were they pretty?" 
 
 " Well, perhaps courtesy would say ' pretty,' but a keener 
 criticism would dwell on certain awkwardnesses of manner, 
 — Walpole called them Irishries." 
 
 "Indeed! " 
 
 "Yes, he confessed to have been amused with the eccen- 
 tric habits and odd ways, but he was not sparing of his 
 strictures afterwards." 
 
 "So that there were no 'tendernesses'?" 
 
 " Oh, I '11 not go that far. I rather suspect there were 
 ' tendernesses,' but only such as a fine gentleman permits 
 himself amongst semi-savage peoples, — something that 
 seems to say, ' Be as fond of me as you like, and it is a 
 great privilege you enjoy; and I, on my side, will accord 
 you such of my affections as I set no particular store by.* 
 Just as one throws small coin to a beggar." 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Atlee!" 
 
 "I am ashamed to own that I have seen something of 
 this kind myself." 
 
 "It is not like my cousin Cecil to behave in that 
 fashion." 
 
 "I might say, Lady Maude, that your home experiences 
 of people would prove a very fallacious guide as to what 
 
THE DRIVE. oOo 
 
 they might or might not do iii a society of whose ways 
 you know nothing." 
 
 "A man of honor would always be a man of honor." 
 
 " There are men, and men of honor, as there are persons 
 of excellent principles with delicate moral health, and they 
 — I say it with regret — must be satisfied to be as respect- 
 ably conducted as they are able." 
 
 ''I don't think you like Cecil," said she, half puzzled by 
 his subtlety, but hitting what she thought to be a '' blot.'' 
 
 "It is difficult for me to tell his cousin what I should 
 like to say in answer to this remark." 
 
 " Oh, have no embarrassment on that score. There are 
 very few people less trammelled by the ties of relationship 
 than we are. Speak out, and if you want to say anything 
 particularly severe, have no fears of wounding my sus- 
 ceptibilities." 
 
 " And do you know. Lady Maude," said he, in a voice of 
 almost confidential meaning, '' this was the very thing I was 
 dreading? I had at one time a good deal of Walpole's in- 
 timacy, — I '11 not call it friendship, for somehow there were 
 certain differences of temperament that separated us con- 
 tinually. We could commonly agree upon the same things ; 
 we could never be one-minded about the same people. In 
 my experiences, the world is by no means the cold-hearted 
 and selfish thing he deems it; and yet I suppose. Lady 
 Maude, if there were to be a verdict given upon us both, 
 nine out of ten would have fixed on me as the scoffer. Is 
 not this so? " 
 
 The artfulness with which he had contrived to make 
 himself and his character a question of discussion achieved 
 only a half success, for she only gave one of her most 
 meaningless smiles as she said, " I do not know; I am 
 not quite sure." 
 
 " And yet I am more concerned to learn what you would 
 think on this score than for the opinion of the whole world." 
 
 Like a man who has taken a leap and found a deep 
 "drop" on the other side, he came to a dead halt as he 
 saw the cold and impassive look her features had assumed. 
 He would have given worlds to recall his speech and stand 
 as he did before it was uttered ; for though she did not 
 
506 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Bay one word, there was that in her calm and composed 
 expression which reproved all that savored of passionate 
 appeal. A now-or-never sort of courage nerved him, and 
 he went on: "I know all the presumption of a man like 
 myself daring to address such words to 3^ou, Lady Maude ; 
 but do you remember that though all eyes but one saw only 
 fog-bank in the horizon, Columbus maintained there was 
 land in the distance ? and so say I, ' He who would lay his 
 fortunes at your feet now sees high honors and great re- 
 wards awaiting him in the future. It is with you to say 
 whether these honors become the crowning glories of a life, 
 or all pursuit of them be valueless I ' May I — dare I 
 hope?" 
 
 '' This is Lebanon," said she ; " at least I think so ; " and 
 she held her glass to her eye. '' Strange caprice, was n't it, 
 to call her house Lebanon because of those wretched cedars? 
 Aunt »]erningham is so odd!" 
 
 '^ There is a crowd of carriages here," said Atlee, en- 
 deavoring to speak with unconcern. 
 
 ''It is her day; she likes to receive on Sundays, as she 
 says she escapes the bishops. By the way, did you tell 
 me you were an old friend of hers, or did I dream it?" 
 
 ''I'm afraid it was the vision revealed it?" 
 
 "Because, if so, I must not take you in. She has a 
 rule against all presentations on Sundays, — they are only 
 her intimates she receives on that day. We shall have to 
 return as we came." 
 
 "Not for worlds. Pray let me not prove an embarrass- 
 ment. You can make your visit, and I will go back on 
 foot. Indeed, I should like a walk." 
 
 "On no account! Take the carriage, and send it back 
 for me. I shall remain here till afternoon tea." 
 
 " Thanks, but I hold to my walk." 
 
 "It is a charming day, and I'm sure a walk will be 
 delightful." 
 
 " Am I to suppose, Lady Maude," said he, in a low voice, 
 as he assisted her to alight, " that you will deign me a more 
 formal answer at another time to the words I ventured to 
 address you? May I live in the hope that I shall yet regard 
 this day as the most fortunate of my life ? " 
 
THE DRIVE. 507 
 
 *' It is wonderful weather for November, — an English 
 November, too. Pray let me assure you that you need not 
 make yourself uneasy about what you were speaking of. I 
 shall not mention it to any one, least of all to ' my Lord ; * 
 and as for myself, it shall be as completely forgotten as 
 though it had never been uttered." 
 
 And she held out her hand with a sort of cordial frank- 
 ness that actually said, '' There, you are forgiven ! Is there 
 any record of generosity like this ? " 
 
 Atlee bowed low and resignedly over that gloved hand, 
 which he felt he was touching for the last time, and turned 
 away with a rush of thoughts through his brain, in which 
 certainly the pleasantest were not the predominating ones. 
 
 He did not dine that day at Bruton Street, and only 
 returned about ten o'clock, when he knew he should find 
 Lord Danesbury in his study. 
 
 '* I have determined, my Lord," said he, with somewhat 
 of decision in his tone that savored of a challenge, " to go 
 over to Ireland by the morning mail." 
 
 Too much engrossed by his own thoughts to notice the 
 other's manner, Lord Danesbury merely turned from the 
 papers before him to say, "Ah, indeed! it would be very 
 well done. We were talking about that, were we not, 
 yesterday? What was it?" 
 
 " The Greek, — Kostalergi's daughter, my Lord? " 
 
 "To be sure. You are incredulous about her, ain't 
 you?" 
 
 " On the contrary, my Lord, I opine that the fellow has 
 told us the truth. I believe he has a daughter, and destines 
 this money to be her dowry." 
 
 ' ' With all my heart ; I do not see how it should concern 
 me. If I am to pay the money, it matters very little to me 
 whether he invests it in a Greek husband or the Double 
 Zero, — speculations, I take it, pretty much alike. Have 
 you sent a telegram ? " 
 
 " I have, my Lord. I have engaged your Lordship's word 
 that you are willing to treat." 
 
 "Just so; it is exactly what I am! Willing to treat, 
 willing to hear argument, and reply with my own, why 1 
 should give more for anything than it is worth." 
 
508 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " We need not discuss further what we can only regard 
 from one point of view, and that our own." 
 
 Lord Danesbury started. The altered tone and manner 
 struck him now for the first time, and he threw his spectacles 
 on the table and stared at the speaker with astonishment. 
 
 "There is another point, my Lord," continued Atlee, with 
 unbroken calm, " that I should like to ask your Lordship's 
 judgment upon, as I shall in a few hours be in Ireland, 
 where the question will present itself. There was some time 
 ago in Ireland a case brought under your Lordship's notice of 
 a very gallant resistance made by a family against an armed 
 party who attacked a house, and your Lordship was gra- 
 ciously pleased to say that some recognition should be 
 offered to one of the sons, — something to show how the 
 Government regarded and approved his spirited conduct." 
 
 " I know, I know ; but I am no longer the Viceroy." 
 
 " I am aware of that, my Lord, nor is your successor 
 appointed ; but any suggestion or wish of your Lordship's 
 would be accepted by the Lords Justices with great defer- 
 ence, all the more in payment of a debt. If, then, your 
 Lordship would recommend this young man for the first 
 vacancy in the constabulary, or some place in the Customs, 
 it -would satisfy a most natural expectation, and, at the 
 same time, evidence your Lordship's interest for the country 
 you so late ruled over." 
 
 '' There is nothing more pernicious than forestalling other 
 people's patronage, Atlee. Not but if this thing was to be 
 done for yourself — " 
 
 '' Pardon me, my Lord, I do not desire anything for 
 myself." 
 
 " Well, be it so. Take this to the Chancellor or the Com- 
 mander-in-Chief," — and he scribbled a few hasty lines as he 
 talked, — " and say what you can in support of it. If they 
 give you something good, I shall be heartily glad of it, and 
 I wish you years to enjoy it." 
 
 Atlee only smiled at the warmth of interest for him whicli 
 was linked with such a shortness of memory, but was too 
 much wounded in his pride to reply. And now, as he saw 
 that his Lordship had replaced his glasses and resumed his 
 work, he walked noiselessly to the door and withdrew. 
 
CHAPTER LXXII. 
 
 THE SAUNTER IN TOWN. 
 
 As Atlee sauntered along towards Downing Street, whence 
 he purposed to despatch his telegram to Greece, he thought 
 a good deal of his late interview with Lord Danesbury. 
 There was much in it that pleased him. He had so far 
 succeeded in re Kostalergi, that the case was not scouted 
 out of court; the matter, at least, was to be entertained, and 
 even that was something. The fascination of a scheme to 
 be developed, an intrigue to be worked out, had for his 
 peculiar nature a charm little short of ecstasy. The demand 
 upon his resources for craft and skill, concealment and 
 duplicity, was only second in his estimation to the delight 
 he felt at measuring his intellect with some other, and 
 seeing whether, in the game of subtlety, he had his master. 
 
 Next to this, but not without a long interval, was the 
 pleasure he felt at the terms in which Lord Danesbury spoke 
 of him. No orator accustomed to hold an assembly en- 
 thralled by his eloquence, no actor habituated to sway the 
 passions of a crowded theatre, is more susceptible to the 
 promptings of personal vanity than your "practised talker." 
 The man who devotes himself to be a "success" in conver- 
 sation glories more in his triumphs, and sets a greater 
 value on his gifts, than any other I know of. 
 
 That men of mark and station desired to meet him, that 
 men whose position secured to them the advantage of asso- 
 ciating with the pleasantest people and the freshest minds 
 — men who commanded, so to say, the best talking in 
 society — wished to confer with and to hear him^ was an 
 intense flattery, and he actually longed for the occasion of 
 display. He had learned a good deal since he had left Ire- 
 land. He had less of that fluency which Irishmen cultivate, 
 
510 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 seldom ventured on an epigram, never on an anecdote, 
 was guardedly circumspect as to statements of fact, and, 
 on the whole, liked to understate his case, and affect dis- 
 trust of his own opinion. Though there was not one of 
 these which were not more or less restrictions on him, he 
 could be brilliant and witty when occasion served ; and there 
 was an incisive neatness in his repartee in which he had no 
 equal. Some of those he was to meet were well known 
 amongst the most agreeable people of society, and he re- 
 joiced that, at least, if he were to be put upon his trial, he 
 should be judged by his peers. 
 
 With all these flattering prospects, was it not strange that 
 his Lordship never dropped a word, nor even a hint, as to 
 his personal career? He had told him, indeed, that he 
 could not hope for success at Cradford, and laughingly said, 
 "You have left Odger miles behind you in your Radicalism. 
 Up to this, we have had no Parliament in England suffi- 
 ciently advanced for your opinions." On the whole, how- 
 ever, if not followed up, — which Lord Danesbury strongly 
 objected to its being, — he said there was no great harm in 
 a young man making his first advances in political life by 
 something startling. They are only fireworks, it is true; 
 the great requisite is that they be brilliant, and do not go 
 out with a smoke and a bad smell ! 
 
 Beyond this he had told him nothing. Was he minded 
 to take him out to Turkey, and as what? He had already 
 explained to him that the old days in which a clever fellow 
 could be drafted at once into a secretaryship of Embassy 
 were gone by; that though a Parliamentary title was held 
 to supersede all others, whether in the case of a man or 
 a landed estate, it was all-essential to be in the House for 
 that^ and that a diplomatist, like a sweep, must begin when 
 he is little. 
 
 "As his private secretary," thought he, " the position is at 
 once fatal to all my hopes with regard to Lady Maude." 
 There was not a woman living more certain to measure a 
 man's pretensions by his station. "Hitherto I have not 
 been ' classed. ' I might be anybody, or go anywhere. My 
 wide capabilities seemed to say that if I descended to do 
 small things, it would be quite as easy for me to do great 
 
THE SAUNTER IN TOWN. 511 
 
 ones; and though I copied despatches, they would have 
 been rather better if I had drafted them also." 
 
 Lady Maude knew this. She knew the esteem in which 
 her uncle held him. She knew how that uncle, shrewd 
 man of the world as he was, valued the sort of qualities he 
 saw in him, and could, better than most men, decide how 
 far such gifts were marketable, and what price they brought 
 to their possessor. 
 
 "And yet," cried he, "they don't know one half of me! 
 What would they say if they knew that it was I wrote the 
 great paper on Turkish Finance in the ' Memorial Diplo- 
 matique, ' and the review of it in the ' Quarterly ; ' that it 
 was I who exposed the miserable compromise of Thiers 
 with Gambetta in the 'Debats,' and defended him in the 
 * Daily News; ' that the hysterical scream of the ' Kreutz 
 Zeitung,' and the severe article on Bismarck in the ' Fort- 
 nightly ' were both mine ; and that at this moment I am 
 urging in the ' Pike ' how the Fenian prisoners must be 
 amnestied, and showing in a London review that if they are 
 liberated Mr. Gladstone should be attainted for high trea- 
 son? I should like well to let them know all this; and I 'm 
 not sure I would not risk all the consequences to do it." 
 
 And then he as suddenly bethought him how little account 
 men of letters were held in by the Lady Maudes of this 
 world; what a humble place they assigned them socially, 
 and how small they estimated their chances of worldly 
 success ! 
 
 " It is the unreal ism of literature as a career strikes them ; 
 and they cannot see how men are to assure themselves of the 
 ' quoi vivre ' by providing what so few want, and even they 
 could exist without." 
 
 It was in a revery of this fashion he walked the streets, 
 as little cognizant of the crowd around him as if he were 
 sauntering along some rippling stream in a mountain gorge. 
 
CHAPTER LXXIII. 
 
 A DARKENED ROOM. 
 
 The "comatose" state, to use the language of the doctors, 
 into which Gorman O'Shea had fallen, had continued so long 
 as to excite the greatest apprehensions of his friends ; for al- 
 though not amounting to complete insensibility, it left him 
 so apathetic and indifferent to everything and every one, 
 that the girls, Kate and Nina, in pure despair, had given 
 up reading or talking to him, and passed their hours of 
 "watching" in perfect silence in the half-darkened room. 
 
 The stern immobility of his pale features, the glassy 
 and meaningless stare of his large blue eyes, the unvarying 
 rhythm of a long-drawn respiration, were signs that at 
 length became more painful to contemplate than evidences 
 of actual suffering; and as day by day went on, and interest 
 grew more and more eager about the trial, which was fixed 
 for the coming Assize, it was pitiable to see him, whose 
 fate was so deeply pledged on the issue, unconscious of all 
 that went on around him, and not caring to know any of 
 those details the very least of which might determine his 
 future lot. 
 
 The instructions drawn up for the defence were sadly in 
 need of the sort of information which the sick man alone 
 could supply; and Nina and Kate had both been entreated 
 to watch for the first favorable moment that should present 
 itself, and ask certain questions, the answers to which 
 would be of the last importance. 
 
 Though Gill's affidavit gave many evidences of unscrupu- 
 lous falsehood, there was no counter-evidence to set against 
 it, and O'Shea's counsel complained strongly of the meagre 
 instructions which were briefed to him in the case, and his 
 utter inability to construct a defence upon them. 
 
A DARKENED ROOM. 513 
 
 "He said he would tell me something this evening, Kate," 
 said Nina; "so, if you will let me, I will go in your place 
 and remind him of his promise." 
 
 This hopeful sign of returning intelligence was so gratify- 
 ing to Kate that she readily consented to the proposition of 
 her cousin taking her ''watch," and, if possible, learning 
 something of his wishes. 
 
 "He said it," continued Nina, "like one talking to him- 
 self, and it was not easy to follow him. The words, as well 
 as I could make out, were ' I will say it to-day, — this even- 
 ing, if T can. When it is said, ' — here he muttered some- 
 thing ; but 1 cannot say whether the words were ' My mind 
 will be at rest, ' or ' I shall be at rest f orevermore. ' " 
 
 Kate did not utter a word ; but her eyes swam, and two 
 large tears stole slowly down her face. 
 
 "His own conviction is that he is dying," said Nina; but 
 Kate never spoke. 
 
 . "The doctors persist," continued Nina, "in declaring that 
 this depression is only a well-known symptom of the attack, 
 and that all affections of the brain are marked by a certain 
 tone of despondency. They even say more, and that the 
 cases where this symptom predominates are more frequently 
 followed by recovery. Are you listening to me, child?" 
 
 "No; I was following some thoughts of my own." 
 
 " I was merely telling you why I think he is getting better." 
 
 Kate leaned her head on her cousin's shoulder, and she 
 did not speak. The heaving motion of her shoulders and 
 her chest betrayed the agitation she could not subdue. 
 
 "I wish his aunt were here; I see how her absence frets 
 him. Is she too ill for the journey? " asked Nina. 
 
 "She says not, and she seems in some way to be coerced 
 by others ; but a telegram this morning announces she would 
 try and reach Kilgobbin this evening." 
 
 "What could coercion mean? Surely this is mere fancy? " 
 
 "1 am not so certain of that. The convent has great hopes 
 of inheriting her fortune. She is rich, and she is a devout 
 Catholic; and we have heard of cases where zeal for the 
 Church has pushed discretion very far." 
 
 "What a worldly creature it is! " cried Nina; "and who 
 would have suspected it? " 
 
 33 
 
514 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "I do not see the worldliness of my believing that people 
 will do much to serve the cause they follow. When chem- 
 ists tell us that there is no finding such a thing as a glass of 
 pure water, where are we to go for pure motives ? " 
 
 "To one's heart, of course," said Nina; but the curl of 
 her perfectly cut lip, as she said it, scarcely vouched for the 
 sincerity. 
 
 On that same evening, just as the last flickerings of twi- 
 light were dying away, Nina stole into the sick-room, 
 and took her place noiselessly beside the bed. 
 
 Slowly moving his arm without turning his head, or by 
 any gesture whatever acknowledging her presence, he took 
 her hand and pressed it to his burning lips, and then laid it 
 upon his cheek. She made no effort to withdraw her hand, 
 and sat perfectly still and motionless. 
 
 "Are we alone? " whispered he, in a voice hardly audible. 
 
 "Yes, quite alone." 
 
 "If I should say what — displease you," faltered he, his 
 agitation making speech even more difficult; "how shall 
 I tell ? " And once more he pressed her hand to his lips. 
 
 "No, no; have no fears of displeasing me. Say what you 
 would like to tell me." 
 
 "It is this, then," said he, with an effort. "I am dying- 
 with my secret in my heart. I am dying, to carry away 
 with me the love I am not to tell, — my love for you, Kate." 
 
 "I am not Kate," was almost on her lips; but he;' struggle 
 to keep silent was aided by that desire so strong in her 
 nature, — to follow out a situation of difficulty to the end. 
 She did not love him, nor did she desire his love; but a 
 strange sense of injury at hearing his profession of love 
 for another shot a pang of intense suffering through her 
 heart, and she lay back in her chair with a cold feeling of 
 sickness like fainting. The overpowering passion of her 
 nature was jealousy ; and to share even the admiration of a 
 salon, the "passing homage," as such deference is called, 
 with another, was a something no effort of her generosity 
 could compass. 
 
 Though she did not speak, she suffered her hand to remain 
 unresistingly within his own. After a short pause he 
 went on; "I thought yesterday that I was dying; and in 
 
A DARKENED ROOM. 515 
 
 my rambling intellect I thought I took leave of you ; and 
 do you know my last words, — my last words, Kate ? " 
 
 '•No; what were they?" 
 
 "My last words were these: ' Beware of the Greek; have 
 no friendship with the Greek. ' " 
 
 '' And why that warning ? " said she, in a low, faint voice. 
 
 "She is not of us, Kate; none of her ways or thoughts are 
 ours, nor would they suit us. She is subtle and clever 
 and sly; and these only mislead those who lead simple 
 lives." 
 
 "May it not be that you wrong her?" 
 
 "I have tried to learn her nature." 
 
 "Not to love it?" 
 
 "I believe 1 was beginning to love her — juwst when you 
 were cold to me. You remember when ? " 
 
 " I do ; and it was this coldness was the cause ? Was it 
 the only cause ? " 
 
 " No, no. She has wiles and ways which, with her beauty, 
 make her nigh irresistible." 
 
 "And now you are cured of this passion? There is no 
 trace of it in your breast?" 
 
 "Not a vestige. But why speak of her? " 
 
 "Perhaps I am Jealous." 
 
 Once more he pressed his lips to her hand, and kissed it 
 rapturously. 
 
 "No, Kate," cried he, "none but you have the place in 
 my heart. Whenever I have tried a treason it has turned 
 against me. Is there light enough in the room to find a 
 small portfolio of red-brown leather? It is on that table 
 yonder." 
 
 Had the darkness been not almost complete, Nina would 
 scarcely have ventured to rise and cross the room, so fearful 
 was she of being recognized. 
 
 "It is locked," said she, as she laid it beside him on the" 
 bed ; but touching a secret spring, he opened it, and passed 
 his fingers hurriedly through the papers within. 
 
 "I believe it must be this," said he. "I think I know 
 the feel of the paper. It is a telegram from my aunt ; the 
 doctor gave it to me last night. We read it over together 
 four or five times. This is it, and these are the words: ' If 
 
516 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Kate will be your wife, the estate of O' Shea's Barn is your 
 own forever. ' " 
 
 ''Is she to have no time to think over this offer?" asked 
 she. 
 
 "Would you like candles, miss? " asked a maid-servant, 
 of whose presence there neither of the others had been 
 aware. 
 
 "No, nor are you wanted," said Nina, haughtily, as she 
 arose ; while it was not without some difficulty she withdrew 
 her hand from the sick man's grasp. 
 
 "I know,'' said he, falteringly, "you would not leave me 
 if you had not left hope to keep me company in your 
 absence. Is not that so, Kate?" 
 
 "By-by," said she, softly, and stole away. 
 
CHAPTER LXXIV. 
 
 AN ANGRY COLLOQUY. 
 
 It was with passionate eagerness Nina set off in search of 
 Kate. Why she should have felt herself wronged, outraged, 
 insulted even, is not so easy to say; nor shall I attempt 
 any analysis of the complex web of sentiments which, so to 
 say, spread itself over her faculties. The man who had so 
 wounded her self-love had been at her feet; he had followed 
 her in her walks, hung over the piano as she sang, — shown 
 by a thousand signs that sort of devotion by which men 
 intimate that their lives have but one solace, one ecstasy, 
 one joy. By what treachery had he been moved to all this, 
 if he really loved another? That he was simply amusing 
 himself with the sort of flirtation she herself could take up 
 as a mere pastime was not to be believed. That the wor- 
 shipper should be insincere in his worship was too dreadful 
 to think of. And yet it was to this very man she had once 
 turned to avenge herself on Walpole's treatment of her; she 
 had even said, "Could you not make a quarrel with him?'* 
 Now, no woman of foreign breeding puts such a question 
 without the perfect consciousness that, in accepting a man's 
 championship, she has virtually admitted his devotion. 
 Her own levity of character, the thoughtless indifference 
 with which she would sport with any man's affections, so 
 far from inducing her to palliate such caprices, made her 
 more severe and unforgiving. "How shall 1 punish him 
 for this? How shall I make him remember whom it is he 
 has insulted?" repeated she over and over to herself as she 
 went. 
 
 The servants passed her on the stairs with trunks and 
 luggage of various kinds ; but she was too much engrossed 
 
518 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 with her own thoughts to notice them. Suddenly the words, 
 *'Mr. Walpole's room," caught her ear, and she asked, 
 "Has any one come?" 
 
 Yes; two gentlemen had just arrived. A third was to 
 come that night, and Miss O'Shea might be expected at any 
 moment. 
 
 Where was Miss Kate? she inquired. 
 
 "In her own room at the top of the house." 
 
 Thither she hastened at once. 
 
 "Be a dear good girl," cried Kate, as Nina entered, "and 
 help me in my many embarrassments. Here are a flood of 
 visitors all coming unexpectedly. Major Lockwood and 
 Mr. Walpole have come. Miss Betty will be here for 
 dinner; and Mr. Atlee, whom we all believed to be in Asia, 
 may arrive to-night. I shall be able to feed them; but 
 how to lodge them with any pretension to comfort is more 
 than I can see" 
 
 "I am in little humor to aid any one. I have my own 
 troubles, — worse ones, perhaps, than playing hostess to 
 disconsolate travellers." 
 
 "And what are your troubles, dear Nina?" 
 
 "I have half a mind not to tell you. You ask me with 
 that supercilious air that seems to say, ' How can a creature 
 like you be of interest enough to any one or anything to 
 have a difficulty ? ' " 
 
 "I force no confidences," said the other, coldly. 
 
 " For that reason, you shall have them, — at least, this 
 one. What will you say when I tell you that young O'Shea 
 has made me a declaration, — a formal declaration of 
 love?" 
 
 "I should say that you need not speak of it as an insult 
 nor an offence." 
 
 "Indeed! and if so, you would say what was perfectly 
 wrong. It was both insult and offence, — yes, both. Do 
 you know that the man mistook me for you, and called me 
 Kate ? " 
 
 "How could this be possible? " 
 
 "In a darkened room, with a sick man slowly rallying 
 from a long attack of stupor; nothing of me to be seen but 
 my hand, which he devoured with kisses, — raptures, in- 
 
AN ANGRY COLLOQUY. 519 
 
 deed, Kate, of which I had no conception till I experienced 
 them by counterfeit ! " 
 
 "Oh! Nina, this is not fair! " 
 
 "It is true, child. The man caught my hand, and declared 
 he would never quit it till I promised it should be his own. 
 Nor was he content with this ; but, anticipating his right 
 to be lord and master, he bade you to beware of me! 
 ' Beware of that Greek girl ! ' were his words, — words 
 strengthened by what he said of my character and my tem- 
 perament. I shall spare you, and I shall spare myself his 
 acute comments on the nature he dreaded to see in compan- 
 ionship with his wife. I have had good training in learn- 
 ing these unbiassed judgments, — my early life abounded 
 in such experiences; but this young gentleman's cautions 
 were candor itself." 
 
 "I am sincerely sorry for what has pained you." 
 
 "I did not say it was this boy's foolish words had 
 wounded me so acutely. I could bear sterner critics than 
 he is; his very blundering misconception of me would 
 always plead his pardon. How could he, or how could they 
 with whom he lived and talked and smoked and swaggered, 
 know of me, or such as me? What could there be in the 
 monotonous vulgarity of their tiresome lives that should 
 teach them what we are, or what we wish to be? By what 
 presumption did he dare to condemn all that he could not 
 understand ? " 
 
 "You are angry, Nina; and I will not say, without some 
 cause." 
 
 "What ineffable generosity! You can really constrain 
 yourself to believe that I have been insulted ! " 
 
 "I should not say insulted." 
 
 "You cannot be an honest judge in such a cause. Every 
 outrage offered to me was an act of homage to yourself. 
 If you but knew how I burned to tell him who it was whose 
 hand he held in his, and to whose ears he had poured out 
 his raptures! To tell him, too, how the Greek girl would 
 have resented his presumption had he but dared to indulge 
 it! One of the women servants, it would seem, was a wit- 
 ness to this boy's declaration. I think it was Mary was in 
 the room ; I do not know for how long, but she announced 
 
520 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 her presence by asking some question about candles. In 
 fact, I shall have become a servants' -hall scandal by this 
 time." 
 
 "There need not be any fear of that, Nina; there are no 
 bad tongues amongst our people." 
 
 "I know all that. I know we live amidst human perfecti- 
 bilities, — all of Irish manufacture, and warranted to be 
 genuine." 
 
 "I would hope that some of your impressions of Ireland 
 are not unfavorable ? " 
 
 "I scarcely know. I suppose you understand each other, 
 and are tolerant about capricious moods and ways which to 
 strangers might seem to have a deeper significance. I be- 
 lieve you are not as hasty or as violent or as rash as you 
 seem; and I am sure you are not as impulsive in your 
 generosity, or as headlong in your affections. Not exactly 
 that you mean to be false, but you are hypocrites to your- 
 selves." 
 
 "A very flattering picture of us." 
 
 "I do not mean to flatter you; and it is to this end I say, 
 you are Italians without the subtlety of the Italian, and 
 Greeks without their genius. You need not courtesy so 
 profoundly. I could say worse than this, Kate, if I were 
 minded to do so." 
 
 "Pray do not be so minded, then. Pray remember that, 
 even when you wound me, I cannot return the thrust." 
 
 "I know what you mean," cried Nina, rapidly. ''You 
 are veritable Arabs in your estimate of hospitality; and 
 he who has eaten your salt is sacred." 
 
 "You remind me of what I had nigh forgotten, Nina, — 
 of our coming guests." 
 
 "Do you know why Walpole and his friend are coming? " 
 
 "They are already come, Nina, — they are out walking 
 with papa; but what has brought them here I cannot guess, 
 and, since I have heard your description of Ireland, I can* 
 not imagine." 
 
 said she, indolently, and moved away. 
 
CHAPTER LXXV. 
 
 MATHEW Kearney's reflections. 
 
 To have his house full of company, to see his table crowded 
 with guests, was nearer perfect happiness than anything 
 Kearney knew; and when he set out, the morning after the 
 arrival of the strangers, to show Major Lockwood where he 
 would find a brace of woodcocks, the old man was in such 
 spirits as he had not known for years. 
 
 "Why don't your friend Walpole come with us?" asked 
 he of his companion, as they trudged across the bog. 
 
 *' I believe I can guess," mumbled out the other; ''but 
 I 'm not quite sure I ought to tell." 
 
 " I see," said Kearney, with a knowing leer ; " he 's afraid 
 I '11 roast him about that unlucky despatch he wrote. He 
 thinks I '11 give him no peace about that bit of stupidity ; 
 for you see, Major, it was stupid, and nothing less. Of all 
 the things we despise in Ireland, take my word for it, there 
 is nothing we think so little of as a weak government. We 
 can stand up strong and bold against hard usage, and we 
 gain self-respect by resistance ; but when you come down to 
 conciliations and what you call healing measures, we feel as 
 if you were going to humbug us, and there is not a devil- 
 ment comes into our heads we would not do, just to see how 
 you '11 bear it ; and it 's then your London newspapers cry 
 out : ' What 's the use of doing anything for Ireland ? We 
 pulled down the Church, and we robbed the landlords, and 
 we 're now going to back Cardinal Cullen for them, and there 
 
 - they are murthering away as bad as ever.' " 
 
 I ''Is it not true? " asked the Major. 
 
 " And whose fault if it is true? Who has broke down the 
 laws in Ireland but yourselves ? We Irish never said that 
 
 |; many things you called crimes were bad in morals, and when 
 
522 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 it occurs to you now to doubt if they are crimes, I 'd like to 
 ask you, why would n't we do them ? You won't give us our 
 independence, and so we '11 fight for it ; and though, maybe, 
 we can't lick you, we'll make your life so uncomfortable to 
 you, keeping us down, that you '11 beg a compromise, — a 
 healing measure, you'll call it, — just as when I won't give 
 Tim Sullivan a lease, he takes a shot at me ; and as I reckon 
 the holes in my hat, I think better of it, and take a pound 
 or two off his rent." 
 
 " So that, in fact, you court the policy of conciliation?" 
 
 "Only because I'm weak. Major, — because I'm weak, 
 and that I must live in the neighborhood. If I could pass 
 my days out of the range o^ Tim's carbine, I wouldn't 
 reduce him a shilling." 
 
 " I can make nothing of Ireland or Irishmen either." 
 
 " Why would you ? God help us ! -we are poor enough and 
 wretched enough ; but we 're not come down to that yet that 
 a Major of Dragoons can read us like big print." 
 
 " So far as I see you wish for a strong despotism." 
 
 " In one way it w^ould suit us well. Do you see. Major, 
 what a weak administration and uncertain laws do? They 
 set every man in Ireland about righting himself by his own 
 hand. If I know I shall be starved when I am turned out 
 , of my holding, I 'm not at all so sure I '11 be hanged if I shoot 
 my landlord. Make me as certain of the one as the other, 
 and I '11 not shoot him." 
 
 " I believe I understand you." 
 
 " No, you don't, nor any Cockney among you." 
 
 " I 'm not a Cockney." 
 
 " I don't care, you 're the same : you 're not one of us ; nor, 
 if you spent fifty years among us, would you understand us." 
 
 "Come over and see me in Berkshire, Kearnev, and let 
 me see if you can read our people much better." 
 
 " From all I hear, there 's not much to read. Your chaw- 
 bacon is n't as 'cute a fellow as Pat." 
 
 " He 's easier to live with." 
 
 " Maybe so ; but I would n't care for a life with such people 
 about me. I like human nature, and human feelings, — aye, 
 human passions, if you must call them so. I want to know 
 — I can make some people love me, though I well know there 
 
MATHEW KEARNEY'S REFLECTIONS. 523 
 
 must be others will hate me. You 're all for tranquillity all 
 over in England, — a quiet life you call it. I like to live 
 without knowing what 's coming, and to feel all the time that 
 I know enough of the game to be able to play it as well as 
 my neighbors. Do you follow me now, Major? " 
 
 "I'm not quite certain I do." 
 
 "No, — but I'm quite certain you don't; and, indeed, I 
 wonder at myself talkirig to you arbout these things at all." 
 
 "I'm much gratified that you do so. In fact, Kearney, 
 you give me courage to speak a little about myself and 
 my own affairs; and, if you will allow me, to ask your 
 advice." 
 
 This was an unusually long speech for the Major, and he 
 actually seemed fatigued when he concluded. He was, how- 
 ever, consoled for his exertions by seeing what pleasure his 
 words had conferred on Kearney, and with what racy self- 
 satisfaction that gentleman heard himself mentioned as a 
 " wise opinion." 
 
 " I believe I do know a little of life. Major," said he, 
 sententiously. " As old Giles Dackson used to say, ' Get 
 Mathew Kearney to tell you what he thinks of it.' You 
 knew Giles?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 ' ' Well, you 've heard of him ? No ! not even that. There 's 
 another proof of what I was saying, — we 're two people, the 
 English and the Irish. If it was n't so, you 'd be no stranger 
 to the sayings and doings of one of the 'cutest men that ever 
 lived." 
 
 " We have witty fellows, too." 
 
 "No, you haven't! Do you call your House of Com- 
 mons' jokes wit? Are the stories j^ou tell at your hustings' 
 speeches wit? Is there one over there " — and he pointed in 
 the direction of England — " that ever made a smart repar- 
 tee or a brilliant answer to any one about anything? You 
 now and then tell an Irish story, and you forget the point ; 
 or you quote a French ' mot,' and leave out the epigram. 
 Don't be angry, — it 's truth I 'm telling you." 
 
 " I 'm not angry, though I must say I don't think you are 
 fair to us." 
 
 "The last bit of brilliancy you had in the House was 
 
524 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 Brinsley Sheridan, and there wasn't much English about 
 /im." 
 
 "I've never heard that the famous O'Connell used to con- 
 vulse the House with his drollery." 
 
 ' ' Why should he ? Did n't he know where he was ? Do 
 you imagine that O'Connell was going to do like poor Lord 
 Killeen, who shipped a cargo of coal-scuttles to Africa? " 
 
 "Will you explain to me then, how, if you are so much 
 shrewder and wittier and cleverer than us, that it does not 
 make you richer, more prosperous, and more contented?" 
 
 " I could do that, too, but I'm losing the birds. There 's 
 a cock now. Well done ! I see you can shoot a bit. Look 
 here. Major, there's a deal in race, — in the blood of a 
 people. It's very hard to make a light-hearted, joyous 
 people thrifty. It's your sullen fellow, that never cuts a 
 joke, nor wants any one to laugh at it, that 's the man who 
 saves. If you 're a wit, you want an audience, and the best 
 audience is round a dinner-table; and we know what that 
 costs. Now, Ireland has been very pleasant for the last 
 hundred and fifty years in that fashion, and you, and scores 
 of other low-spirited, depressed fellows, come over here to 
 pluck up and rouse yourselves, and you go home, and you 
 wonder why the people who amused you were not always as 
 jolly as you saw them. I 've known this country now nigh 
 sixty years, and I never knew a turn of prosperity that 
 did n't make us stupid ; and, upon my conscience, I believe, 
 if we ever begin to grow rich, we '11 not be a bit better than 
 yourselves." 
 
 "That would be very dreadful," said the other, in mock 
 horror. 
 
 "So it would, whether you mean it or not. There's a 
 hare missed this time ! " 
 
 " I was thinking of something I wanted to ask you. The 
 fact is, Kearney, I have a thing on my mind now." 
 
 "Is it a duel? It's many a day since I was out, but I 
 used to know every step of the way as well as most men." 
 
 "No; it's not a duel!" 
 
 " It 's money, then ! Bother it for money. What a deal 
 of bad blood it leads to ! Tell me all about it, and I '11 see 
 if I can't deal with it." 
 
MATHEW KEARNEY'S REFLECTIONS. 525 
 
 "No, it 's not money ; it has nothing to do with money. 
 I'm not hard up. I was never less so." 
 
 " Indeed ! " cried Kearney, staring at him. 
 
 " Why, what do you mean by that? " 
 
 "I was curious to see how a man looks, and I'd like to 
 know how he feels, that did n't want money. I can no 
 more understand it than if a man told me he did n't want 
 air." 
 
 "If he had enough to breathe freely, could he need 
 more ? " 
 
 " That would depend on the size of his lungs, and I be- 
 lieve mine are pretty big. But come now, if there 's nobody 
 you want to shoot, and you have a good balance at the 
 banker's, what can ail you, except it 's a girl you want to 
 marry, and she won't have you ? " 
 
 " Well, there is a lady in the case." 
 
 "Aye, aye! she's a married woman," cried Kearney, 
 closing one eye, and looking intensely cunning. "Then I 
 may tell you at once, Major, I 'm no use to you whatever. 
 If it was a young girl that liked you against the wish of her 
 family, or that you were in love with though she was below 
 you in condition, or that was promised to another man but 
 wanted to get out of her bargain, I 'm good for any of these, 
 or scores more of the same kind ; but if it 's mischief and 
 misery and life-long sorrow you have in your head, you 
 must look out for another adviser." 
 
 "It's nothing of the kind," said the other, bluntly. "It's 
 marriage I was thinking of. I want to settle down and have 
 a wife." 
 
 " Then why couldn't you, if you think it would be any 
 comfort to you?" 
 
 The last words were rather uttered than spoken, and 
 sounded like a sad reflection uttered aloud. 
 
 "I am not a rich man," said the Major, with that strain 
 it always cost him to speak of himself, " but I have got 
 enough to live on. A goodish old house, and a small estate, 
 underlet as it is, bringing me about two thousand a year, 
 and some expectations, as they call them, from an old 
 grand-aunt." 
 
 " You have enough, if you marry a prudent girl," mut- 
 
526 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 tered Kearney, who was never happier than when advocating 
 moderation and discretion. 
 
 " Enough, at least, not to look for money with a wife." 
 
 "I'm with you there, heart and soul," cried Kearney. 
 " Of all the shabby inventions of our civilization, I don't 
 know one as mean as that custom of giving a marriage- 
 portion with a girl. Is it to induce a man to take her? Is 
 it to pa}^ for her board and lodging? Is it because marriage 
 is a partnership, and she must bring her share into the 
 ' concern ; ' or is it to provide for the day when they are to 
 part company, and each go his own road ? Take it how you 
 like, it 's bad and it 's shabby. If you 're rich enough to 
 give your daughter twenty or thirty thousand pounds, wait 
 for some little family festival, — her birthday, or her hus- 
 band's birthday, or a Christmas gathering, or maybe a 
 christening, — and put the notes in her hand. Oh, Major 
 dear," cried he, aloud, "if you knew how much of life you 
 lose with lawyers, and what a deal of bad blood comes into 
 the world by parchments, you 'd see the wisdom of trusting 
 more to human kindness and good feeling, and, above all, 
 to the nonor of gentlemen, — things that nowadays we 
 always hope to secure by Act of Parliament." 
 
 " I go with a great deal of what you say." 
 
 *' Why not with all of it? What do we gain by trying to 
 overreach each other? What advantage in a system where 
 it 's always the rogue that wins ? If I was a King to- 
 morrow, I 'd rather fine a fellow for quoting Blackstone than 
 for blasphemy, and I 'd distribute all the law libraries in the 
 kingdom as cheap fuel for the poor. We pray for peace 
 and quietness, and we educate a special class of people to 
 keep us always wrangling. Where 's the sense of that? " 
 
 While Kearney poured out these words in a flow of fervid 
 conviction, they had arrived at a little open space in the 
 wood, from which various alleys led off in different directions. 
 Along one of these, two figures were slowly moving side by 
 side, whom Lockwood quickly recognized as Walpole and 
 Nina Kostalergi. Kearney did not see them, for his atten- 
 tion was suddenly called off by a shout from a distance, and 
 his son Dick rode hastily up to the spot. 
 
 " I have been in search of you all through the plantation," 
 
MATHEW KEARNEY'S REFLECTIONS. 527 
 
 cried he. "I have brought back Holmes the lawyer from 
 TuUamore, who wants to talk to you about this affair of 
 O'Gormau's. It's going to be a bad business, I fear." 
 
 ' ' Is n't that more of what I was saying ? " said the old 
 man, turning to the Major. ''There's law for you!" 
 
 " They 're making what they call a ' national ' event of it," 
 continued Dick. " The ' Pike ' has opened a column of sub- 
 scriptions to defray the cost of proceedings, and they've 
 engaged Battersby with a hundred guinea retainer already." 
 
 It appeared from what tidings Dick brought back from the 
 town, that the nationalists — to give them the much un- 
 merited name by which they called themselves — were 
 determined to show how they could dictate to a jury. 
 
 " There 's law for you ! " cried the old man again. 
 
 "You'll have to take to vigilance committees, like the 
 Yankees," said the Major. 
 
 ' ' We 've had them for years ; but they only shoot their 
 political opponents." 
 
 " They say, too," broke in the young man, "that Dono- 
 gan is in the town, and that it is he who has organized the 
 whole prosecution. In fact, he intends to make Battersby's 
 speech for the plaintiff a great declaration of the wrongs of 
 Ireland ; and as Battersby hates the Chief Baron, who will 
 try the cause, he is determined to insult the Bench, even at 
 the cost of a commitment." 
 
 "What will he gain by that?" asked Lockwood. 
 
 "I'll tell you what he '11 gain, — he '11 gain the election of 
 Mallow," said Kearney. " Every one cannot have a father 
 that was hanged in '98 ; but any one can go to jail for 
 blackguarding a Chief Justice." 
 
 For a moment or two the old man seemed ashamed at 
 having been led to make these confessions to " the Saxon ; " 
 and telling Lockwood where he would be likely to find a 
 brace of cocks, he took his son's arm and returned homeward. 
 
CHAPTER LXXVI. 
 
 VERY CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION. 
 
 When Lockwood returned, only in time to dress for dinner, 
 Walpole, whose room adjoined his, threw open the door 
 between them and entered. He had just accomplished a 
 most careful " tie," and came in with the air of one fairly 
 self-satisfied and happy. 
 
 *' You look quite triumphant this evening," said the 
 Major, half sulkily. 
 
 " So 1 am, old fellow ; and so I have a right to be. It 's 
 all done and settled." 
 
 " Already? " 
 
 "Aye, already. I asked her to take a stroll with me in 
 the garden ; but we sauntered off into the plantation. A 
 woman always understands the exact amount of meaning 
 a man has in a request of this kind, and her instinct 
 reveals to her at once whether he is eager to tell her some 
 bit of fatal scandal of one of her own friends, or to make 
 her a declaration." 
 
 A sort of sulky grunt was Lockwood's acknowledgment of 
 this piece of abstract wisdom, — a sort of knowledge he never 
 listened to with much patience. 
 
 "I am aware," said Walpole, flippantly, " the female 
 nature was an omitted part in your education, Lockwood, and 
 you take small interest in those nice distinctive traits which, 
 to a man of the world, are exactly what the stars are to the 
 mariner." 
 
 " Finding out what a woman means by the stars does seem 
 very poor fun." 
 
 "Perhaps you prefer the moon for your observation," 
 replied Walpole ; and the easy impertinence of his manner 
 was almost too much for the other's patience. 
 
VERY CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION. 529 
 
 " 1 don't care for your speculatioDS, — I want to hear what 
 passed between you and the Greek girl." 
 
 " The Greek gkl will in a very few days be Mrs. Walpole, 
 and I shall crave a little more deference for the mention of 
 her." 
 
 " I forgot her name, or I should not have called her with 
 such freedom. What is it?" 
 
 '' Kostalergi. Her father is Kostalergi, Prince of Delos." 
 
 " All right ; it will read well in the ' Post.' " 
 
 " My dear friend, there is that amount of sarcasm in your 
 conversation this evening that, to a plain man like myself, 
 never ready at reply, and easily subdued by ridicule, is 
 positively overwhelming. Has any disaster befallen you 
 that you are become so satirical and severe ? " 
 
 " Never mind me, — tell me about yourself," was the blunt 
 reply. 
 
 '' I have not the slightest objection. When we had walked 
 a little way together, and I felt that we were beyond the 
 risk of interruption, I led her to the subject of my sudden 
 reappearance here, and implied that she, at least, could not 
 have felt much surprise. ' You remember,' said I, ' I 
 promised to return?' 
 
 *' ' There is something so conventional,' said she, ' in these 
 pledges, that one comes to read them like the ' ' yours sin- 
 cerely " at the foot of a letter.' 
 
 *' 'I ask for nothing better/ said I, taking her up on her 
 own words, 'than to be " yours sincerely." It is to ratify 
 that pledge by making you ''mine sincerely" that I am 
 here.' 
 
 " ' Indeed ! ' said she, slowly, and looking down. 
 
 " ' I swear it ! ' said I, kissing her hand, which, however, 
 had a glove on." 
 
 " Why not her cheek? " 
 
 " That is not done, Major mine, at such times." 
 
 "Well, goon." 
 
 "I can't recall the exact words, for I spoke rapidly; but 
 I told her I was named Minister at a foreign Court, that my 
 future career was assured, and that I was able to offer her a 
 station, not, indeed, equal to her deserts, but that, occupied 
 by her, would be only less than royal." 
 
 34 
 
630 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " At Guatemala ! " exclaimed the other, derisively. 
 
 *' Have the kindness to keep your geography to yourself," 
 said Walpole. "I merely said in South America, and she 
 had too much delicacy to ask more." 
 
 '* But she said yes? She consented? " 
 
 '' Yes, sir, she said she would venture to commit her 
 future to my charge." 
 
 ''Didn't she ask you what means you had, — what was 
 your income ? " 
 
 "Not exactly in the categorical way you put it, but she 
 alluded to the possible style we should live in." 
 
 *' I '11 swear she did. That girl asked you, in plain words, 
 how many hundreds or thousands you had a-year? " 
 
 '' And I told her. I said, ' It sounds humbly, dearest, 
 to tell you we shall not have fully two thousand a-year; 
 but the place we are going to is the cheapest in the uni- 
 verse, and we shall have a small establishment of not more 
 than forty black and about a dozen white servants, and 
 at first only keep twenty horses, taking our carriages on 
 job.' " 
 
 ' ' What about pin-money ? " 
 
 " There is not much extravagance in toilette, and so I 
 said she must manage with a thousand a-year." 
 
 " And she did n't laugh in your face? " 
 
 " No, sir ! nor was there any strain upon her good breed- 
 ing to induce her to laugh in my face." 
 
 " At all events, you discussed the matter in a fine practical 
 spirit. Did you go into groceries ? I hope you did not for- 
 get groceries ? " 
 
 '' My dear Lockwood, let me warn you against being droll. 
 You ask me for a correct narrative, and when I give it, you 
 will not restrain that subtle sarcasm the mastery of which 
 makes you unassailable." 
 
 " When is it to be? When is it to come off? Has she to 
 write to His Serene Highness the Prince of What's-his- 
 name? " 
 
 "No, the Prince of What's-his-name need not be con- 
 sulted ; Lord Kilgobbin will stand in the position of father 
 to her." 
 
 Lockwood muttered something, in which " Give her 
 
VERY CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION. 531 
 
 away!" were the only words audible. "I must say," 
 added he, aloud, " the wooing did not take long." 
 
 '' You forget that there was an actual engagement be- 
 tween us when 1 left this for London. My circumstances 
 at that time did not permit me to ask her at once to be my 
 wife; but our affections were pledged, and — even if more 
 tender sentiments did not determine — my feeling, as a 
 man of honor, required I should come back here to make 
 her this offer." 
 
 ''AH right; I suppose it will do, — I hope it will do; 
 and after all, I take it, you are likely to understand each 
 other better than others would." 
 
 " Such is our impression and belief." 
 
 ''How will your own people — how will Danesbury like 
 it?" 
 
 " For their sakes I trust they will like it very much; for 
 mine, it is less than a matter of indifference to me." 
 
 " She, however — she will expect to be properly received 
 amongst them? " 
 
 " Yes," cried Walpole, speaking for the first time in a 
 perfectly natural tone, divested of all pomposity, — "yes, 
 she stickles for that, Lockwood. It was the one point she 
 seemed to stand out for. Of course I told her she would 
 be received with open arms by my relatives, — that my 
 family would be overjoyed to receive her as one of them. 
 I only hinted that ray Lord's gout might prevent him from 
 being at the wedding. 1 'm not sure Uncle Danesbury w^ould 
 not come over. ' And the charming Lady Maude,' asked 
 she, ' would she honor me so far as to be a bridesmaid ? ' " 
 
 "She didn't say that?" 
 
 " She did. She actually pushed me to promise I should 
 ask her." 
 
 "Which you never would." 
 
 "Of that 1 will not affirm I am quite positive; but I 
 certainly intend to press my uncle for some sort of recog- 
 nition of the marriage, — a civil note ; better still, if it 
 could be managed, an invitation to his house in town." 
 
 "You are a bold fellow to think of it." 
 
 " Not so bold as you imagine. Have you not often 
 remarked that when a man of good connections is about 
 
532 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 to exile himself by accepting a far-away post, whether it 
 be out of pure compassion or a feeling that it need never 
 be done again, and that they are about to see the last of 
 him ; but, somehow, — whatever the reason, — his friends 
 are marvellously civil and polite to him, just as some be- 
 nevolent but eccentric folk send a partridge to the con- 
 demned felon for his last dinner." 
 
 "They do that in France." 
 
 ' ' Here it would be a rumpsteak ; but the sentiment is 
 the same. At all events, the thing is as I told you, and 
 I do not despair of Danesbury." 
 
 "For the letter perhaps not; but he'll never ask you 
 to Bruton Street, nor, if he did, could you accept." 
 
 "You are thinking of Lady Maude." 
 
 "I am." 
 
 "There would be no difficulty in that quarter. When a 
 Whig becomes Tory, or a Tory Whig, the gentlemen of the 
 party he has deserted never take umbrage in the same way 
 as the vulgar dogs below the gangway ; so it is in the 
 world. The people who must meet, must dine together, 
 sit side by side at flower-shows and garden-parties, always 
 manage to do their hatreds decorously, and only pay off 
 their dislikes by instalments. If Lady Maude were to 
 receive my wife at all, it would be with a most winning 
 politeness. All her malevolence would limit itself to mak- 
 ing the supposed underbred woman commit a gaucJierie, to 
 do or say something that ought not to have been done or 
 said ; and as I know Nina can stand the test, I have no 
 fears for the experiment." 
 
 A knock at the door apprised them that the dinner was 
 waiting, neither having heard the bell which had summoned 
 them a quarter of an hour before. " And I wanted to 
 hear all about your progress," cried Walpole, as they de- 
 scended the staircase together. 
 
 "I have none to report," was the gruff reply. 
 
 "Why, surely you have not passed the whole day in 
 Kearney's company without some hint of what you came 
 here for?" 
 
 But at the same moment they were in the dining-room. 
 
 " We are a man party to-day, I am sorry to say," cried 
 
VERY CONFIDENTIAL CONVERSATION. 533 
 
 old Kearney, as they entered. " My niece and my daugh- 
 ter are keeping Miss O'Shea company upstairs. She is not 
 well enough to come down to dinner, and they have scru- 
 ples about leaving her in solitude." 
 
 "At least, we'll have a cigar after dinner," was Dick's 
 ungallant reflection as they moved away. 
 
CHAPTER LXXVII. 
 
 TWO YOUNG LADIES ON MATRIMONY. 
 
 "I HOPE they had a pleasanter dinDer downstairs than we 
 have had here," said Nina, as, after wishing Miss O'Shea a 
 good-night, the young girls slowly mounted the stairs. 
 
 "Poor old godmother was too sad and too depressed to be 
 cheerful company ; but did she not talk well and sensibly 
 on the condition of the country? Was it not well said, when 
 she showed the danger of all that legislation which, assum- 
 ing to establish right, only engenders disunion and class 
 jealousy ? " 
 
 "1 never followed her; I was thinking of something else." 
 
 "She was worth listening to, then. She knows the 
 people well, and she sees all the mischief of tampering with 
 natures so imbued with distrust. The Irishman is a gam- 
 bler, and English law-makers are always exciting him to 
 play." 
 
 "It seems to me there is very little on the game." 
 
 "There is everything, — home, family, subsistence, life 
 itself, — all that a man can care for." 
 
 " Never mind these tiresome themes ; come into my room ; 
 or I '11 go to yours, for I 'm sure you 've a better fire; be- 
 sides, I can walk away if you offend me, — I mean offend 
 beyond endurance; for you are sure to say something 
 cutting." 
 
 "I hope you wrong me, Nina." 
 
 "Perhaps I do. Indeed, I half suspect I do; but the fact 
 is, it is not your words that reproach me, it is your whole 
 life of usefulness is my reproach; and the least syllable 
 you utter comes charged with all the responsibility of one 
 who has a duty and does it, to a mere good-for-nothing. 
 There, is not that humility enough?" 
 
TWO YOUNG LADIES ON MATRIMONY. 535 
 
 *'More than enough, for it goes to flattery." 
 
 "I 'm not a bit sure all the time that I 'm not the more 
 lovable creature of the two. If you like, I '11 put it to the 
 vote at breakfast." 
 
 "Oh, Nina!" 
 
 "Very shocking, that 's the phrase for it, — very shock- 
 ing! Oh, dear, what a nice fire, and what a nice little 
 snug room! How is it, will you tell me, that though my 
 room is much larger and better furnished in every way, 
 your room is always brighter and neater, and more like a 
 little home? They fetch you drier firevfood, and they 
 bring you flowers, wherever they get them. I know well 
 what devices of roguery they practise." 
 
 " Shall I give you tea? " 
 
 "Of course I'll have tea. I expect to be treated like a 
 favored guest in all things, and I mean to take this arm- 
 chair, and the nice soft cushion for my feet ; for I warn you, 
 Kate, I 'm here for two hours. I 've an immense deal to tell 
 you, and I '11 not go till it 's told." 
 
 "I '11 not turn you out." 
 
 "I'll take care of that; I have not lived in Ireland for 
 nothing. I have a proper sense of what is meant by pos- 
 session, and I defy what your great minister calls a heart- 
 less eviction. Even your tea is nicer; it is more fragrant 
 than any one else's. I begin to hate you out of sheer 
 jealousy." 
 " "That is about the last feeling I ought to inspire." 
 
 "More humility; but I '11 drop rudeness and tell you my 
 story, for I have a story to tell. Are you listening? Are 
 you attentive? Well, my Mr. Walpole, as you called him 
 once, is about to become so in real earnest. I could have 
 made a long narrative of it and held you in weary suspense, 
 but I prefer to dash at once into the thick of the fray, and 
 tell you that he has this morning made me a formal proposal, 
 and I have accepted him. Be pleased to bear in mind that 
 this is no case of a misconception or a mistake. No young 
 gentleman has been petting and kissing my hand for 
 another's; no tender speeches have been uttered to the ears 
 they were not meant for. I have been wooed this time for 
 myself, and on my own part I have said yes." 
 
536 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "You told me you had accepted him ah^eady. I mean 
 when he was here last." 
 
 ''Yes, after a fashion. Don't you know, child, that, 
 though lawyers maintain that a promise to do a certain 
 thing, to make a lease or some contract, has in itself a 
 binding significance, that in Cupid's Court this is not law? 
 and the man knew perfectly that all passed between us 
 hitherto had no serious meaning, and bore no more real 
 relation to marriage than an outpost encounter to a battle. 
 For all that has taken place up to this, we might never fight 
 — I mean marry — after all. The sages say that a girl 
 should never believe a man means marriage till he talks 
 money to her. Now, Kate, he talked money; and I be- 
 lieved him.'* 
 
 "I wish you would tell me of these things seriously and 
 without banter." 
 
 "So I do. Heaven knows I am in no jesting humor. It 
 is in no outburst of high spirits or gayet}^ a girl confesses 
 she is going to marry a man who has neither wealth nor 
 station to offer, and whose fine connections are just fine 
 enough to be ashamed of him." 
 
 "Are you in love with him? " 
 
 "If you mean, do I imagine that this man's affection 
 and this man's companionship are more to me than all the 
 comforts and luxuries of life with another, I am not in love- 
 with him; but if you ask me, am I satisfied to risk my 
 future with so much as I know of his temper, his tastes, his' 
 breeding, his habits, and his abilities, I incline to say yes. 
 Married life, Kate, is a sort of dietary, and one should re- 
 member that what he has to eat of every day ought not to 
 be too appetizing." 
 
 "I abhor your theory." 
 
 "Of course you do, child; and you fancy, naturally 
 enough, that you would like ortolans every day for dinner; 
 but my poor cold Greek temperament has none of the 
 romantic warmth of your Celtic nature. I am very moderate 
 in my hopes, very humble in all my ambitions.'* 
 
 "It is not thus I read you." 
 
 "Very probably. At all events, I have consented to be 
 Mr. Walpole's wife, and we are to be Minister Pleuipoten- 
 
TWO YOUNG LADIES ON MATRIMONY. 537 
 
 tiary and Special Envoy somewhere. It is not Bolivia, 
 nor the Argentine Republic, but some other fabulous region, 
 where the only fact is yellow fever." 
 
 "And you really like him? " 
 
 *'I hope so, for evidently it must be on love we shall have 
 to live; one half of our income being devoted to saddle- 
 horses, and the other to my toilette." 
 
 "How absurd you are! " 
 
 "No, not I. It is Mr. Walpole himself, w^ho, not trust- 
 ing much to my skill at arithmetic, sketched out this sched- 
 ule of expenditure; and then I bethought me how simple 
 this man must deem me. It was a flattery that won me at 
 once. Oh, Kate dearest, if you could understand the 
 ecstasy of being thought, not a fool, but one easily duped, 
 easily deceived ! " 
 
 "I don't know what you mean." 
 
 "It is this, then, that to have a man's whole heart — 
 whether it be worth the having is another and a different 
 question — you must impress him with his immense supe- 
 riority in everything; that he is not merely physically 
 stronger than you, and bolder and more courageous, but 
 that he is mentally more vigorous and more able, judges 
 better, decides quicker, resolves more fully than you; and 
 that, struggle how you will, you pass your life in eternally 
 looking up to this wonderful god, who vouchsafes now and 
 then to caress you, and even say tender things to you." 
 
 "Is it, Nina, that you have made a study of these things, 
 or is all this mere imagination ? " 
 
 " Most innocent young lady ! I no more dreamed of these 
 things to apply to such men as your country furnishes — 
 good, homely, commonplace creatures — than I should have 
 thought of asking you to adopt French cookery to feed them. 
 I spoke of such men as one meets in what I may call the 
 real world; as for the others, if they feel life to be a stage, 
 they are always going about in slipshod fashion, as if at 
 rehearsal. Men like your brother and young O'Shea, for 
 instance, tossed here and there by accidents, made one thing 
 by a chance, and something else by a misfortune. Take 
 my word for it, the events of life are very vulgar things; 
 the passions and emotions they evoke, these constitute the 
 
538 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 high stimulants of existence, they make the r/ros jeu, which 
 it is so exciting to play." 
 
 "I follow you with some difficulty; but I am rude enough 
 to own I scarcely regret it." 
 
 "I know, — 1 know all about that sweet innocence that 
 fancies to ignore anything is to obliterate it; but it's a 
 fooPs paradise, after all, Kate. We are in the world, and 
 we must accept it as it is made for us." 
 
 "1 '11 not ask, does your theory make you better, but 
 does it make you happier?" 
 
 '*If being duped were an element of bliss, I should say 
 certainly not happier; but I doubt the blissful ignorance of 
 your great moralist. I incline to believe that the better 
 you play any game — life amongst the rest — the higher the 
 pleasure it yields. I can afford to marry, without believing 
 my husband to be a paragon, — could you do as much? " 
 
 "I should like to know that I preferred him to any one 
 else." 
 
 "So should I, and I would only desire to add ' to every 
 >one else that asked me.' Tell the truth, Kate dearest; we 
 jare here all alone, and can afford sincerity. How many 
 [of us girls marry the man we should like to marry; and if 
 the game were reversed, and it were to be we who should 
 make the choice, — the slave pick out his master, — how 
 many, think you, would be wedded to their present 
 mates?" 
 
 *'So long as we can refuse him we do not like, I cannot 
 think our case a hard one.'* 
 
 "Neither should I if I could stand fast at three-and- 
 twenty. The dread of that change of heart and feeling that 
 will come, must come, ten years later, drives one to com- 
 promise with happiness, and take a part of what you once 
 aspired to the whole." 
 
 "You used to think very highly of Mr. Walpole ; admired, 
 and I suspect you liked him." 
 
 "All true; my opinion is the same still. He will stand 
 the great test that one can go into the world with him and 
 not be ashamed of him. I know, dearest, even without 
 that shake of the head, the small value you attach to this ; 
 but it is a great element in that droll contract by which 
 
TWO YOUNG LADIES ON MATRIMONY. 539 
 
 one person agrees to pit his temper against another's, and 
 which we are told is made in heaven, with angels as spon- 
 sors. Mr. Walpole is sufficiently good-looking to be pre-i 
 possessing; he is well bred, very courteous, converses 
 extremely well, knows his exact place in life, and takes it 
 quietly but firmly. All these are of value to his wife, and 
 it is not easy to overrate them." 
 
 *^Is that enough?" 
 
 "Enough for what? If you mean for romantic love, for 
 the infatuation that defies all change of sentiment, all 
 growth of feeling, that revels in the thought, experience will 
 not make us wiser, nor daily associations less admiring, it 
 is not enough. I, however, am content to bid for a much 
 humbler lot. I want a husband who, if he cannot give me 
 a brilliant station, will, at least, secure me a good position 
 in life, a reasonable share of vulgar comforts, some luxuries, 
 and the ordinary routine of what are called pleasures. If, 
 in affording me these, he will vouchsafe to add good 
 temper, and not high spirits, — which are detestable, — but 
 fair spirits, I think 1 can promise him, not that I shall 
 make him happy, but that be will make himself so, and it 
 will afford me much gratification to see it." 
 
 "Is this real, or — " 
 
 "Or what? Say what was on your lips." 
 
 "Or are you utterly heartless?" cried Kate, with an 
 effort that covered her face with blushes. 
 
 "I don't think I am," said she, oddly and calmly; "but 
 all I have seen of life teaches me that every betrayal of a 
 feeling or a sentiment is like what gamblers call showing 
 your hand, and is sure to be taken advantage of by the other 
 players. It's an ugly illustration, dear Kate; but in the 
 same round game we call life there is so much cheating 
 that if you cannot afford to be pillaged, you must be 
 prudent." 
 
 "I am glad to feel that I can believe you to be much 
 better than you make yourself." 
 
 "Do so, and as long as you can." 
 
 There was a pause of several moments after this, each 
 apparently following out her own thoughts. 
 
 "By the way," cried Nina, suddenly, "did I tell you 
 
540 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 that Mary wished me joy this morning? She had overheard 
 Mr. O'Gorman's declaration, and believed he had asked 
 me to be his wife." 
 
 "How absurd! " said Kate; and there was anger as well 
 as shame in her look as she said it. 
 
 "Of course it was absurd. She evidently never sus- 
 pected to whom she was speaking, and then — " She 
 stopped; for a quick glance at Kate's face warned her of 
 the peril she was grazing. "I told the girl she was a fool, 
 and forbade her to speak of the matter to any one." 
 
 "It is a servants'-hall story already," said Kate, quietly. 
 
 "Do you care for that? " 
 
 "Not much; three days will see the end of it." 
 
 "I declare, in your own homely way, I believe you are 
 the wiser of. the two of us." 
 
 "My common sense is of the very commonest," said 
 Kate, laughing; "there is nothing subtle nor even neat 
 about it." 
 
 "Let us see that! Give me a counsel, or, rather, say if 
 you agree with me? I have asked Mr. Walpole to show 
 me how his family accept my entrance amongst them, with 
 what grace they receive me as a relative. One of his cousins 
 called me the Greek girl, and in my own hearing. It is 
 not, then, over-caution on my part to inquire how they 
 mean to regard me. Tell me, however, Kate, how far you 
 concur with me in this. I should like much to hear how 
 your good sense regards the question. Should you have 
 done as I have? " 
 
 "Answer me first one question. If you should learn that 
 these great folks would not welcome you amongst them, 
 would you still consent to marry Mr. Walpole?" 
 
 "I'm not sure, I am not quite certain; but I almost 
 believe I should." 
 
 "I have, then, no counsel to give you," said Kate, 
 firmly. "Two people who see the same object differently 
 cannot discuss its proportions." 
 
 "1 see my blunder," cried Nina, impetuously. "I put 
 my question stupidly. I should have said, * If a girl has 
 won a man's affections and given him her own, if she feels 
 her heart has no other home than in his keeping, that she 
 
TWO YOUNG LADIES ON MATRIMONY. 541 
 
 lives for him and by him, — should she be deterred from 
 joining her fortunes to his because he has some fine con- 
 nections who would like to see him marry more advan- 
 tageously ? ' " It needed not the saucy curl of her lip as 
 she spoke to declare how every word was uttered in sar- 
 casm. "Why will you not answer me?" cried she at 
 length; and her eyes shot glances of fiery impatience as 
 she said it. 
 
 "Our distinguished friend Mr. Atlee is to arrive to- 
 morrow, Dick tells me," said Kate, with the calm tone of 
 one who would not permit herself to be ruffled. 
 
 "Indeed! If your remark has any apropos at all, it must 
 mean that in marrying such a man as he is one might 
 escape all the difficulties of family coldness ; and I protest, 
 as I think of it, the matter has its advantages." 
 
 A faint smile was all Kate's answer. 
 
 "I cannot make you angry; I have done my best, and it 
 has failed. I am utterly discomfited, and I '11 go to bed." 
 
 "Good-night," said Kate, as she held out her hand. 
 
 "I wonder is it nice to have this angelic temperament, — 
 to be always right in one's judgments, and never carried 
 away by passion? I half suspect perfection does not mean 
 perfect happiness." 
 
 "You shall tell me when you are married," said Kate, 
 with a laugh; and Nina darted a flashing glance towards 
 her, and swept out of the room. 
 
CHAPTER LXXVIII. 
 
 A MISERABLE MORNING. 
 
 It was not without considerable heart-sinking and misgiv- 
 ing that old Kearney heard it was Miss Betty O'Shea's 
 desire to have some conversation with him after breakfast. 
 He was, indeed, reassured, to a certain extent, by his 
 daughter telling him that the old lady was excessively 
 weak, and that her cough was almost incessant, and that 
 she spoke with extreme difficulty. All the comfort that 
 these assurances gave him was dashed by a settled convic- 
 tion of Miss Betty's subtlety. "She 's like one of the wild 
 foxes they have in Crim Tartary; and when you think they 
 are dead, they 're up and at you before you can look round." 
 He affirmed no more than the truth when he said that "he 'd 
 rather walk barefoot to Kilbeggan than go up that stair to 
 see her." 
 
 There was a strange conflict in his mind all this time 
 between these ignoble fears and the efforts he was making 
 to seem considerate and gentle by Kate's assurance that a 
 cruel word, or even a harsh tone, would be sure to kill her. 
 "You '11 have to be very careful, papa dearest," she said. 
 "Her nerves are completely shattered, and every respiration 
 seems as if it would be the last." 
 
 Mistrust was, however, so strong in him that he would 
 have employed any subterfuge to avoid the interview ; but 
 the Rev. Luke Delany, who had arrived to give her "the 
 consolations," as he briefly phrased it, insisted on Kear- 
 ney's attending to receive the old lady's forgiveness before 
 she died. 
 
 "Upon my conscience," muttered Kearney, "I was 
 always under the belief it was I was injured; but, as the 
 
A MISERABLE MORNING. 543 
 
 priest says, ' it 's only on one's death-bed he sees things 
 clearly. " 
 
 As Kearney groped his way through the darkened room, 
 shocked at his own creaking shoes, and painfully convinced 
 that he was somehow deficient in delicacy, a low faint cough 
 guided him to the sofa where Miss O'Shea lay. "Is that 
 Mathew Kearney?" said she, feebly. "I think I know 
 his foot." 
 
 "Yes, indeed, bad luck to them for shoes. Wherever 
 Davy Morris gets the leather I don't know; but it 's as loud 
 as a barrel-organ." 
 
 " Maybe they 're cheap, Mathew. One puts up with many 
 a thing for a little cheapness." 
 
 "That's the first shot!" muttered Kearney to himself, 
 while he gave a little cough to avoid reply. 
 
 "Father Luke has been telling me, Mathew, that before 
 I go this long journey I ought to take care to settle any 
 little matter here that 's on my mind. ' If there 's anybody 
 you bear an ill will to,' says he, ' if there 's any one has 
 wronged you, ' says he, ' told lies of you, or done you any 
 bodily harm, send for him, ' says he, ' and let him hear your 
 forgiveness out of your own mouth. I'll take care after- 
 wards,' says Father Luke, ' that he '11 have to settle the 
 account with me ; but you must n't mind that. You must 
 be able to tell St. Joseph that you come with a clean breast 
 and a good conscience; and that's" — here she sighed 
 heavily several times — "and that's the reason I sent for 
 you, Mathew Kearney ! " 
 
 Poor Kearney sighed heavily over that category of mis- 
 doers with whom he found himself classed, but he said 
 nothing. 
 
 "I don't want to say anything harsh to you, Mathew, 
 nor have I strength to listen, if you 'd try to defend your- 
 self; time is short with me now; but this I must say, if 
 I 'm here now, sick and sore, and if the poor boy in the 
 other room is lying down with his fractured head, it is you, 
 and you alone, have the blame." 
 
 " May the blessed Virgin give me patience ! " muttered 
 he, as he wrung his hands despairingly. 
 
 "I hope she will; and give you more, Mathew Kearney, 
 
544 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 I hope she '11 give you a hearty repentance. I hope she '11 
 teach you that the few days that remain to you in this life 
 are short enough for contrition ; aye, — contrition and 
 castigation." 
 
 "Ain't I getting it now?" muttered he; but low as he 
 spoke the words, her quick hearing had caught them. 
 
 "I hope you are; it is the last bit of friendship I can do 
 you. You have a hard, worldly, selfish nature, Mathew; 
 you had it as a boy, and it grew worse as you grew older. 
 What many believed high spirits in you was nothing else 
 than the reckless devilment of a man that only thought of 
 himself. You could afford to be — at least, to look — light- 
 hearted, for you cared for nobody. You squandered your 
 little property, and you 'd have made away with the few 
 acres that belonged to your ancestors if the law would have 
 let you. As for the way you brought up your children, 
 that lazy boy below stairs, that never did a hand's turn, is 
 proof enough; and poor Kitty, just because she wasn't like 
 the rest of you, how she 's treated ! " 
 
 "How is that, — what is my cruelty there?" cried he. 
 
 "Don't try to make yourself out worse than you are," 
 said she, sternly, "and pretend that you don't know the 
 wrong you done her." 
 
 "May I never — if I understand what you mean." 
 
 " Maybe you thought it was no business of yours to pro- 
 vide for your own child. Maybe you had a notion that it 
 was enough that she had her food and a roof over her while 
 you were here, and that somehow — anyhow — she 'd get on, 
 as they call it, when you were in the other place. Mathew 
 Kearney, I '11 say nothing so cruel to you as your own con- 
 science is saying this minute; or, maybe, with that light 
 heart that makes your friends so fond of you, you never 
 bothered yourself about her at all; and that's the way it 
 come about." 
 
 " What came about? I want to know that" 
 
 "First and foremost, I don't think the law will let you. 
 I don't believe you can charge your estate against the 
 entail. I have a note there to ask McKeown's opinion; 
 and if I'm right, I '11 set apart a sum in my will to contest 
 it in the Queen's Bench. I tell you this to your face, 
 
A MISERABLE MORNING 545 
 
 Mathew Kearney, and I 'm going where I can tell it to 
 somebody better than a hard-hearted, cruel old man." 
 
 "What is it that I want to do, and that the law won't let 
 me ? " asked he, in the most imploring accents. 
 
 "At least twelve honest men will decide it." 
 
 "Decide what! in the name of the saints?" cried he. 
 
 "Don't be profane ; don't parade your unbelieving notions 
 to a poor old woman on her death-bed. You may want to 
 leave your daughter a beggar, and your son little better, 
 but you have no right to disturb my last moments with your 
 terrible blasphemies." 
 
 "I'm fairly bothered now," cried he, as his two arms 
 dropped powerlessly to his sides. "So help me, if I know 
 whether I 'm awake or in a dream." 
 
 "It's an excuse won't serve you where you'll be soon 
 going, and I warn you, don't trust it." 
 
 "Have a little pity on me. Miss Betty, darling," said he, 
 in his most coaxing tone; "and tell me what it is I have 
 done?" 
 
 ''You mean what you are trying to do; but what, please 
 the Virgin, we '11 not let you! " 
 
 "Whsit is that?" 
 
 "And what, weak and ill, and dying as I am, I 've 
 strength enough left in me to prevent, Mathew Kearney; 
 and if you '11 give me that Bible there, I '11 kiss it, and take 
 my oath that, if he marries her, he '11 never put foot in a 
 house of mine, nor inherit an acre that belongs to me ; and 
 all that I '11 leave in my will shall be my — well, I won't say 
 what; only it's something he'll not have to pay a legacy 
 duty on. Do you understand me now, or ain't I plain 
 enough yet? " 
 
 "No, not yet. You '11 have to make it clearer still." 
 
 "Faith, I must say you did not pick up much 'cuteness 
 from your adopted daughter." 
 
 "Who is she?" 
 
 "The Greek hussy that you want to marry my nephew, 
 
 and give a dowry to out of the estate that belongs to your 
 
 son. I know it all, Mathew. I was n't two hours in the 
 
 , house before my old woman brought me the story from 
 
 Mary. Aye, stare if you like, but they all know it below 
 
 35 
 
546 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 stairs; and a nice way you are discussed in your own 
 house! Getting a promise out of a poor boy in a brain 
 fever, making him give a pledge in his ravings! Won't it 
 tell well in a court of justice, of a magistrate, a county 
 gentleman, a Kearney of Kilgobbin? Oh, Mathew, Mathew, 
 I 'm ashamed of you! " 
 
 " Upon my oath, you 're making me ashamed of myself 
 that I sit here and listen to you," cried he, carried beyond 
 all endurance. "Abusing, aye, blackguarding me this 
 last hour about a lying story that came from the kitchen. 
 It 's you that ought to be ashamed, old lady. Not, indeed, 
 for believing ill of an old friend, — for that 's nature in you, 
 — but for not having common sense, just common sense 
 to guide you, and a little common decency to warn you. 
 Look now, there is not a word, there is not a syllable of 
 truth in the whole story. Nobody ever thought of your 
 nephew asking my niece to marry him; and if he did, 
 she wouldn't have him. She looks higher, and she has 
 a right to look higher, than to be the wife of an Irish 
 squireen." 
 
 "Go on, Mathew, go on. You waited for me to be as I 
 am now, before you had courage for words like these." 
 
 "Well, I ask your pardon, and ask it in all humiliation 
 and sorrow. My temper — bad luck to it ! — gets the better, 
 or maybe it 's the worse, of me at times, and I say fifty 
 things that I know I don't feel; just the way sailors load a 
 gun with anything in the heat of an action." 
 
 "I 'm not in a condition to talk of sea-fights, Mr. Kearney, 
 though I'm obliged to you all the same for trying to amuse 
 me. You '11 not think me rude if I ask you to send Kate to 
 me? And please to tell Father Luke that I '11 not see him 
 this morning. My nerves have been sorely tried. One 
 word before you go, Mathew Kearney; and have compas- 
 sion enough not to answer me. You may be a just man 
 and an honest man ; you may be fair in your dealings, and 
 all that your tenants say of you may be lies and calumnies ; 
 but to insult a poor old woman on her death-bed is cruel 
 and unfeeling; and I'll tell you more, Mathew, it's 
 cowardly and it's — " 
 
 Kearney did not wait to hear what more it might be, for 
 
A MISERABLE MORNING. 547 
 
 he was already at the door, and rushed out as if he was 
 escaping from a fire. 
 
 "I'm glad he's better than they made him out," said 
 Miss Betty to herself, in atone of calm soliloquy; "and 
 he '11 not be worse for some of the home truths I told him." 
 And with this she drew on her silk mittens, and arranged 
 her cap composedly, while she waited for Kate's arrival. 
 
 As for poor Kearney, other troubles were awaiting him 
 in his study, where he found his son and Mr. Holmes, the 
 lawyer, sitting before a table covered with papers. "I have 
 no head for business now," cried Kearney. "I don't feel 
 over well to-day; and if you want to talk to me, you '11 have 
 to put it off till to-morrow." 
 
 "Mr. Holmes must leave for town, my Lord," interposed 
 Dick, in his most insinuating tone, "and he only wants a 
 few minutes with you before he goes." 
 
 "And it's just what he won't get. I would not see the 
 Lord Lieutenant if he was here now." 
 
 "The trial is fixed for Tuesday, the 19th, my Lord,'* 
 cried Holmes, "and the national press has taken it up in 
 such a way that we have no chance whatever. The verdict 
 will be ' Guilty,' without leaving the box; and the whole 
 voice of public opinion will demand the very heaviest sen- 
 tence the law can pronounce." 
 
 "Think of that poor fellow, O'Shea, just rising from a 
 sick-bed," said Dick, as his voice shook with agitation. 
 
 "They can't hang him." 
 
 "No, for the scoundrel Gill is alive, and will be the 
 chief witness on the trial; but they may give him two 
 years with prison labor, and if they do, it will kill him." 
 
 "I don't know that. I 've seen more than one fellow 
 come out fresh and hearty after a spell. In fact, the plain 
 diet and the regular work and the steady habits are won- 
 derful things for a young man that has been knocking about 
 in a town life." 
 
 "Oh, father, don't speak that way. I know Gorman 
 well, and I can swear he'd not survive it." 
 
 Kearney shook his head doubtingly, and muttered, 
 "There 's a great deal said about wounded pride and injured 
 feelings; but the truth is, these things are like a bad colic, 
 
548 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 mighty hard to bear, if you like, but nobody ever dies 
 of it." 
 
 "From all I hear about young Mr. O'Shea," said Holmes, 
 "I am led to believe he will scarcely live through an 
 imprisonment." 
 
 "To be sure! Why not? At three or four-and-twenty 
 we 're all of us high-spirited and sensitive and noble- 
 hearted, and we die on the spot if there 's a word against 
 our honor. It is only after we cross the line in life, wher- 
 ever that be, that we become thick-skinned and hardened, 
 and mind nothing that does not touch our account at the 
 bank. Sure I know the theory well ! Ay, and the only bit 
 of truth in it all is that we cry out louder when we 're 
 young, for we are not so well used to bad treatment." 
 
 *' Right or wrong, no man likes to have the whole press 
 of a nation assailing him, and all the sympathies of a people 
 against him," said Holmes. 
 
 " And what can you and your brothers in wigs do against 
 that? Will all your little beguiling ways and insinuating 
 tricks turn the ' Pike ' and the ' Irish Cry ' from what sells 
 their papers? Here it is now, Mr. Holmes, and I can't put 
 it shorter. Every man that lives in Ireland knows in his 
 heart he must live in hot water ; but somehow, though he 
 may not like it, he gets used to it, and he finds it does him 
 no harm in the end. There was an uncle of my own was in 
 a passion for forty years, and he died at eighty-six." 
 
 " I wish I could only secure your attention, my Lord, for 
 ten minutes." 
 
 " And what would you do. Counsellor, if you had it? " 
 
 ''You see, my Lord, there are some very grave questions 
 here. First of all, you and your brother magistrates had no 
 right to accept bail. The injury was too grave : Gill's life, 
 as the doctor's certificate will prove, was in danger. It was 
 for a judge in Chambers to decide whether bail could be 
 taken. They will move, therefore, in the Queen's Bench, 
 for a mandamus — " 
 
 " May I never, if you won't drive me mad ! " cried Kearney, 
 passionately ; " and I 'd rather be picking oakum this minute 
 than listening to all the possible misfortunes briefs and law- 
 yers could bring on me." 
 
A MISERABLE MORNING. 549 
 
 '' Just listen to Holmes, father," whispered Dick. ♦' He 
 thinks that Gill might be got over, — that if done 'oy you 
 with three or four hundred pounds, he'd either make his 
 evidence so light, or he 'd contradict himself, or, better than 
 all, he 'd not make an appearance at the trial — " 
 
 "Compounding a felony! Catch me at it!" cried the 
 old man, with a yell. 
 
 " Well, Joe Atlee will be here to-night," continued Dick. 
 " He 's a clever fellow at all rogueries. Will you let him see 
 if it can't be arranged? " 
 
 " I don't care who does it, so it is n't Mathew Kearney," 
 said he, angrily, for his patience could endure no more. " If 
 you won't leave me alone now, I '11 go out and sit on the 
 bog, and upon my conscience I won't say that I '11 not 
 throw myself into a bog-hole ! " 
 
 There was a tone of such perfect sincerity in his speech 
 that, without another word, Dick took the lawyer's arm, and 
 led him from the room. 
 
 A third voice was heard outside as they issued forth, and 
 Kearney could just make out that it was Major Lockwood, 
 who was asking Dick if he might have a few minutes' con- 
 versation with his father. 
 
 " I don't suspect you'll find my father much disposed for 
 conversation just now. I think if you would not mind 
 making your visit to him at another time — " 
 
 " Just so ! " broke in the old man, " if you 're not coming 
 with a strait- waistcoat, or a coil of rope to hold me down, 
 I 'd say it's better to leave me to myself." 
 
 Whether it was that the Major was undeterred by these 
 forbidding evidences, or that what he deemed the importance 
 of his communication warranted some risk, certain it is he 
 lingered at the door, and stood there where Dick and the 
 lawyer had gone and left him. 
 
 A faint tap at the door at last apprised Kearney that some 
 one was without, and he hastily, half angrily, cried, " Come 
 in ! " Old Kearney almost started with surprise as the 
 Major walked in. 
 
 "I'm not going to make any apology for intruding on 
 you," cried he. " What I want to say shall be said in three 
 words, and I cannot endure the suspense of not having them 
 
650 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 said and answered. I 've had a whole night of feverish 
 
 anxiety, and a worse morning, thinking and turning over 
 
 the thing in my mind, and settled it must be at once, one 
 
 way or other, for my head will not stand it." 
 
 *' My own is tried pretty hard, and I can feel for you," 
 
 said Kearney, with a grim humor. 
 ■ "I 've come to ask if you '11 give me your daughter ? " and 
 
 his face became blood-red with the effort the words had 
 
 cost him. 
 ! " Give you my daughter? " cried Kearney. 
 
 ''I want to make her my wife, and as I know little about 
 , courtship, and have nobody here that could settle this affair 
 
 I for me, — for Walpole is thinking of his own concerns, — 
 
 I I 've thought the best way, as it was the shortest, was to 
 ^ come at once to yourself : I have got a few documents here 
 
 that will show you I have enough to live on, and to make 
 i a tidy settlement, and do all that ought to be done." 
 ? " I 'm sure you are an excellent fellow, and I like you 
 I myself; but you see. Major, a man doesn't dispose of his 
 i daughter like his horse, and I 'd like to hear what she would 
 ' say to the bargain." 
 
 *' I suppose you could ask her? " 
 
 "Well, indeed, that's true, I could ask her; but on the 
 
 whole. Major, don't you think the question would come 
 
 better from yourself?" 
 '' That means courtship? " 
 *' Yes, I admit it is* liable to that objection, but somehow 
 
 it's the usual course." 
 I "No, no," said the other, slowly, "I could not manage 
 \ that. I 'm sick of bachelor life, and I 'm ready to send in 
 I my papers and have done with it, but I don't know how to 
 i go about the other. Not to say, Kearney," added he, more 
 j boldly, " that I think there is something Confoundedly mean 
 I in that daily pursuit of a woman, till by dint of importunity, 
 \ and one thing or another, you get her to like you ! What 
 : can she know of her own mind after three or four months of 
 '; what these snobs call attentions ? How is she to say how 
 
 much is mere habit, how much is gratified vanity of having a 
 
 fellow dangling after her, how much the necessity of showing 
 
 the world she is not compromised by the cad's solicitations ? 
 
A MISERABLE MORNING. 551 
 
 Take my word for it, Kearney, my way is the best. Be able^ 
 to go up like a man and tell the girl, ' It 's all arranged. 
 I 've shown the old cove that I can take care of you, he has 
 seen that I 've no debts or mortgages ; I 'm ready to behave 
 handsomely, what do you say yourself?'" 
 
 '' She might say, ' I know nothing about you. I may 
 possibly not see much to dislike, but how do I know I should 
 like you?'" 
 
 *'And I'd say, 'I'm one of those fellows that are the 
 same all through, to-day as I was yesterday, and to-morrow 
 the same. When I 'm in a bad temper, I go out on the moors 
 and walk it off, and I 'm not hard to live with.' " 
 
 *' There's many a bad fellow a woman might like better." 
 
 '' All the luckier for me, then, that I don't get her." 
 
 ''I might say, too," said Kearney, with a smile, "how 
 much do you know of my daughter, — of her temper, her 
 tastes, her habits, and her likings? What assurance have 
 you that you would suit each other, and that you are not as 
 wide apart in character as in country?" 
 
 "I'll answer for that. She's always good-tempered, 
 cheerful, and light-hearted. She 's always nicely dressed and 
 polite to every one. She manages this old house and these 
 stupid bog-trotters till one fancies it a fine establishment 
 and a first-rate household, She rides like a lion, and I'd 
 rather hear her laugh than I'd listen to Patti." 
 
 " I '11 call all that mighty like being in love." 
 
 " Do if you like, — but answer me my question." 
 
 "That is more than I'm able; but I'll consult my 
 daughter. I '11 tell her pretty much in your own words all 
 you have said to me, and she shall herself give the answer." 
 
 " All right, and how soon ? " 
 
 " Well, in the course of the day. Should she say that she 
 does not understand being wooed in this manner, that she 
 would like more time to learn something more about your- 
 self, that, in fact, there is something too peremptory in this 
 mode of proceeding, I would not say she was wrong." 
 
 " But if she says yes frankly, you '11 let me know at 
 once? " 
 
 " I will — on the spot." 
 
CHAPTER LXXIX. 
 
 PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS. 
 
 •fHE news of Nina's engagement to Walpole soon spread 
 through the castle at Kilgobbin, and gave great satisfaction ; 
 even the humbler members of the household were delighted 
 to think there would be a wedding and all its appropriate 
 festivity. 
 
 When the tidings at length arrived at Miss O'Shea's room, 
 so reviving were the effects upon her spirits that the old 
 lady insisted she should be dressed and carried down to the 
 drawing-room, that the bridegroom might be presented to her 
 in all form. 
 
 Though Nina herself chafed at such a proceeding, and 
 called it a most "insufferable pretension," she was perhaps 
 not sorry secretly at the opportunity afforded herself to let 
 the tiresome old woman guess how she regarded her, and 
 what might be their future relations towards each other. 
 *' Not indeed," added she, " that we are likely ever to meet 
 again, or that I should recognize her beyond a bow if we 
 should." 
 
 As for Kearney, the announcement that Miss Betty was 
 about to appear in public filled him with unmixed terror, and 
 he muttered drearily as he went, "There'll be wigs on the 
 Green for this." Nor was Walpole himself pleased at the 
 arrangement. Like most men in his position, he could not 
 be brought to see the delicacy or the propriety of being 
 paraded as an object of public inspection, nor did he per- 
 ceive the fitness of that display of trinkets which he had 
 brought with him as presents, and the sight of which had 
 become a sort of public necessity. 
 
 Not the least strange part of the whole procedure was 
 that no one could tell where or how or with whom it 
 
PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS. 553 
 
 originated. It was like one of those movements which are 
 occasionally seen in political life, where, without the direct 
 intervention of any precise agent, a sort of diffused atmos- 
 phere of public opinion suffices to produce results and effect 
 changes that all are ready to disavow but accept of. 
 
 The mere fact of the pleasure the prospect afforded to Miss 
 Betty prevented Kate from offering opposition to what she 
 felt to be both bad in taste and ridiculous. 
 
 "That old lady imagines, I believe, that I anT to come 
 down like a pretendu in a French vaudeville, — dressed in 
 a tail-coat, with a white tie and white gloves, and perhaps 
 receive her benediction. She mistakes herself, she mistakes 
 us. If there was a casket of uncouth old diamonds, or 
 some marvellous old point-lace to grace the occasion, we 
 might play our parts with a certain decorous hypocrisy; 
 but to be stared at through a double eye-glass by a snuffy 
 old woman in black mittens, is more than one is called on 
 to endure, — eh, Lockwood ? " 
 
 " I don't know. I think I'd go through it all gladly to 
 have the occasion." 
 
 " Have a little patience, old fellow, it will all come right. 
 My worthy relatives — for I suppose I can call them so now 
 — are too shrewd people to refuse the offer of such a fellow 
 as you. They have that native pride that demands a certain 
 amount of etiquette and deference. They must not seem to 
 rise too eagerly to the fly ; but only give them time, — give 
 them time, Lockwood." 
 
 '' Aye, but the waiting in this uncertainty is terrible to 
 me." 
 
 " Let it be certainty, then, and for very little I'll ensure 
 you ! Bear this in mind, my dear fellow, and you '11 see how 
 little need tliere is for apprehension. You, — and the men 
 like you, — snug fellows with comfortable estates and no 
 mortgages, unhampered by ties and uninfluenced by con- 
 nections, are a species of plant that is rare everywhere, 
 but actually never grew at all in Ireland, where every one 
 spent double his income, and seldom dared to move a step 
 without a committee of relations. Old Kearney has gone 
 through that fat volume of the gentry and squirearchy of 
 England last night, and from Sir Simon de Lokewood, 
 
554 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 who was killed at Crecy, down to a certain major in the 
 Carbineers, he knows you all." 
 
 ^' I '11 bet you a thousand they say No." 
 
 "I've not got a thousand to pay if I should lose, but I '11 
 lay a pony — two, if you like — that you are an accepted man 
 this day — aye, before dinner." 
 
 " If I only thought so ! " 
 
 " Confound it, — you don't pretend you are in love ! " 
 
 '' I don't know whether I am or not, but I do know howl 
 should like to bring that nice girl back to Hampshire, and 
 install her at the Dingle. I 've a tidy stable, some nice shoot- 
 ing, a good trout-stream, and then I should have the prettiest 
 wife in the county." 
 
 ' ' Happy dog ! Yours is the real philosophy of life. The 
 fellows who are realistic enough to reckon up the material 
 elements of their happiness, — who have little to speculate on 
 and less to unbelieve, — they are right." 
 
 '' If you mean that I '11 never break my heart because I 
 don't get in for the county, that 's true, — I don't deny it. 
 But come, tell me, is it all settled about your business? 
 Has the uncle been asked? — has he spoken?" 
 
 "He has been asked and given his consent. My dis- 
 tinguished father-in-law, the Prince, has been telegraphed 
 to this morning, and his reply may be here to-night or to- 
 morrow. At all events, we are determined that even should 
 he prove adverse, we shall not be deterred from our wishes 
 by the caprice of a parent who has abandoned us." 
 
 " It 's what people would call a love-match." 
 
 "I sincerely trust it is. If her affections were not inex- 
 tricably engaged, it is not possible that such a girl could 
 pledge her future to a man as humble as myself." 
 
 " That is, she is very much in love with you?'' 
 
 " I hope the astonishment of your question does not arise 
 from its seeming difficulty of belief? " 
 
 " No, not so much that, but I thought there might have 
 been a little heroics, or whatever it is, on your side." 
 
 " Most dull dragoon, do you not know that, so long as a 
 man spoons, he can talk of his affection for a woman ; but 
 that, once she is about to be his wife or is actually his wife, 
 he limits his avowals to her love for Jiim f " 
 
PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS. 655 
 
 *' I never heard that before. I say, what a swell you are 
 this morning ! The cock-pheasants will mistake you for one 
 of them." 
 
 '* Nothing can be simpler, nothing quieter, I trust, than a 
 suit of dark purple knickerbockers ; and you may see that 
 my thread stockings and my coarse shoes presuppose a 
 stroll in the plantations, where, indeed, I mean to smoke 
 my morning cigar." 
 
 " She'll make you give up tobacco^ I suppose?" 
 
 '' Nothing of the kind, — a thorough woman of the world 
 enforces no such penalties as these. True free- trade is the 
 great matrimonial maxim, and for people of small means it 
 is inestimable. The formula may be stated thus, — ' Dine 
 at the best houses, and give tea at your own.' " 
 
 What other precepts of equal wisdom Walpole was pre- 
 pared to enunciate were lost to the world by a message 
 informing him that Miss Betty was in the drawing-room, 
 and the family assembled to see him. 
 
 Cecil Walpole possessed a very fair stock of that useful 
 quality called assurance ; but he had no more than he needed 
 to enter that large room, where the assembled family sat in 
 a half-circle, and stand to be surveyed by Miss O'Shea's eye- 
 glass, unabashed. Nor was the ordeal the less trying as he 
 overheard the old lady ask her neighbor, "if he was n't the 
 image of the Knave of Diamonds." 
 
 " I thought you were the other man ! " said she, curtly, as 
 he made his bow. 
 
 " I deplore the disappointment, madam, — even though I 
 do not comprehend it." 
 
 "It was the picture, the photograph, of the other man I 
 saw, — a fine, tall, dark man, with long moustaches." 
 
 "The fine, tall, dark man, with the long moustaches, is in 
 the house, and will be charmed to be presented to you." 
 
 " Aye, aye ! presented is all very fine ; but that won't make 
 bim the bridegroom," said she, with a laugh. 
 
 "I sincerely trust it will not, madam." 
 
 " And it is you, then, are Major Walpole? " 
 
 "Mr. Walpole, madam, — my friend Lockwood is the 
 Major." 
 
 "To be sure. I have it right now. You are the young 
 
556 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 man that got into that unhappy scrape, and got the Lord 
 Lieutenant turned away — " 
 
 " I wonder how you endure this," burst out Nina, as she 
 arose and walked angrily towards a window. 
 
 " I don't think I caught what the young lady said ; but if 
 it was that what cannot be cured must be endured, it is true 
 enough ; and I suppose that they '11 get over your blunder as 
 they have done many another." 
 
 '* I live in that hope, madam." 
 
 " Not but it 's a bad beginning in public life ; and a stupid 
 mistake hangs long on a man's memory. You're young, 
 however, and people are generous enough to believe it might 
 be a youthful indiscretion." 
 
 '' You give me great comfort, madam." 
 
 " And now you are going to risk another venture?" 
 
 "I sincerely trust on safer grounds." 
 
 ''That's what they all think. I never knew a man that 
 didn't believe he drew the prize in matrimony. Ask him, 
 however, six months after he's tied. Say, 'What do you 
 think of your ticket now?' Eh, Mat Kearney? It doesn't 
 take twenty or thirty years' quarrelling and disputing to 
 show one that a lottery with so many blanks is just a 
 swindle." 
 
 A loud bang of the door, as Nina flounced out in indigna- 
 tion, almost shook the room. 
 
 "There's a temper you'll know more of yet, young 
 gentleman; and, take my word for it, it's only in stage- 
 plays that a shrew is ever tamed." 
 
 "I declare," cried Dick, losing all patience, "I think 
 Miss O'Shea is too unsparing of us all. We have our faults, 
 I 'm sure ; but public correction will not make us more 
 comfortable." 
 
 " It wasn't your comfort I was thinking of, young man ; 
 and if I thought of your poor father's, I 'd have advised him 
 to put you out an apprentice. There 's many a light busi- 
 ness, — like stationery, or figs, or children's toys, — and they 
 want just as little capital as capacity." 
 
 " Miss Betty," said Kearney, stiffl}^, " this is not the time 
 nor the place for these discussions. Mr. Walpole was polite 
 enough to present himself here to-day to have the honor 
 
PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS. 557 
 
 of makiDg your acquaintaDce, and to announce his future 
 marriage." 
 
 ''A great event for us all, — and we 're proud of it ! It's 
 what the newspapers will call a great day for the Bog of 
 Allen. Eh, Mat? The Princess, — God forgive me, but 
 I 'm always calling her Kostigan, — but the Princess will be 
 set down niece to Lord Kilgobbin ; and if you " — and she 
 addressed Walpole — ''haven't a mock title and a mock 
 estate, you '11 be the only one without them ! " 
 
 '' I don't think any one will deny us our tempers," cried 
 Kearney. 
 
 "Here's Lockwood," cried Walpole, delighted to see his 
 friend enter, though he as quickly endeavored to retreat. 
 
 "Come in. Major," said Kearney. "We're all friends 
 here. Miss O'Shea, this is Major Lockwood, of the Carbi- 
 neers — Miss O'Shea." 
 
 Lockwood bowed stiffly, but did not speak. 
 
 " Be attentive to the old woman," whispered Walpole. 
 "A word from her will make your affair all right." 
 
 " I have been very desirous to have had the honor of this 
 introduction, madam," said Lockwood, as he seated himself 
 at her side. 
 
 "Was not that a clever diversion I accomplished with 
 * the Heavy ' ? " said Walpole, as he drew away Kearney 
 and his son into a window. 
 
 "I never heard her much worse than to-day," said Dick. 
 
 "I don't know," hesitated Kilgobbin. "I suspect she is 
 breaking. There is none of the sustained virulence I used 
 to remember of old. She lapses into half-mildness at 
 moments." 
 
 "I own I did not catch them, nor, I 'm afraid, did Nina," 
 said Dick. "Look there! I'll be shot, if she 's not giving 
 your friend the Major a lesson! When she performs in 
 that way with her hands, you may swear she is didactic." 
 
 "I think I '11 go to his relief," said Walpole; "but I own 
 it's a case for the V. C." 
 
 As Walpole drew nigh, he heard her saying, " Marry one 
 of your own race, and you will jog on well enough. Marry 
 a Frenchwoman or a Spaniard, and she '11 lead her own life, 
 and be very well satisfied; but a poor Irish girl, with a 
 
558 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 fresh heart and a joyous temper, — what is to become of 
 her, with your dull habits and your dreary intercourse, 
 your county society and your Chinese manners ! " 
 
 ''Miss O'Shea is telling me that I must not look for a 
 wife among her countrywomen," said Lockwood, with a 
 touching attempt to smile. 
 
 ''What I overheard was not encouraging," said Walpole; 
 "but I think Miss O'Shea takes a low estimate of our social 
 temperament." 
 
 "Nothing of the kind! All I say is, you'll do mighty 
 well for each other; or, for aught I know, you might in- 
 termarry with the Dutch or the Germans; but it 's a down- 
 right shame to unite your slow sluggish spirits with the 
 sparkling brilliancy and impetuous joy of an Irish girl. 
 That 's a union I 'd never consent to." 
 
 "I hope this is no settled resolution," said Walpole, speak- 
 ing in a low whisper; "for I want to bespeak your especial 
 influence in my friend's behalf. Major Lockwood is a 
 most impassioned 'admirer of Miss Kearney, and has 
 already declared as much to her father," 
 
 "Come over here, Mat Kearney! come over here this 
 moment!" cried she, half wild with excitement. "What 
 new piece of roguery, what fresh intrigue is this? Will 
 you dare to tell me you had a proposal for Kate, for my 
 own god-daughter, without even so much as telling me?" 
 
 "My dear Miss Betty, be calm, be cool for one minute, 
 and I '11 tell you everything." 
 
 "Ay, when I 've found it out. Mat! " 
 
 "I profess I don't think my friend's pretensions are dis- 
 cussed with much delicacy, time and place considered," said 
 Walpole. 
 
 "We have something to think of as well as delicacy, 
 young man; there's a woman's happiness to be remem- 
 bered." 
 
 "Here it is, now, — the whole business," said Kearney. 
 "The Major there asked me yesterday to get my daughter's 
 consent to his addresses." 
 
 "And you never told me," cried Miss Betty. 
 
 "No, indeed, nor herself neither; for after I turned it 
 over in my mind I began to see it would n't do — " 
 
PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS. 559 
 
 "How do you mean not do? " asked Lock wood. 
 
 '* Just let me finish. What I mean is this, — if a man 
 wants to marry an Irish girl, he mustn't begin by asking 
 leave to make love to her — " 
 
 "Mat 's right! " cried the old lady, stoutly. 
 
 "And, above all, he oughtn't to think that the short cut 
 to her heart is through his broad acres." 
 
 "Mat 's right, — quite right! " 
 
 "And besides this, that the more a man dwells on his 
 belongings, and the settlements, and such like, the more he 
 seems to say, ' I may not catch your fancy in everything, I 
 may not ride as boldly or dance as well as somebody else ; 
 but never mind, — you 're making a very prudent match, and 
 there is a deal of pure affection in the Three per Cents. ' " 
 
 "And I '11 give you another reason," said Miss Betty, 
 resolutely. "Kate Kearney cannot have two husbands, 
 and I 've made her promise to marry my nephew this 
 morning." 
 
 "What! without any leave of mine? " exclaimed Kearney. 
 
 "Just so. Mat. She '11 marry him if you give your con- 
 sent; but whether you will or not, she '11 never marry 
 another." 
 
 "Is there, then, a real engagement?" whispered Walpole 
 to Kearney. "Has my friend here got his answer? " 
 
 "He '11 not wait for another," said Lockwood, haughtily, 
 as he arose. "I 'm for town, Cecil," whispered he. 
 
 "So shall I be this evening," replied Walpole, in the 
 same tone. "I must hurry over to London and see Lord 
 Danesbury. I 've my troubles, too." And so saying, he 
 drew his arm within the Major's, and led him away; while 
 Miss Betty, with Kearney on one side of her and Dick on 
 the other, proceeded to recount the arrangement she had 
 made to make over the Barn and the estate to Gorman, it 
 being her own intention to retire altogether from the world 
 and finish her days in the "Retreat." 
 
 "And a very good thing to do, too," said Kearney, who 
 was too much impressed with the advantages of the project 
 to rememjber his politeness. 
 
 "I have had enough of it, Mat," added she, in a lugu- 
 brious tone; "and it's all backbiting and lying and mis- 
 
560 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 chief -making, and what 's worse, by the people who might 
 live quietly and let others do the same ! " 
 
 "What you say is true as the Bible." 
 
 ''It may be hard to do it. Mat Kearney; but I'll pray 
 for them in my hours of solitude, and in that blessed 
 Retreat I '11 ask for a blessing on yourself, and that your 
 heart, hard and cruel and worldly as it is now, may be 
 changed ; and that in your last days, — maybe on the bed 
 of sickness, — when you are writhing and twisting with 
 pain, with a bad heart and a worse conscience, when you '11 
 have nobody but hirelings near you, — hirelings that will 
 be robbing you before your eyes, and not waiting till the 
 breath leaves you, — when even the drop of drink to cool 
 your lips — " 
 
 "Don't — don't go on that way. Miss Betty. I 've a cold 
 shivering down the spine of my back this minute, and a 
 sickness creeping all over me." 
 
 "I'm glad of it. I'm glad that my words have power 
 over your wicked old nature, — if it's not too late." 
 
 "If it 's miserable and wretched you wanted to make me, 
 don't fret about your want of success; though, whether it 
 all comes too late, I cannot tell you." 
 
 "We '11 leave that to St. Joseph." 
 
 "Do so! do so! " cried he, eagerly; for he had a shrewd 
 suspicion he would have better chances of mercy at any 
 hands than her own. 
 
 "As for Gorman, if I find that he has any notions about 
 claiming an acre of the property, I '11 put it all into Chan- 
 cery, and the suit will outlive him ; but if he owns he is 
 entirely dependent on my bounty, I '11 settle the Barn and 
 the land on him, and the deed shall be signed the day 
 he marries your daughter. People tell you that you can't 
 take your money with you into the next world. Mat Kearney ; 
 and a greater lie was never uttered. Thanks to the laws of 
 England, and the Court of Equity in particular, it's the 
 very thing you can do ! Aye, and you can provide, besides, 
 that everybody but the people that had a right to it shall 
 have a share. So I say to Gorman O'Shea, beware what 
 you are at, and don't go on repeating that stupid falsehood 
 about not carrying your debentures into the next world." 
 
PLEASANT CONGRATULATIONS. 561 
 
 ^'You are a wise woman, and you know life well," said 
 he, solemnly. 
 
 "And if I am, it's nothing to sigh over, Mr. Kearney. 
 One is grateful for mercies, but does not groan over th^m 
 like rheumatism or the lumbago." 
 
 *' Maybe I 'm a little out of spirits to-day." 
 
 "I should n't wonder if you were. They tell me you sat 
 over your wine, with that tall man, last night, till nigh 
 one o'clock, and it's not at your time of life that you can 
 do these sort of excesses with impunity; you had a good 
 constitution once, and there 's not much left of it." 
 
 "My patience, I 'm grateful to see, has not quite deserted 
 me." 
 
 "I hope there's other of your virtues you can be more 
 sure of," said she, rising; "for if I was asked your worst 
 failing, I'd say it was your irritability." And with a 
 stern frown, as though to confirm the judicial severity of 
 her words, she nodded her head to him and walked away. 
 
 It was only then that Kearney discovered he was left 
 alone, and that Dick had stolen away, though when or how 
 he could not say. 
 
 "I'm glad the boy was not listening to her, for I'm 
 downright ashamed that I bore it," was his final reflection 
 as he strolled out to take a walk in the plantation. 
 
 36 
 
CHAPTER LXXX. 
 
 A NEW ARRIVAL. 
 
 Though the dinner-party that day at Kilgobbin Castle was 
 deficient in the persons of Lockwood and Walpole, the 
 accession of Joe Atlee to the company made up in a great 
 measure for the loss. He arrived shortly before dinner was 
 announced; and even in the few minutes in the drawing- 
 room, his gay and lively manner, his pleasant flow of small 
 talk, dashed with the lightest of epigrams, and that mar- 
 vellous variety he possessed, made every one delighted 
 with him. 
 
 "I met Walpole and Lockwood at the station, and did 
 my utmost to make them turn back with me. You may 
 laugh, Lord Kilgobbin, but in doing the honors of another 
 man's house, as I was at that moment, I deem myself with- 
 out a rival.'* 
 
 "I wish with all my heart you had succeeded; there is 
 nothing I like as much as a well-filled table," said Kearney. 
 
 "Not that their air and manner," resumed Joe, "im- 
 pressed me strongly with the exuberance of their spirits; a 
 pair of drearier dogs I have not seen for some time, and I 
 believe I told them so." 
 
 "Did they explain their gloom, or even excuse it? " asked 
 Dick. 
 
 "Except on the general grounds of coming away from 
 such fascinating society. Lockwood played sulky, and 
 scarcely vouchsafed a word ; and as for Walpole, he made 
 some high-flown speeches about his regrets and his torn 
 sensibilities, — so like what one reads in a French novel 
 that the very sound of them betrays unreality." 
 
 "But was it then so very impossible to be sorry for leav- 
 ing this?" asked Nina, calmly. 
 
A NEW ARRIVAL. 563 
 
 "Certainly not for any man but Walpole." 
 
 " And why not Walpole ? " 
 
 "Can you ask me? You who know people so well, and 
 read them so clearly ; you, to whom the secret anatomy of 
 the * heart ' is no mystery, and who understand how to trace 
 the fibre of intense selfishness through every tissue of his 
 small nature. He might be miserable at being separated 
 from himself ; there could be no other estrangement woulc^ 
 affect Aim." 
 
 "This was not always your estimate of youv frie7id," said 
 Nina, with a marked emphasis of the last word. 
 
 "Pardon me, it was my unspoken opinion from the first 
 hour I met him. Since then, some space of time has inter- 
 vened ; and though it has made no change in him, I hope 
 it has dealt otherwise with me. I have at least reached the 
 point in life where men not only have convictions, but 
 avow them." 
 
 "Come, come; lean remember what precious good luck 
 you called it to make his acquaintance," cried Dick, half 
 angrily. 
 
 "I don't deny it. I was very nigh drowning at the time, 
 and it was the first plank I caught hold of. I am very 
 grateful to him for the rescue; but I owe him more grati- 
 tude for the opportunity the incident gave me to see these 
 men in their intimacy; to know, and know thoroughly, 
 what is the range, what the stamp of those minds by which 
 states are ruled and masses are governed. Through Wal- 
 pole I knew his master; and through the master I have 
 come to know the slipshod intelligences which, composed 
 of official detail. House of Commons gossip, and ' Times ' 
 leaders, are accepted by us as statesmen. And if — " A 
 very supercilious smile on Nina's mouth arrested him in 
 the current of his speech, and he said: "I know, of course, 
 
 — I know the question you are too polite to ask, but which 
 quivers on your lip: ' Who is the gifted creature that 
 sees all this incompetence and insufficiency around him? ' 
 And I am quite ready to tell you. It is .Joseph Atlee, — 
 Joseph Atlee, who knows that when he and others like him 
 
 — for we are a strong coterie — stop the supply of ammuni* 
 tion, these gentlemen must cease firing. Let the ' Debats ' 
 
564 LOKD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 and the * Times, * the ' Revue des Deux Mondes ' and the 
 ' Saturday, ' and a few more that I need not stop to enu- 
 merate, strike work ; and let us see how much of original 
 thought you will obtain from your Cabinet sages! It is 
 in the clash and collision of the thinkers outside of respon- 
 sibility that these world-revered leaders catch the fire that 
 lights up their policy. The ' Times ' made the Crimean 
 blunder. The ' Siecle * created the Mexican fiasco. The 
 * Kreutz Zeitung ' gave the first impulse to the Schleswig- 
 Holstein imbroglio ; and, if I mistake not, the ' review ' in 
 the last ' Diplomatic Chronicle ' will bear results of which 
 he who now speaks to you will not disown the parentage." 
 
 "The saints be praised! here 's dinner," exclaimed Kear- 
 ney, " or this fellow would talk us into a brain-fever. Kate 
 is dining with Miss Betty again; God bless her for it," 
 muttered he, as he gave his arm to Nina, and led the 
 way. 
 
 "I 've got you a commission as a * Peeler,' Dick," said 
 Joe, as they moved along. " You '11 have to prove that 
 you can read and write, which is more than they would ask 
 of you if you were going into the Cabinet; but we live in 
 an intellectual age, and we test all the cabin-boys, and it is 
 only the steersman we take on trust." 
 
 Though Nina was eager to resent Atlee's impertinence 
 on Walpole, she could not help feeling interested and 
 amused by his sketches of his travels. 
 
 If, in speaking of Greece, he only gave the substance of 
 the article he had written for the "Revue des Deux Mondes," 
 as the paper was yet unpublished, all the remarks were novel, 
 and the anecdotes fresh and sparkling. The tone of light 
 banter and raillery in which he described public life in 
 Greece and Greek statesmen, might have lost some of its 
 authority had any one remembered to count the hours the 
 speaker had spent in Athens; and Nina was certainly 
 indignant at the hazardous effrontery of the criticisms. It 
 was not, then, without intention that she arose to retire 
 while Atlee was relating an interesting story of brigandage; 
 and he, determined to repay the impertinence in kind, con- 
 tinued to recount his history as he arose to open the door 
 for her to pass out. Her insolent look as she swept by was 
 
A NEW ARRIVAL. 565 
 
 met by a smile of admiration on his part that actually made 
 her cheek tingle with anger. 
 
 Old Kearney dozed off gently, under the influence of 
 names of places and persons that did not interest bim; and 
 the two young men drew their chairs to the fire, and grew 
 confidential at once. 
 
 "I think you have sent my cousin away in bad humor," 
 said Dick. 
 
 '^I see it," said Joe, as he slowly puffed his cigar. 
 "That young lady's head has been so cruelly turned by 
 flattery of late, that the man who does not swing incense 
 before her affronts her. " 
 
 "Yes; but you went out of your way to provoke her. It 
 is true she knows little of Greece or Greeks, but it offends 
 her to hear them slighted or ridiculed, and you took pains 
 to do both." 
 
 "Contemptible little country! with a mock army, a mock 
 treasury, and a mock Chamber. The only thing real is 
 the debt and the brigandage." 
 
 "But why tell her so? You actually seemed bent on 
 irritating her." 
 
 "Quite true, — so I was. My dear Dick, you have some 
 lessons to learn in life; and one of them is that, just as it 
 is bad heraldry to put color on color, it is an egregious 
 blunder to follow flattery by flattery. The woman who has 
 been spoiled by over-admiration must be approached with 
 something else as unlike it as may be; pique, annoy, irri- 
 tate, outrage, but take care that you interest her. Let her 
 only come to feel what a very tiresome thing mere adulation 
 is, and she will one day value your two or three civil 
 speeches as gems of priceless worth. It is exactly because 
 I deeply desire to gain her affections, I have begun in this 
 way." 
 
 "You have come too late." 
 
 "How do you mean too late, — she is not engaged?" 
 . "She is engaged; she is to be married to Walpole." 
 
 "To Walpole!" 
 
 "Yes; he came over a few days ago to ask her. There 
 is some question now — I don't well understand it — about 
 some family consent, or an invitation, — something, I 
 
566 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 believe, that Nina insists on, to show the world how hia 
 family welcome her amongst them ; and it is for this he has 
 gone to London, but to be back in eight or nine days, the 
 wedding to take place towards the end of the month." 
 
 ''Is he very much in love?" 
 
 "I should say he is." 
 
 "And she? Of course she could not possibly care for a 
 fellow like Walpole?" 
 
 "1 don't see why not. He is very much the stamp of 
 man girls admire." 
 
 "Not girls like Nina; not girls who aspire to a position 
 in life, and who know that the little talents of the salon no 
 more make a man of the world than the tricks of the circus 
 will make a fox-hunter. These ambitious women — she is 
 one of them — will marry a hopeless idiot if he can bring 
 wealth and rank and a great name; but they will not take a 
 brainless creature who has to work his way up in the world. 
 If she has accepted Walpole, there is pique in it, or ennui^ 
 or that uneasy desire of change that girls suffer from like 
 a malady." 
 
 "I cannot tell you why, but I know she has accepted 
 him." 
 
 "Women are not insensible to the value of second 
 thoughts." 
 
 "You mean she might throw him over, — might jilt 
 him?" 
 
 "I '11 not employ the ugly word that makes the wrong it 
 is only meant to indicate; but there are few of our resolves 
 in life to which we might not move amendment; and the 
 changed opinion a woman forms of a man before marriage 
 would become a grievous injury if it happened after." 
 
 "But must she of necessity change? " 
 
 "If she marry Walpole, I should say certainly. If a girl 
 has fair abilities and a strong temper, — and Nina has a 
 good share of each, — she will endure faults, actual vices, in 
 a man, but she '11 not stand littleness. Walpole has nothing 
 else ; and so I hope to prove to her to-morrow and the day 
 after, — in fact, during those eight or ten days you tell me 
 he will be absent." 
 
 "Will she let you? Will she listen to you? " 
 
A NEW ARRIVAL. 567 
 
 *'Not at first, — at least, not willingly or very easily; 
 but I will show her, by numerous little illustrations and 
 even fables, where these small people not only spoil their 
 fortunes in life, but spoil life itself; and what an irreparable 
 blunder it is to link companionship with one of them. I will 
 sometimes make her laugh, and I may have to make her 
 cry ; it will not be easy, but I shall do it. I shall certainly 
 make her thoughtful ; and if you can do this day by day, 
 so that a woman will recur to the same theme pretty much 
 in the same spirit, you must be a sorry steersman, Master 
 Dick, but you will know how to guide these thoughts, and 
 trace the channel they shall follow." 
 
 " And supposing, which I do not believe, that you could 
 get her to break with Walpole, what could you offer her? " 
 
 "Myself!" 
 
 "Inestimable boon, doubtless; but what of fortune, — 
 position or place in life? " 
 
 ''The first Napoleon used to say that the * power of the 
 unknown number was incommensurable;' and so I don't 
 despair of showing her that a man like myself may be 
 anything." 
 
 Dick shook his head doubtingly, and the other went on: 
 "In this round game we call life it is all * brag.' The 
 fellow with the worst card in the pack, if he '11 only risk his 
 head on it, keep a bold face to the world, and his own coun- 
 sel, will be sure to win. Bear in mind, Dick, that for some 
 time back I have been keeping the company of these great 
 swells who sit highest in the Synagogue and dictate to us 
 small Publicans. I have listened to their hesitating counsels 
 and their uncertain resojves; I have seen the blotted de- 
 spatches and equivocal messages given, to be disavowed if 
 needful; I have assisted at those dress rehearsals where 
 speech was to follow speech, and what seemed an incau- 
 tious avowal by one was to be ' improved ' into a bold 
 declaration by another, ' in another place.' In fact, my 
 good friend, I have been near enough to measure the mighty 
 intelligences that direct us; and if I were not a believer 
 in Darwin, I should be very much shocked for what humanity 
 was coming to. It is no exaggeration that I say, if you 
 were to be in the Home Office and I at the Foreign Office, 
 
568 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 without our names being divulged, there is not a man or 
 woman in England would be the wiser or the worse ; though, 
 if either of us were to take charge of the engine of the 
 Holyhead line, there would be a smash or an explosion 
 before we reached Rugby." 
 
 " All that will not enable you to make a settlement on 
 Nina Kostalergi." 
 
 "No; but I '11 marry her all the same." 
 
 "I don't think so." 
 
 "Will you have a bet on it, Dick? What will you 
 wager ? " 
 
 "A thousand — ten, if I had it; but I'll give you ten 
 pounds on it, which is about as much as either of us could 
 pay." 
 
 " Speak for yourself, Master Dick. As Robert Macaire 
 says, ' Je viens de toucher mes dividendes, ' and 1 am in no 
 want of money. The fact is, so long as a man can pay for 
 certain luxuries in life he is well off; the strictly necessary 
 takes care of itself." 
 
 "Does it? I should like to know how." 
 
 "With your present limited knowledge of life I doubt if 
 I could explain it to you ; but I will try, one of these morn- 
 ings. Meanwhile let us go into the drawing-room and get 
 Mademoiselle to sing for us. She will sing, I take it?" 
 
 "Of course — if asked by you." And there was the very 
 faintest tone of sneer in the words. 
 
 And they did go, and Mademoiselle did sing all that 
 Atlee could ask her for; and she was charming in every 
 way that grace and beauty and the wish to please could 
 make her. Indeed, to such extent did she carry her fasci- 
 nations that Joe grew thoughtful at last, and muttered to 
 himself, "There is vendetta in this. It is only a woman 
 knows how to make a vengeance out of her attractions. " 
 
 "Why are you so serious, Mr. Atlee?" asked she, at last. 
 
 "I was thinking — I mean, I was trying to think — yes, I 
 remember it now," muttered he. "I have had a letter for 
 you all this time in my pocket." 
 
 "A letter from Greece?" asked she, impatiently. 
 
 "No, — at least, I suspect not. It was given me as I 
 drove through the bog by a barefooted boy, who had trotted 
 
A NEW ARRIVAL. 569 
 
 after the car for miles, and at length overtook us by the 
 accident of the horse picking up a stone in his hoof. He 
 said it was for ' some one at the castle,' and I offered to 
 take charge of it, — here it is ; " and he produced a square- 
 shaped envelope of common coarse-looking paper, sealed 
 with red wax, and a shamrock for impress. 
 
 "A begging-letter, I should say, from the outside," said 
 Dick. 
 
 "Except that there is not one so poor as to ask aid from 
 me," added Nina, as she took the document, glanced at the 
 writing, and placed it in her pocket. 
 
 As they separated for the night, and Dick trotted up the 
 stairs at Atlee's side, he said, "I don't think, after all, my 
 ten pounds is so safe as I fancied." 
 
 "Don't you? " replied Joe. "My impressions are all the 
 other way, Dick. It is her courtesy that alarms me. The 
 effort to captivate where there is no stake to win, means 
 mischief. She '11 make me in love with her whether I will 
 or not." The bitterness of his tone, and the impatient bang 
 he gave his door as he passed in, betrayed more of temper 
 than was usual for him to display ; and as Dick sought his 
 room, he muttered to himself, "I'm glad to see that these 
 over-cunning fellows are sure to meet their match, and get 
 beaten even at the game of their own invention." 
 
CHAPTER LXXXI. 
 
 AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT. 
 
 It was no uncommon thing for the tenants to address peti- 
 tions and complaints in writing to Kate ; and it occurred to 
 Nina as not impossible that some one might have bethought 
 him of entreating her intercession in their favor. The look 
 of the letter, and the coarse wax, and the writing, all in a 
 measure strengthened this impression; and it was in the 
 most careless of moods she broke the envelope, scarcely 
 caring to look for the name of the writer, whom she was 
 convinced must be unknown to her. 
 
 She had just let her hair fall freely down on her neck and 
 shoulders, and was seated in a deep chair before her fire, as 
 she opened the paper and read, "Mademoiselle Kostalergi." 
 This beginning, so unlikely for a peasant, made her turn 
 for the name; and she read, in a large full hand, the words 
 "Daniel Donogan." So complete was her surprise, that 
 to satisfy herself there was no trick or deception, she exam- 
 ined the envelope and the seal, and reflected for some min- 
 utes over the mode in which the document had come to her 
 hands. Atlee's story was a very credible one; nothing 
 more likely than that the boy was charged to deliver the 
 letter at the castle, and simply sought to spare himself so 
 many miles of way ; or it might be that he was enjoined to 
 give it to the first traveller he met on his road to Kilgobbin. 
 Nina had little doubt that if Atlee guessed or had reason 
 to know the writer, he would have treated the letter as a 
 secret missive which would give him a certain power over 
 her. 
 
 These thoughts did not take her long, and she turned once 
 more to the letter. "Poor fellow," said she, aloud, "why 
 does he write to me?" And her own voice sent back its 
 
AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT. 571 
 
 surmises to her; and as she thought over him standing on 
 the lonely road, his clasped hands before him, and his hair 
 wafted wildly back from his uncovered head, two heavy 
 tears rolled slowly down her cheeks, and dropped upon her 
 neck. "I am sure he loved me; I know he loved me," 
 muttered she, half aloud. "I have never seen in any eye 
 the same expression that his wore as he lay that morning 
 in the grass. It was not veneration, it was genuine adora- 
 tion. Had I been a saint and wanted worship, there was 
 the very offering that I craved, — a look of painful mean- 
 ing, made up of wonder and devotion, a something that 
 said, Take what course you may, be wilful, be wayward, be 
 even cruel, I am your slave. You may not think me worthy 
 of a thought, you may be so indifferent as to forget me 
 utterly, but my life from this hour has but one spell to 
 charm, one memory to sustain it. It needed not his last 
 words to me to say that my image would lie on his heart 
 forever. Poor fellow, / need not have been added to his 
 sorrows ; he has had his share of trouble without me ! " 
 
 It was some time ere she could return to the letter, which 
 ran thus : — 
 
 "Mademoiselle Kostalergi, — You once rendered me a great 
 service — not alone at some hazard to yourself, but by doing what 
 must have cost you sorely. It is now my turn ; and if the act of 
 repayment is not equal to the original debt, let me ask you to 
 believe that it taxes my strength even more than your generosity 
 once taxed your own. 
 
 " I came here a few days since in the hope that I might see you 
 before I leave Ireland forever ; and while waiting for some fortu- 
 nate chance, I learned that you were betrothed and to be married 
 to the young gentleman who lies ill at Kilgobbin, and whose 
 approaching trial at the assizes is now the subject of so much dis- 
 cussion. I will not tell you — I have no right to tell you — the deep 
 misery with which these tidings filled me. It was no use to teach 
 my heart how vain and impossible were all my hopes with regard to 
 you. It was to no purpose that I could repeat ever aloud to myself 
 how hopeless my pretensions must be. My love for you had become 
 a religion, and what I could deny to a hope, I could still believe. 
 Take that hope away, and I could not imagine how I should face my 
 daily life, how interest myself in its ambitions, and even care to 
 live on. 
 
 " These sad confessions cannot offend you, coming from one even 
 
572 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 as humble as I am. They are all that are left me for consolation, — • 
 they will soon be all I shall have for memory. The little lamp in the 
 lowly shrine comforts the kneeling worshipper far more than it 
 honors the saint ; and the love I bear you is such as this. Forgive me 
 if I have dared these utterances. To save him with whose fortunes 
 your own are to be bound up, became at once my object ; and as I 
 knew with what ingenuity and craft his ruin had been compassed, it 
 required all my efforts to baffle his enemies. The National Press 
 and the National Party have made a great cause of this trial, and 
 determined that tenant-right should be vindicated in the person of 
 this man Gill. 
 
 " I have seen enough of what is intended here to be aware what 
 mischief may be worked by hard swearing, a violent Press, and a 
 jury not insensible to public opinion, — evils, if you like, but evils 
 that are less of our own growing than the curse ill-government has 
 brought upon us. It has been decided in certain councils — whose 
 decrees are seldom gainsaid — that an example shall be made of 
 Captain Gorman O'Shea, and that no effort shall be spared to make 
 his case a terror and a warning to Irish landowners ; how they 
 attempt by ancient process of law to subvert the concessions we 
 have wrung from our tyrants. 
 
 " A jury to find him guilty will be sworn; and let us see the judge, 
 — in defiance of a verdict given from the jury-box, without a 
 moment's hesitation or the shadow of dissent, — let us see the judge 
 who will dare to diminish the severity of the sentence. This is 
 the language, these are the very words of those who have more of 
 the rule of Ireland in their hands than the haughty gentlemen, hon- 
 orable and right honorable, who sit at Whitehall. 
 
 " I have heard this opinion too often of late to doubt how much 
 it is a fixed determination of the party ; and until now — until I 
 came here, and learned what interest his fate could have for me — I 
 offered no opposition to these reasonings. Since then I have be- 
 stirred myself actively. I have addressed the committee here who 
 have taken charge of the prosecution ; I have written to the editors 
 of the chief newspapers ; I have even made a direct appeal to the 
 leading counsel for the prosecution, and tried to persuade them that 
 a victory here might cost us more than a defeat, and that the country 
 at large, who submit with difficulty to the verdict of absolving 
 juries, will rise with indignation at this evidence of a jury prepared 
 to exercise a vindictive power, and actually make the law the agent 
 of reprisal. I have failed in all, — utterly failed. Some reproach 
 me as faint-hearted and craven ; some condescend to treat me as 
 merely mistaken and misguided ; and some are bold enough to hint 
 that, though as a military authority I stand without rivalry, as a 
 purely political adviser my counsels are open to dispute. 
 
AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT. 573 
 
 "I have still a power, however, through the organization of which 
 I am a chief; and by this power I have ordered Gill to appear 
 before me, and, in obedience to my commands, he will sail this 
 night for America. With him will also leave the two other impor- 
 tant witnesses in this cause ; so that the only evidence against Captain 
 O'Shea will be some of those against whom he has himself instituted 
 a cross charge for assault. That the prosecution can be carried on 
 with such testimony need not be feared. Our Press will denounce 
 the infamous arts by which these witnesses have been tampered 
 with, and justice has been defeated. The insults they may hurl at 
 our oppressors — for once unjustly — will furnish matter for the 
 Opposition journals to inveigh against our present Government, and 
 some good may come even of this. At all events, I shall have 
 accomplished what I sought. I shall have saved from a prison the 
 man I hate most on earth, — the man who, robbing me of what never 
 could be mine, robs me of every hope, of every ambition, making my 
 love as worthless as my life! Have I not repaid you? Ask your 
 heart which of us has done more for the other? 
 
 " The contract on which Gill based his right as a tenant, and which 
 would have sustained his action, is now in my hands ; and I will — 
 if you permit me — place it in yours. This may appear an ingenious 
 device to secure a meeting with you; but though I long to see 
 you once more, were it but a minute, I would not compass it by a 
 fraud. If, then, you will not see me, I shall address the packet to 
 you through the post. 
 
 " 1 have finished. I have told you what it most concerns you 
 to know, and what chiefly regards your happiness. I have done 
 this as coldly and impassively, I hope, as though I had no other part 
 in the narrative than that of the friend whose friendship had a 
 blessed office. I have not told you of the beating heart that hangs over 
 this paper, nor will I darken one bright moment of your fortune by 
 the gloom of mine. If you will write me one line, — a farewell if it 
 must be, — send it to the care of Adam Cobb, ' Cross Keys,' Moate, 
 where I shall find it up to Thursday next. If — and oh ! how shall 
 I bless you for it — if you will consent to see me, to say one word, to 
 let me look on you once more, I shall go into my banishment with a 
 bolder heart, as men go into battle with an amulet. 
 
 "Daniel Donogan." 
 
 *' Shall I show this to Kate?" was the first thought of 
 Nina, as she laid the letter down. " Is it a breach of confi- 
 dence to let another than myself read these lines ? Assuredly 
 they were meant for my eyes alone. Poor fellow ! " said she, 
 once more aloud. '' It was very noble in him to do this for 
 
574 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 one he could not but regard as a rival." And then she 
 asked herself how far it might consist with honor to derive 
 benefit from his mistake — since mistake it was — in believ- 
 ing O'Shea was her lover, and to be her future husband. 
 
 "There can be little doubt Donogan would never have 
 made the sacrifice had he known that I am about to marry 
 Walpole." From this she rambled on to speculate on how 
 far might Donogan's conduct compromise or endanger him 
 with his own party, and if — which she thought well probable 
 — there was a distinct peril in what he was doing, whether 
 he would have incurred that peril if he really knew the truth, 
 and that it was not herself he was serving. 
 
 The more she canvassed these doubts, the more she found 
 the difficulty of resolving them ; nor indeed was there any 
 other way than one, — distinctly to ask Donogan if he would 
 persist in his kind intentions when he knew that the benefit 
 was to revert to her cousin and not to herself. So far as 
 the evidence of Gill at the trial was concerned, the man's 
 withdrawal was already accomplished ; but would Donogan 
 be as ready to restore the lease, and would he, in fact, be as 
 ready to confront the danger of all this interference, as at 
 first? She could scarcely satisfy her mind how she would 
 wish him to act in the contingency ! She was sincerely fond 
 of Kate, she knew all the traits of honesty and truth in 
 that simple character, and she valued the very qualities of 
 straightforwardness and direct purpose in which she knew 
 she was herself deficient. She would have liked well to 
 secure that dear girl's happiness, and it would have been 
 an exquisite delight to her to feel that she had been an aid 
 to her welfare ; and yet, with all this, there was a subtle 
 jealousy that tortured her in thinking, " What will this man 
 have done to prove his love for me^ Where am I, and what 
 are my interests in all this ? " There was a poison in this 
 doubt that actually extended to a state of fever. ' ' I must 
 see him," she said at last, speaking aloud to herself. "I 
 must let him know the truth. If what he proposes shall lead 
 him to break with his party or his friends, it is well he 
 should see for what and for whom he is doing it." 
 
 And then she persuaded herself she would like to hear 
 Donogan talk, as once before she had heard him talk, of his 
 
AN UNLOOKED-FOR CORRESPONDENT. 575 
 
 hopes and his ambitions. There was something in the high- 
 sounding inspirations of the man, a lofty heroism in all he 
 said, that struck a chord in her Greek nature. The cause 
 that was so intensely associated with danger that life was 
 always on the issue, was exactly the thing to excite her 
 heart, and, like the trumpet-blast to the charger, she felt 
 stirred to her inmost soul by whatever appealed to reckless 
 daring and peril. " He shall tell me what he intends to do, 
 — his plans, his projects, and his troubles. He shall tell 
 me of his hopes, what he desires in the future, and where he 
 himself will stand when his efforts have succeeded ; and, 
 oh ! " thought she, '' are not the wild extravagances of these 
 men better a thousand times than the well-turned nothings 
 of the fine gentlemen who surround us ? Are not their very 
 risks and vicissitudes more manly teachings than the small 
 casualties of the polished world? If life were all ' salon,* 
 taste perhaps might decide against them ; but it is not all 
 * salon,' or, if it were, it would be a poorer thing even than 
 I think it I " She turned to her desk as she said this, and 
 wrote : — 
 
 " Dear Mr. Donogan, — I wish to thank you in person for the 
 great kindness you have shown me, though there is some mistake 
 on your part in the matter. I cannot suppose you are able to come 
 here openly, but if you will be in the garden on Saturday evening 
 at nine o'clock, I shall be there to meet you. 
 
 " I am, very truly yours, 
 
 " Nina Kostalergi." 
 
 ''Very imprudent, — scarce delicate, — perhaps, all this, 
 and for a girl who is to be married to another man in some 
 three weeks hence ; but I will tell Cecil Walpole all when he 
 returns, and if he desires to be off his engagement, he shall 
 have the liberty. I have one half at least of the Bayard 
 Legend; and if I cannot say lam 'without reproach,' I 
 am certainly without fear." 
 
 The letter-bag lay in the hall, and Nina went down at 
 once, and deposited her letter in it ; this done, she lay down 
 on her bed, not to sleep, but to think over Donogan and his 
 letter till daybreak. 
 
CHAPTER LXXXII. 
 
 THE BREAKFAST-ROOM. 
 
 *' Strange house this ! " said Joseph Atlee, as Nina entered 
 the room the next morning where he sat alone at breakfast. 
 " Lord Kilgobbin and Dick were here a moment ago, and 
 disappeared suddenly ; Miss Kearney for an instant, and also 
 left as abruptly ; and now you have come, I most earnestly 
 hope not to fly away in the same fashion." 
 
 *' No ; I mean to eat my breakfast, and so far to keep you 
 company." 
 
 *' I thank the tea'-urn for my good fortune," said he, 
 solemnly. 
 
 *'A tete-a-tete with Mr. Atlee is a piece of good luck," 
 said Nina, as she sat down. ''Has anything occurred to 
 call our hosts away ? " 
 
 "In a house like this," said he, jocularly, "where people 
 are marrying or giving in marriage at every turn, what may 
 not happen? It may be a question of the settlement, or the 
 bride cake, or white satin 'slip,' — if that's the name for 
 it, — the orange-flowers, or the choice of the best man, — 
 who knows ? " 
 
 " You seem to know the whole bead-roll of wedding 
 incidents." 
 
 "It is a dull repertoire^ after all; for whether the piece 
 be melodrama, farce, genteel comedy, or harrowing tragedy, 
 it has to be played by the same actors. " 
 
 "What would you have? — marriages cannot be all alike. 
 There must be many marriages for things besides love, — for 
 ambition,- for interest, for money, for convenience." 
 
 ' ' Convenience is exactly the phrase I wanted and could 
 not catch." 
 
THE BREAKFAST-ROOM. 577 
 
 " It is not the word /wanted, nor do I think we mean the 
 same thing by it." 
 
 "What I mean is this," said Atlee, with a firm voice, 
 " that when a young girl has decided ill her own mind that 
 she has had enough of that social bondage of the daughter, 
 and cannot marry the man she would like, she will marry the 
 man that she can." 
 
 " And like him too," added Nina, with a strange, dubious 
 sort of smile. 
 
 "Yes, and like him too; for there is a curious feature in 
 the woman's nature that, without any falsehood or dis- 
 loyalty, permits her to like different people in different 
 ways, so that the quiet, gentle, almost impassive woman 
 might, if differently mated, have been a being of fervid 
 temper, headstrong and passionate. If it were not for this 
 species of accommodation, marriage would be a worse thing 
 than it is." 
 
 " I never suspected you of having made a study of the 
 subject. Since when have you devoted your attention to the 
 theme?" 
 
 " I could answer in the words of Wilkes, — since I have 
 had the honor to know your Royal Highness ; but perhaps 
 you might be displeased with the flippanc3^" 
 
 " I should think that very probable," said she, gravely. 
 
 " Don't look so serious. Remember that I did not commit 
 myself, after all." 
 
 " I thought it was possible to discuss this problem without 
 a personality." 
 
 " Don't you know that, let one deal in abstractions as long 
 as he will, he is only skirmishing around special instances? 
 It is out of what I glean from individuals I make up my 
 generalities." 
 
 " Am I to understand by this that I have supplied you 
 with the material of one of these reflections?" 
 
 " You have given me the subject of many. If I were to 
 tell you how often I have thought of you, I could not answer 
 for the words in which I might tell it.'* 
 
 " Do not tell it, then." 
 
 " I know — I am aware — I have heard since I came here 
 
 37 
 
578 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 that there is a special reason why you could not listen 
 to me." 
 
 " And being so, why do you propose that I should hear 
 you ? " 
 
 " 1 will tell you," said he, with an earnestness that almost 
 startled her, — ''I will tell you, because there are things on 
 which a doubt or an equivocation is actually maddening ; 
 and I will not, I cannot believe that you have accepted 
 Cecil Walpole." 
 
 " Will you please to say why it should seem so incre- 
 dible?" 
 
 *' Because I have seen you not merely in admiration, and 
 that admiration would be better conveyed by a stronger 
 word ; and because I have measured you with others 
 infinitely beneath you in every way, and who are yet soar- 
 ing into very high regions indeed ; because I have learned 
 enough of the world to know that alongside of — often 
 above — the influence that men are wielding in life by their 
 genius and their capacity, there is another power exercised 
 by women of marvellous beauty, of infinite attractions, and 
 exquisite grace, which sways and moulds the fate of man- 
 kind far more than cabinets and councils. There are not 
 above half a dozen of these in Europe, and you might be 
 one added to the number." 
 
 " Even admitting all this, — and I don't see that I should 
 go so far, — it is no answer to my question." 
 
 " Must I then say there can be no — not companionship, 
 that 's not the word ; no, I must take the French expres- 
 sion, and call it solidarite — there can be no soUdarite of 
 interests, of objects, of passions, or of hopes between people 
 so widely dissevered as you and Walpole? I am so con- 
 vinced of this that still I can dare to declare I cannot 
 believe you could marry him." 
 
 "And if I were to tell you it were true?" 
 
 " I should still regard it as a passing caprice, that the 
 mere mention of to-morrow would offend you. It is no 
 disparagement of Walpole to say he is unworthy of you, for 
 who would be worthy? but the presumption of his daring is 
 enough to excite indignation, — at least, I feel it such. 
 How he could dare to link his supreme littleness with 
 
THE BREAKFAST-ROOM. 579 
 
 consummate perfection ; to freight the miserable barque 
 of his fortunes with so precious a cargo ; to encounter the 
 feeling, — and there is no escape for it, — 'I must drag that 
 woman down, not alone into obscurity, but into all the sor- 
 did meanness of a small condition, that never can emerge 
 into anything better ' ! He cannot disguise from himself 
 that it is not within his reach to attain power or place 
 or high consideration. Such men make no name in life; 
 they leave no mark on their time. They are heaven-born 
 subordinates, and never refute their destiny. Does a woman 
 with ambition — does a woman conscious of her own great 
 merits — condescend to ally herself, not alone with small 
 fortune, — that might be borne, — but with the smaller asso- 
 ciations that make up these men's lives, — with the peddling 
 efforts to mount even one rung higher of that crazy little 
 ladder of their ambition, to be a clerk of another grade, 
 a creature of some fifty pounds more, a being in an upper 
 office?" 
 
 '' And the Prince, — for he ought to be at least a Prince 
 who should make me the offer of his name, — whence is he 
 to come, Mr. Atlee? " 
 
 " There are men who are not born to princely station, 
 who by their genius and their determination are just as 
 sure to become famous, and who need but the glorious prize 
 of such a woman's love — No, no, don't treat what I say 
 as rant and rodomontade ; these are words of sober sense 
 and seriousness." 
 
 ''Indeed!" said she, with a faint sigh. "So that it 
 really amounts to this, — that I shall actually have missed 
 my whole fortune in life, — thrown myself away, — all be- 
 cause I would not wait for Mr. Atlee to propose to me." 
 
 Nothing less than Atlee's marvellous assurance and self- 
 possession could have sustained this speech unabashed. 
 
 "You have only said what my heart has told me many 
 a day since." 
 
 "But you seem to forget," added she, with a very faint 
 curl of scorn on her lip, " that I had no more to guide 
 me to the discovery of Mr. Atlee's affection than that of 
 his future greatness. Indeed, I could more readily believe 
 in the latter than the former." 
 
580 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " Believe in both," cried he, warmly. " If I have con- 
 quered difficulties in life, if I ha^^e achieved some successes, 
 — now for a passing triumph, now for a moment of grati- 
 fied vanity, now for a mere caprice, — try me by a mere 
 hope — I only plead for a hope — try me by hope of 
 being one day worthy of calling that hand my own." 
 
 As he spoke, he tried to grasp her hand ; but she with- 
 drew it coldly and slowly, saying, "I have no fancy to 
 make myself the prize of any success In life, political or 
 literary; nor can I believe that the man who reasons in 
 this fashion has any really high ambition. Mr. Atlee," 
 added she, more gravely, "your memory may not be as 
 good as mine, and you will pardon me if I remind you that, 
 almost at our first meeting, we struck up a sort of friend- 
 ship, on the very equivocal ground of a common country. 
 We agreed that each of us claimed for their native land the 
 mythical Bohemia, and we agreed, besides, that the natives 
 of that country are admirable colleagues, but not good 
 partners." 
 
 *' You are not quite fair in this," he began ; but before 
 he could say more, Dick Kearney entered hurriedly, and 
 cried out: "It's all true. The people are in wild excite- 
 ment, and all declare that they will not let him be taken. 
 Oh! I forgot," added he. "You were not here when my 
 father and I were called away by the despatch from the 
 police-station, to say that Donogan has been seen at 
 Moate, and is about to hold a meeting on the bog. Of 
 course, this is mere rumor ; but the constabulary are deter- 
 mined to capture him, and Curtis has written to inform 
 my father that a party of police will patrol the grounds 
 here this evening." 
 
 " And if they should take him, what would happen, — to 
 him, I mean? " asked Nina, coldly. 
 
 "An escaped convict is usually condemned to death; but 
 I suppose they would not hang him," said Dick. 
 
 " Han^ him ! " cried Atlee ; " nothing of the kind. Mr. 
 Gladstone would present him with a suit of clothes, a ten- 
 pound note, and a first-class passage to America. He 
 would make a 'healing measure' of him." 
 
 " I must say, gentlemen,' said Nina, scornfully, " you can 
 discuss your friend's fate with a marvellous equanimity." 
 
THE BREAKFAST-ROOM. 581 
 
 " So we do," rejoined Atlee. '' He is another Bohemian.'* 
 
 " Don't say so, sir," said she, passionately. *'The men 
 who put their lives on a venture — and that venture not a 
 mere gain to themselves — are in no wise the associates of 
 those poor adventurers who are gambling for their daily 
 living. He is a rebel, if you like ; but he believes in 
 rebellion. How much do you believe in, Mr. Atlee?" 
 
 ''I say, Joe, you are getting the worst of this discussion. 
 Seriously, however, I hope they '11 not catch poor Donogan ; 
 and my father has asked Curtis to come over and dine here, 
 and I trust to a good fire and some old claret to keep him 
 quiet for this evening, at least. We must not molest the 
 police ; but there 's no great harm done if we mislead 
 them." 
 
 " Once in the drawing-room, if Mademoiselle Kostalergi 
 will only condescend to aid us," added Atlee, "I think 
 Curtis will be more than a chief constable if he will be- 
 think him of his duty." 
 
 " You are a strange set of people, you Irish," said Nina, 
 as she walked away. "Even such of you as don't want 
 to overthrow the Government are always ready to impede 
 its march and contribute to its difficulties." 
 
 " She only meant that for an impertinence," said Atlee, 
 after she left the room ; " but she was wonderfully near the 
 truth, though not truthfully expressed." 
 
CHAPTER LXXXIII. 
 
 THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 
 
 There was but one heavy heart at the dinner-table that day ; 
 but Nma's pride was proof against any disclosure of suffering, 
 and, though she was tortured by anxiety and fevered with 
 doubt, none — not even Kate — suspected that any care 
 weighed on her. 
 
 As for Kate herself, her happiness beamed in every line 
 and lineament of her handsome face. The Captain — to 
 give him the name by which he was known — had been up 
 that day, and partaken of an afternoon tea with his aunt and 
 Kate. Her spirits were excellent, and all the promise of the 
 future was rose-colored and bright. The little cloud of what 
 trouble the trial might bring was not suffered to darken the 
 cheerful meeting, and it was the one only bitter in their 
 cup. 
 
 To divert Curtis from this theme, on which, with the accus- 
 tomed mal d, propos of an awkward man, he wished to talk, 
 the young men led him to the subject of Donogan and his 
 party. 
 
 "I believe we'll take him this time," said Curtis. ''He 
 must have some close relations with some one about Moate 
 or Kilbeggan, for it is remarked he cannot keep away from 
 the neighborhood ; but who are his friends, or what they are 
 meditating, we cannot" guess." 
 
 " If what Mademoiselle Kostalergi said this morning 
 be correct," remarked Atlee, "conjecture is unnecessary. 
 She told Dick and myself that every Irishman is at heart 
 a rebel." 
 
 "I said more or less of one, Mr. Atlee, since there are 
 some who have not the courage of their opinions." 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 583 
 
 "I hope you are gratified by the emendation," whispered 
 Dick; and then added aloud, " Donogan is not one of 
 these." 
 
 '' He 's a consummate fool," cried Curtis, bluntl}^ '' He 
 thinks the attack of a police-barrack or the capture of a few 
 firelocks will revolutionize Ireland." 
 
 *' He forgets that there are twelve thousand police, officered 
 by such men as yourself. Captain," said Nina, gravely. 
 
 "Well, there might be worse," rejoined Curtis, doggedly, 
 for he was not quite sure of the sincerity of the speaker. 
 
 "What will you be the better of taking him?" said Kil- 
 gobbin. " If the whole tree be pernicious, where 's the use 
 of plucking one leaf off it?" 
 
 " The Captain has nothing to do with that," said Atlee, 
 " any more than a hound has to discuss the morality o.f fox- 
 hunting, — his business is the pursuit." 
 
 " I don't like your simile, Mr. Atlee," said Nina, while she 
 whispered some words to the Captain, and drew him in this 
 way into a confidential talk. 
 
 " I don't mind him at all, Miss Nina," said Curtis ; " he 's 
 one of those fellows on the Press, and they are always say- 
 ing impertinent things to keep their talents in wind. I '11 
 tell you, in confidence, how wrong he is. I have just had a 
 meeting with the Chief Secretary, who told me that the 
 Popish bishops are not at all pleased with the leniency of the 
 Government ; that whatever ' healing measures ' Mr. Glad- 
 stone contemplates ought to be for the Church and the 
 Catholics ; that the Fenians or the Nationalists are the 
 enemies of the Holy Father ; and that the time has come for 
 the Government to hunt them down, and give over the rule 
 of Ireland to the Cardinal and his party." 
 
 " That seems to me very reasonable and very logical," 
 said Nina. 
 
 " Well, it is and it is not. If you want peace in the 
 rabbit-warren, you must banish either the rats or the rabbits ; 
 and I suppose either the Protestants or the Papists must 
 have it their own way here." 
 
 "Then you mean to capture this man? " 
 
 "We do, — we are determined on that. And, what's 
 more, I'd hang him if I had the power." 
 
584 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ''And why?" 
 
 " Just because he isn't a bad fellow ! There 's no use in 
 hanging a bad fellow in Ireland, — it frightens nobody ; but 
 if you hang a respectable man, a man that has done gener- 
 ous and fine things, it produces a great effect on society, and 
 is a terrible example." 
 
 " There may be a deep wisdom in what you say." 
 
 "Not that they'll mind me, for all that. It's the men 
 like myself. Miss Nina, who know Ireland well, who know 
 every assize town in the country, and what the juries will do 
 in each, are never consulted in England. They say, ' Let 
 Curtis catch him, — that 's his business.' " 
 
 " And how will you do it? " 
 
 "I'll tell you. I haven't men enough to watch all the 
 roads ; but I '11 take care to have my people where he 's least 
 likely to go, that is, to the north. He 's a cunning fellow is 
 Dan, and he 'd make for the Shannon if he could ; but now 
 that he knows we 're after him, he '11 turn to Antrim or 
 Derry. He '11 cut across Westmeath, and make north, if he 
 gets away from this." 
 
 " That is a very acute calculation of yours ; and where do 
 you suspect he may be now, — I mean, at this moment we 're 
 talking?" 
 
 " He 's not three miles from where we 're sitting," said he, 
 in a low whisper, and a cautious glance round the table. 
 "He's hid in the bog outside. There's scores of places 
 there a man could hide in, and never be tracked ; and 
 there 's few fellows would like to meet Donogan single- 
 handed. He 's as active as a rope-dancer, and he 's as 
 courageous as the devil." 
 
 " It would be a pity to hang such a fellow." 
 
 " There 's plenty more of the same sort, — not exactly as 
 good as him, perhaps, for Dan was a gentleman once." 
 
 "And is, probably, still? " 
 
 " It would be hard for him, with the rapscallions he has to 
 live with, and not five shillings in his pocket, besides." 
 
 " I don't know, after all, if you '11 be happier for giving 
 him up to the law. He may have a mother, a sister, a wife, 
 or a sweetheart." 
 
 " He may have a sweetheart, but I know he has none of 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. ,585 
 
 the others. He said, in the dock, that no man could quit 
 life at less cost, — that there was n't one to grieve after 
 him." 
 
 " Poor fellow ! that was a sad confession." 
 
 ''We're not all to turn Fenians, Miss Nina, because 
 we're only children and unmarried." 
 
 "You are too clever for me to dispute with," said she, in 
 affected humility; "but I like greatly to hear you talk of 
 Ireland. Now, what number of people have you here? " 
 
 " I have my orderly, and two men to patrol the demesne ; 
 but to-morrow we '11 draw the net tighter. We '11 call in all 
 the party from Moate. and, from information I have got, 
 we 're sure to track him." 
 
 " What confidences is Curtis making with Mademoiselle 
 Nina ? " said Atlee, who, though affecting to join the general 
 conversation, had never ceased to watch them. 
 
 " The Captain is telling me how he put down the Fenians 
 in the rising of '61," said Nina, calmly. 
 
 " And did he? I say, Curtis, have you really suppressed 
 rebellion in Ireland?" 
 
 "No; nor won't, Mr. Joe Atlee, till we put down the 
 rascally Press, — the unprincipled penny-a-liners, that write 
 treason to pay for their dinner." 
 
 " Poor fellows ! " replied Atlee. " Let us hope it does not 
 interfere with their digestion. But seriously. Mademoiselle, 
 does it not give you a great notion of our insecurity here in 
 Ireland when you see to what we trust law and order." 
 
 " Never mind him, Curtis," said Kilgobbin. " When these 
 fellows are not saying sharp things, they have to be silent." 
 
 While the conversation went briskly on, Nina contrived to 
 glance unnoticed at her watch, and saw that it wanted only 
 a quarter of an hour to nine. Nine was the hour she had 
 named to Donogan to be in the garden, and she already 
 trembled at the danger to which she had exposed him. She 
 reasoned thus : So reckless and fearless is this man, that, 
 if he should have come determined to see me, and I do 
 not go to meet him, he is quite capable of entering the 
 house boldly, even at the cost of being captured. The 
 very price he would have to pay for his rashness would be 
 its temptation. 
 
586 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 A sudden cast of seriousness overcame her as she thus 
 thought ; and Kate, perceiving it, rose at once to retire. 
 
 " You were not ill, dearest Nina? 1 saw you grow pale, 
 and I fancied for a moment you seemed faint." 
 
 *'No; a mere passing weakness. I shall lie down, and 
 be better presently." 
 
 *' And then you '11 come up to aunt's room, — I call god- 
 mother aunt now, — and take tea with Gorman and us all." 
 
 "Yes, I'll do that after a little rest. I'll take half an 
 hour or so of quiet," said she, in broken utterances. " I 
 suppose the gentlemen will sit over their wine ; there 's no 
 fear of their breaking up." 
 
 " Very little /ear, indeed," said Kate, laughing at the 
 word. "Papa made me give out some of his rare old .'41 
 wine to-day, and they're not likely to leave it." 
 
 " By-by, then, for a little while," said Nina, dreamily, 
 for her thoughts had gone off on another track. " I shall 
 join you later on." 
 
 Kate tripped gayly up the stairs, singing pleasantly as 
 she went, for hers was a happy heart and a hopeful. 
 ' Nina lingered for a moment with her hand on the banister, 
 and then hurried to her room. 
 
 It was a still cold night of deep winter, a very faint cres- 
 cent of a new moon was low in the sky, and a thin snowfall, 
 slightly crisped with frost, covered the ground. Nina 
 opened her window and looked out. All was still and quiet 
 without, — not a twig moved. She bent her ear to listen, 
 thinking that on the frozen ground a step might perhaps be 
 heard, and it was a relief to her anxiety when she heard 
 nothing. The chill, cold air that came in through the win- 
 dow warned her to muffle herself well, and she drew the 
 hood of her scarlet cloak over her head. Strong-booted, 
 and with warm gloves, she stood for a moment at her door 
 to listen, and, finding all quiet, she slowly descended the 
 stairs and gained the hall. She started affrighted as she 
 entered, thinking there was some one seated at the table ; 
 but she rallied in an instant, as she saw it was only the loose 
 horseman's coat, or cloak, of the chief constable, which, 
 lined with red, and with the gold-laced cap beside it, made 
 up the delusion that alarmed her. 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 587 
 
 It was not an easy task to withdraw the heavy bolts and 
 bars that secured the massive door, and even to turn the 
 heavy key in the lock required an effort ; but she succeeded 
 at length, and issued forth into the open. 
 
 "How I hope he has not come! how I pray be has not 
 ventured ! " said she to herself, as she walked along. '' Leave- 
 takings are sad things, and why incur one so full of peril 
 and misery too? When I wrote to him, of course I knew 
 nothing of his danger, and it is exactly his danger will make 
 him come ! " She knew of others to whom such reasonings 
 would not have applied, and a scornful shake of the head 
 showed that she would not think of them at such a moment. 
 The sound of her own footsteps on the crisp ground made 
 her once or twice believe she heard some one coming ; and as 
 she stopped to listen, the strong beating of her heart could 
 be counted. It was not fear, — at least not fear in the sense 
 of a personal danger, — it was that high tension which great 
 anxiety lends to the nerves, exalting vitality to a state in 
 which a sensation is as powerful as a material influence. 
 
 She ascended the steps of the little terraced mound of the 
 rendezvous, one by one, overwhelmed almost to fainting by 
 some imagined analogy with the scaffold, which might be the 
 fate of him she was going to meet. 
 
 He was standing under a tree, his arms crossed on his 
 breast, as she came up. The moment she appeared, he 
 rushed to meet her, and, throwing himself on one knee, he 
 seized her hand and kissed it. 
 
 "Do you know your danger in being here? "she asked, 
 as she surrendered her hand to his grasp. 
 
 " I know it all, and this moment repays it tenfold." 
 
 "You cannot know the full extent of the peril ; you can- 
 not know that Captain Curtis and his people are in the 
 castle at this moment, that they are in full cry after you, 
 and that every avenue to this spot is watched and guarded." 
 
 " What care I ! Have I not this? " And he covered her 
 hand with kisses. 
 
 " Every moment that you are here increases j^our danger, 
 and if my absence should become known, there will be a 
 search after me. I shall never forgive myself if my folly 
 should lead to your being captured." 
 
588 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 'Mf I could but feel my fate was linked with yours, I'd 
 give ray life for it willingly." 
 
 " It was not to listen to such words as these I came here." 
 
 '' Remember, dearest, they are the last confessions of one 
 you shall never see more. They are the last cry of a heart 
 that will soon be still forever." 
 
 ''No, no, no!" cried she, passionately. "There is life 
 enough left for you to win a worthy name. Listen to me 
 calmly now : I have heard from Curtis within the last hour 
 all his plans for your capture ; I know where his patrols are 
 stationed, and the roads they are to watch." 
 
 '' And did you care to do this? " said he, tenderly. 
 
 '' I would do more than that to save you." 
 
 " Oh, do not say so ! " cried he, wildly, " or you will give 
 me such a desire to live as will make a coward of me." 
 
 '' Curtis suspects you will go northward ; either he has 
 had information, or computes it from what you have done 
 already." 
 
 "He is wrong, then. When I go hence, it shall be to 
 the Court House at TuUamore, where I mean to give myself 
 up." 
 
 "As what?" 
 
 "As what I am, — a rebel, convicted, sentenced, and 
 escaped, and still a rebel." 
 
 " You do not, then, care for life? " 
 
 " Do I not, for such moments of life as this! " cried he, 
 as with a wild rapture he kissed her hand again and again. 
 
 " And were 1 to ask you, you would not try to save your 
 life?" 
 
 " To share that life with you there is not anything I would 
 not dare. To live and know you were another's is more than 
 I can face. Tell me, Nina, is it true you are to be the wife 
 of this soldier? I cannot utter his name." 
 
 "I am to be married to Mr. Walpole." 
 
 "What! to that contemptuous young man you have 
 already told me so much of? How have they brought you 
 down to this ? " 
 
 "There is no thought of bringing down; his rank and 
 place are above my own, — he is by family and connection 
 superior to us all." 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 589 
 
 *' And what is he, or how does he asph-e to you? Is the 
 vulgar security of competence to live on, — is that enough for 
 one like you? Is the well-balanced good-breeding of common 
 politeness enough to fill a heart that should be fed on pas- 
 sionate devotion ? You may link yourself to mediocrity, but 
 can you humble your nature to resemble it? Do you believe 
 you can plod on the dreary road of life without an impulse 
 or an ambition, or blend your thoughts with those of a man 
 who has neither?" 
 
 She stood still and did not utter a word. 
 
 " There are some — I do not know if you are one of them 
 — who have an almost shrinking dread of poverty." 
 
 " I am not afraid of poverty." 
 
 " It has but one antidote, I know, — intense love! The 
 all-powerful sense of living for another begets indifference to 
 the little straits and trials of narrow fortune, till the mind at 
 last comes to feel how much there is to live for beyond the 
 indulgence of vulgar enjoyments ; and if, to crown all, a 
 high ambition be present, there will be an ecstasy of bliss no 
 words can measure." 
 
 " Have you failed in Ireland? " asked she, suddenly. 
 
 " Failed, so far as to know that a rebellion will only 
 ratify the subjection of the country to England ; a recon- 
 quest would be slavery. The chronic discontent that burns 
 in every peasant heart will do more than the appeal to arms. 
 It is slow, but it is certain." 
 
 " And where is your part? " 
 
 " My part is in another land; my fortune is linked with 
 America, — that is, if I care to have a fortune." 
 
 " Come, come, Donogan," cried she, calling him inadver- 
 tently by his name, " men like you do not give up the battle 
 of life so easily. It is the very essence of their natures to 
 resist pressure and defy defeat." 
 
 " So I could ; so I am ready to show myself. Give me 
 but hope. There are high paths to be trodden in more than 
 one region of the globe. There are great prizes to be 
 wrestled for, but it must be by him who would share them 
 with another. Tell me, Nina," said he, suddenly, lowering 
 his voice to a tone of exquisite tenderness, " have you never, 
 as a little .child, played at that game of what is called seek- 
 
590 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 ing your fortune, — wandered out into some thick wood or 
 along a winding rivulet, to meet whatever little incident 
 imagination might dignify into adventure ; and in the chance 
 heroism of your situation have you not found an intense 
 delight? And if so in childhood, why not see if adult years 
 cannot renew the experience ? Why not see if the great 
 world be not as dramatic as the small one? I should say it 
 is still more so. I know you have courage." 
 
 "And what will courage do for me? " asked she, after a 
 pause. 
 
 "For you, not much; forme, everything." 
 
 "I do not understand you." 
 
 " I mean this, — that if that stout heart could dare the 
 venture and trust its fate to me, — to me, poor, outlawed, 
 and doomed, — there would be a grander heroism in a girl's 
 nature than ever found home in a man's." 
 
 "And what should I be? " 
 
 "My wife within an hour; my idol while I live." 
 
 "There are some who would give this another name than 
 courage," said she, thoughtfully. 
 
 *' Let them call it what they will, Nina. Is it not to the 
 unbounded trust of a nature that is above all others that I, 
 poor, unknown, ignoble as I am, appeal when I ask, Will 
 you be mine? One word, — only one, — or, better still — " 
 
 He clasped her in his arms as he spoke, and, drawing her 
 head towards his, kissed her cheek rapturously. 
 
 With wild and fervent words, he now told her rapidly that 
 he had come prepared to make her the declaration, and had 
 provided everything, in the event of her compliance, for 
 their flight. By an unused path through the bog they could 
 gain the main road to Maryborough, where a priest, well 
 known in the Fenian Interest, would join them in marriage. 
 The officials of the railroad were largely imbued with the 
 nationalist sentiment, and Donogan could be sure of safe 
 crossing to Kilkenny, where the members of the party were 
 in great force. 
 
 In a very few words he told her how, by the mere utterance 
 of his name, he could secure the faithful services and the 
 devotion of the people in every town or village of the king- 
 dom. "The English have done this for us," cried he, "and 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 591 
 
 we thank them for it. They have popularized rebellion in a 
 way that all our attempts could never have accomplished. 
 How could I, for instance, gain access to those little gath- 
 erings at fair or market, in the yard before the chapel, or 
 the square before the court-house ; how could I be able to 
 explain to those groups of country people what we mean by 
 a rising in Ireland, — what we purpose by a revolt against 
 England, — how it is to be carried on, or for whose benefit, 
 — what the prizes of success, what the cost of failure ? Yet 
 the English have contrived to embody all these in one word, 
 and that word my name ! " 
 
 There was a certain artifice, there is no doubt, in the way 
 in which this poorly clad and not distinguished-looking man 
 contrived to surround himself with attributes of power and 
 influence; and his self-reliance imparted to his voice, as he 
 spoke, a tone of confidence that was actually dignified. And, 
 besides this, there was personal daring ; for his life was on 
 the hazard, and it was the very contingency of which he 
 seemed to take the least heed. 
 
 Not less adroit, too, was the way in which he showed 
 what a shock and amazement her conduct would occasion in 
 that world of her acquaintances, — that world which had 
 hitherto regarded her as essentially a pleasure-seeker, self- 
 indulgent and capricious. " ' Which of us all,' will they say, 
 * could have done what that girl has done? Which of us, 
 having the world at her feet, her destiny at her very bidding, 
 would go off and brave the storms of life out of the heroism 
 of her own nature? How we all misread her nature! how 
 wrongfully and unfairly we judged her! In what utter 
 ignorance of her real character was every interpretation we 
 made! How scornfully has she, by one act, replied to all 
 our misconstruction of her! What a sarcasm on all our 
 worldliness is her devotion! ' " 
 
 He was eloquent, after a fashion, and he had, above most 
 men, the charm of a voice of singular sweetness and melody. 
 It was clear as a bell, and he could modulate its tones till, 
 like the drip, drip of water on a rock, they fell one by one 
 upon the ear. Masses had often been moved by the power 
 of his words, and the mesmeric influence of persuasiveness 
 was a gift to do him good service now. 
 
592 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 There was much in the man that she liked. She liked his 
 rugged boldness and determination; she liked his contempt 
 for danger and his self-reliance ; and, essentially, she liked 
 how totally different he was to all other men. He had not 
 their objects, their hopes, their fears, and their ways. To 
 share the destiny of such a man was to ensure a life that 
 could not pass unrecorded. There might be storm, and 
 even shipwreck, but there was notoriety — perhaps even 
 fame! 
 
 And how mean and vulgar did all the others she had 
 known seem by comparison with him, — how contemptible 
 the polished insipidity of Walpole, how artificial the neatly 
 turned epigrams of Atlee! How would either of these have 
 behaved in such a moment of danger as this man's? Every 
 minute he passed there was another peril to his life; and yet 
 he had no thought for himself, — his whole anxiety was to 
 gain time to appeal to her. He told her she was more to 
 him than his ambition ; she saw herself she was more to him 
 than life. The whirlwind rapidity of his eloquence also 
 moved her, and the varied arguments he addressed, now to 
 her heroism, now to her self-sacrifice, now to the power of 
 her beauty, now to the contempt she felt for the inglorious 
 lives of commonplace people, — the ignoble herd who passed 
 unnoticed. All these swayed her ; and after a long interval, 
 in which she had heard him without a word, she said, in a 
 low murmur to herself, "I will do it." 
 
 Donogan clasped her to his heart as she said it, and held 
 her some seconds in a fast embrace. "At last I know 
 what it is to love," cried he, with rapture. 
 
 "Look there!" cried she, suddenly disengaging herself 
 from his arm. "They are in the drawing-room already. 
 I can see them as they pass the windows. I must go back, 
 if it be for a moment, as I should be missed." 
 
 "Can I let you leave me now?" he said; and the tears 
 were in his eyes as he spoke. 
 
 " I have given you my word, and you may trust me, " said 
 she, as she held out her hand. 
 
 "I was forgetting this document; this is the lease or 
 the agreement I told you of." She took it, and hurried 
 away. 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 593 
 
 In less than five minutes afterwards she was among the 
 company in the drawing-room. 
 
 "Here have I been singing a rebel ballad, Nina," said 
 Kate, " and not knowing the while it was Mr. Atlee who 
 wrote it." 
 
 ''What! Mr. Atlee," cried Nina, "is the ' Time to begin' 
 yours?" And then, without waiting for an answer, she 
 seated herself at the piano, and, striking the chords of the 
 accompaniment with a wild and vigorous hand, she sang, — 
 
 *' If the moment is come and the hour to need us ; 
 If we stand man to man, like kindred and kin ; 
 If we know we have one who is ready to lead us, — 
 What waht we for more than the word to begin * " 
 
 The wild ring of defiance in which her clear, full voice 
 gave out these words seemed to electrify all present, and 
 to a second or two of perfect silence a burst of applause 
 followed, that even Curtis, with all his loyalty, could not 
 refrain from joining. 
 
 "Thank God you 're not a man. Miss Nina! " cried he, 
 fervently. 
 
 " I 'm not sure she 's not more dangerous as she is," said 
 Lord Kilgobbin. "There's people out there in the bog, 
 starving and half-naked, would face the Queen's Guards if 
 they only heard her voice to cheer them on. Take my word 
 for it, rebellion would have died out long ago in Ireland if 
 there wasn't the woman's heart to warm it." 
 
 " If it were not too great a liberty, Mademoiselle Kosta- 
 lergi," said Joe, "I should tell you that you have not caught 
 the true expression of my song. The brilliant bravura in 
 which you gave the last line, immensely exciting as it was, 
 is not correct. The whole force consists in the concen- 
 trated power of a fixed resolve, — the passage should be 
 subdued." 
 
 An insolent toss of the head was all Nina's reply; and 
 there was a stillness in the room, as, exchanging looks with 
 each other, the different persons there expressed their amaze- 
 ment at Atlee' s daring. 
 
 "Who's for a rubber of whist?" said Lord Kilgobbin, 
 
 38 
 
594 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 to relieve the awkward pause. *' Are you, Curtis? Atlee, 
 I know, is ready." 
 
 "Here is all prepared," said Dick. "Captain Curtis told 
 me before dinner that he would not like to go to bed till he 
 had his sergeant's report; and so I have ordered a broiled 
 bone to be ready at one o'clock, and we '11 sit up as late as 
 he likes after." 
 
 "Make the stake pounds and fives," cried Joe, "and I 
 should pronounce your arrangements perfection." 
 
 "With this amendment," interposed my Lord, "that 
 nobody is expected to pay ! " 
 
 "I say, Joe," whispered Dick, as they drew nigh the 
 table, "my cousin is angry with you; why have you not 
 asked her to sing ? " 
 
 "Because she expects it; because she's tossing over the 
 music yonder to provoke it; because she 's in a furious rage 
 with me: that will be nine points of the game in my favor," 
 hissed he out between his teeth. 
 
 "You are utterly wrong; you mistake her altogether." 
 
 "Mistake a woman! Dick, will you tell me what I do 
 know, if I do not read every turn and trick of their tortuous 
 nature? They are occasionally hard to decipher when 
 they 're displeased. It 's very big print, indeed, when 
 they're angry." 
 
 "You 're off, are you? " asked Nina, as Kate was about 
 to leave. 
 
 "Yes; I'm going to read to him." 
 
 "To read to him!" said Nina, laughing. "How nice it 
 sounds, when one sums up all existence in a pronoun! 
 Good-night, dearest, — good-night!" and she kissed her 
 twice. And then, as Kate reached the door, she ran towards 
 her, and said, "Kiss me again, my dearest Kate! " 
 
 "I declare you have left a tear upon my cheek," said 
 Kate. 
 
 "It was about all I could give you as a wedding present," 
 muttered Nina, as she turned away. 
 
 "Are you come to study whist, Nina?" said Lord Kil- 
 gobbin, as she drew nigh the table. 
 
 "No, my Lord; I have no talent for games, but I like to 
 look at the players." 
 
THE GARDEN BY MOONLIGHT. 595 
 
 Joe touched Dick with his foot, and shot a cunning glance 
 towards him, as though to say, ''Was I not correct in all I 
 said?" 
 
 "Couldn't you sing us something, my dear? we're not 
 such infatuated gamblers that we '11 not like to hear you, — 
 eh, Atlee?" 
 
 "Well, my Lord, I don't know; I'm not sure, — that is, 
 I don't see how a memory for trumps is to be maintained 
 through the fascinating charm of Mademoiselle's voice. 
 And as for cards, it 's enough for Miss Kostalergi to be in 
 the room to make one forget not only the cards, but the 
 Fenians." 
 
 "If it was only out of loyalty, then, I should leave you! '* 
 said she, and walked proudly away. 
 
CHAPTER LXXXIV. 
 
 NEXT MORNING. 
 
 The whist-party did not break up till nigh morning. The 
 sergeant had once appeared at the drawing-room to announce 
 that all was quiet without. There had been no sign of any 
 rising of the people, nor any disposition to molest the 
 police. Indeed, so peaceful did everything look, and such 
 an air of easy indifference pervaded the country, the police 
 were half disposed to believe that the report of Donogan 
 being in the neighborhood was unfounded, and not impos- 
 sibly circulated to draw oft' attention from some other part 
 of the country. 
 
 This was also Lord Kilgobbin's belief. "The man has 
 no friends, or even warm followers, down here. It was the 
 merest accident first led him to this part of the country, 
 where, besides, we are all too poor to be rebels. It 's only 
 down in Meath, where the people are well off, and rents 
 are not too high, that people can afford to be Fenians." 
 
 While he was enunciating this fact to Curtis, they were 
 walking up and down the breakfast-room, waiting for the 
 appearance of the ladies to make tea. 
 
 "I declare it's nigh eleven o'clock," said Curtis, "and I 
 meant to have been over two baronies before this hour." 
 
 "Don't distress yourself, Captain. The man was never 
 within fifty miles of where we are. And why would he? 
 It is not the Bog of Allen is the place for a revolution." 
 
 "It's always the way with the people at the Castle," 
 grumbled out Curtis. "They know more of what 's going 
 on down the country than we that live here! It 's one de- 
 spatch after another. Head-Centre Such-a-one is at the 
 * Three Cripples. ' He slept there two nights ; he swore in 
 
NEXT MORNING. 597 
 
 fifteen men last Saturday, and they '11 tell you where he 
 bought a pair of corduroy breeches, and what he ate for his 
 breakfast — '* " 
 
 "I wish we had ours," broke in Kilgobbin. "Where's 
 Kate all this time ? " 
 
 "Papa, papa, I want you for a moment; come here to 
 me quickly," cried Kate, whose head appeared for a moment 
 at the door. "Here 's very terrible tidings, papa dearest," 
 said she, as she drew him along towards his study. "Nina 
 is gone! Nina has run away! " 
 
 "Run away for what? " 
 
 "Run away to be married; and she is married. Read 
 this, or I '11 read it for you. A country boy has just 
 brought it from Maryborough." 
 
 Like a man stunned almost to insensibility, Kearney 
 crossed his hands before him, and sat gazing out vacantly 
 before him. 
 
 "Can you listen to me, — can you attend to me, dear 
 papa ? " 
 
 "Go on," said he, in a faint voice. 
 
 " It is written in a great hurry, and very hard to read. It 
 runs thus: ' Dearest, — I have no time for explainings nor 
 excuses, if I were disposed to make either, and I will con- 
 fine myself to a few facts. I was married this morning to 
 Donogan, — the rebel : I know you have added the word, 
 and I write it to show how our sentiments are united. As 
 people are prone to put into the lottery the number they have 
 dreamed of, I have taken my ticket in this greatest of all 
 lotteries on the same wise grounds. I have been dreaming 
 adventures ever since I was a little child, and it is but 
 natural that I marry an adventurer. ' " 
 
 A deep groan from the old man made her stop ; but as she 
 saw that he was not changed in color or feature, she went 
 on: — 
 
 " 'He says he loves me very dearly, and that he will treat 
 me well. I like to believe both, and I do believe them. 
 He says we shall be very poor for the present, but that he 
 means to become something or somebody later on. I do 
 not much care for the poverty, if there is hope ; and he is a 
 man to hope with and to hope from. 
 
598 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 " ' You are, in a measure, the cause of all, since it was to 
 tell me he would send away all the witnesses against your 
 husband, that is to be, that I agreed to meet him, and to 
 give me the lease which Miss O'Shea was so rash as to 
 place in Gill's hands. This I now send you.' " 
 
 "And this she has sent you, Kate?" asked Kilgobbin. 
 
 "Yes, papa, it is here, and the master of the ' Swallow's ' 
 receipt for Gill as a passenger to Quebec." 
 
 "Read on." 
 
 "There is little more, papa, except what I am to say 
 to you, — to forgive her." 
 
 "I can't forgive her. It was deceit, — cruel deceit." 
 
 "It was not, papa. I could swear there was no fore- 
 thought. If there had been, she would have told me. She 
 told me everything. She never loved Walpole; she could 
 not love him. She was marrying him with a broken heart. 
 It was not that she loved another, but she knew she could 
 have loved another." 
 
 "Don't talk such muddle to me," said he, angrily. "You 
 fancy life is to be all courting, but it is n't. It 's house- 
 rent, and butchers' bills, and apothecaries', and the pipe 
 water; it's shoes, and schooling, and arrears of rent, and 
 rheumatism, and flannel waistcoats, and toothache have a 
 considerable space in Paradise!" And there was a grim 
 comicality in his utterance of the word. 
 
 "She said no more than the truth of herself," broke in 
 Kate. "With all her queenly ways, she could face poverty 
 bravely; I know it." 
 
 "So you can, any of you, if a man 's making love to you. 
 You care little enough what you eat, and not much more 
 what you wear, if he tells you it becomes you; but that 's 
 not the poverty that grinds and crushes. It 's what comes 
 home in sickness; it 's what meets you in insolent letters, 
 in threats of this or menaces of that. But what do you know 
 about it, or why do I speak of it? She 's married a man that 
 could be hanged if the law caught him, and for no other 
 reason, that I see, than because he 's a felon." 
 
 "I don't think you are fair to her, papa." 
 
 "Of course I 'm not. Is it likely that at sixty I can be as 
 great a fool as I was at sixteen ? " 
 
NEXT MORNING. 599 
 
 "So that means that you once thought in the same way 
 that she does ? " 
 
 "I didn't say any such thing, miss," said he, angrily. 
 "Did you tell Miss Betty what 's happened us? " 
 
 "I just broke it to her, papa, and she made me run away 
 and read the note to you. Perhaps you '11 come and speak 
 to her?" 
 
 "I will," said he, rising, and preparing to leave the room. 
 "I'd rather hear I was a bankrupt this morning than that 
 news!" And he mounted the stairs, sighing heavily as he 
 went. 
 
 "Is n't this fine news the morning has brought us. Miss 
 Betty ! " cried he, as he entered the room with a haggard 
 look, and hands clasped before him. "Did you ever dream 
 there was such disgrace in store for us? " 
 
 "This marriage you mean," said the old lady, dryly. 
 
 "Of course I do, — if you call it a marriage at all." 
 
 "I do call it a marriage; here's Father Tierney's certifi- 
 cate, a copy made in his own handwriting : ' Daniel Dono- 
 gan, M.P., of Killamoyle, and Innismul, County Kilkenny, 
 to Virginia Kostalergi, of no place in particular, daughter 
 of Prince Kostalergi, of the same localities, contracted in 
 holy matrimony this morning at six o'clock, and witnessed 
 likewise by Morris M'Cabe, vestry clerk, Mary Kestinogue, 
 her mark.' Do you want more than that? " 
 
 "Do I want more? Do I want a respectable wedding? 
 Do I want a decent man, — a gentleman, — a man fit to 
 maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have behaved? 
 Is this what we thought of her? " 
 
 "It is not. Mat Kearney; you say truth. I never believed 
 so well of her till now. I never believed before that she 
 had anything in her head but to catch one of those English 
 puppies, with their soft voices and their sneers about Ire- 
 land. I never saw her that she was n't trying to flatter them, 
 and to please them, and to sing them down, as she called it 
 herself, — the very name fit for it ! And that she had the 
 high heart to take a man not only poor, but with a rope 
 round his neck, shows me how I wronged her. I could 
 give her five thousand this morning to make her a dowry, 
 and to prove how I honor her." 
 
600 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 "Can any one tell who he is? What do we know oi 
 him?" 
 
 "All Ireland knows of him; and, after all, Mat Kearney, 
 she has only done what her mother did before her." 
 
 "Poor Matty! " said Kearney, as he drew his hand across 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Aye, aye! Poor Matty, if you like; but Matty was a 
 beauty run to seed, and, like the rest of them, she married 
 the first good-looking vagabond she saw. Now, this girl 
 was in the very height and bloom of her beauty, and she 
 took a fellow for other qualities than his whiskers or his 
 legs. They tell me he is n't even well-looking, so that I 
 have hopes of her." 
 
 "Well, well," said Kearney, "he has done you a good 
 turn, anyhow, — he has got Sam Gill out of the country." 
 
 "And it 's the one thing that I can't forgive him. Mat, 
 — just the one thing that 's fretting me now. I was living 
 in hopes to see that scoundrel Sam on the table, and Coun- 
 sellor Holmes baiting him in a cross-examination. I 
 wanted to see how the lawyer would n't leave him a rag of 
 character or a strip of truth to cover himself with. How 
 he 'd tear off his evasions, and confront him with his own 
 lies, till he wouldn't know what he was saying or where he 
 was sitting ! I wanted to hear the description he would give 
 of him to the jury; and I'd go home to my dinner after 
 that, and not wait for the verdict." 
 
 "All the same, I 'm glad we 're rid of Sam." 
 
 "Of course you are. You 're a man, and well pleased 
 when your enemy runs away; but if you were a woman. 
 Mat Kearney, you 'd rather he 'd stand out boldly and meet 
 you, and fight his battle to the end. But they haven't 
 done with me yet. I '11 put that little blackguard attorney, 
 that said my letter was a lease, into Chancery ; and it will 
 go hard with me if I don't have him struck off the rolls. 
 There 's a small legacy of five hundred pounds left me the 
 other day, and, with the blessing of Providence, the Com- 
 mon Pleas shall have it. Don't shake your head. Mat 
 Kearney. I 'm not robbing any one. Your daughter will 
 have enough and to spare — " 
 
 "Oh, godmother!" cried Kate, imploringly. 
 
NEXT MORNING. 601 
 
 "It was n't I, my darling, that said the five hundred would 
 be better spent on wedding clothes or house-linen. That 
 delicate and refined suggestion was your father's. It was 
 his Lordship made the remark." 
 
 It was^ a fortunate accident at that conjuncture that a ser- 
 vant should announce the arrival of Mr. Flood, the Tory 
 J. P., who, hearing of Donogan's escape, had driven over 
 to confer with his brother magistrate. Lord Kilgobbin was 
 not sorry to quit the field, where he 'd certainly earned few 
 laurels, and hastened down to meet his colleague. 
 
CHAPTER LXXXV. 
 
 THE END. 
 
 While the two justices and Curtis discussed the unhappy 
 condition of Ireland, and deplored the fact that the law- 
 breaker never appealed in vain to the sympathies of a people 
 whose instincts were adverse to discipline, Flood's estimate 
 of Donogan went very far to reconcile Kilgobbin to Nina's 
 marriage. 
 
 ''Out of Ireland, you '11 see that man has stuff in him to 
 rise to eminence and station. AH the qualities of which 
 home manufacture would only make a rebel will combine to 
 form a man of infinite resource and energy in America. 
 Have you never imagined, Mr. Kearney, that, if a man 
 were to employ the muscular energy to make his way 
 through a drawing-room that he would use to force his pas- 
 sage through a mob, the effort would be misplaced, and the 
 man himself a nuisance? Our old institutions, with all 
 their faults, have certain ordinary characteristics that answer 
 to good-breeding and good manners, — reverence for author- 
 ity, respect for the gradations of rank, dislike to civil con- 
 vulsion, and such like. We do not sit tamely by when all 
 these are threatened with overthrow ; but there are countries 
 where there are f^wer of these traditions, and men like 
 Donogan find their place there." 
 
 While they debated such points as these within doors, 
 Dick Kearney and Atlee sat on the steps of the hall door, 
 and smoked their cigars. 
 
 "I must say, Joe," said Dick, "that your accustomed 
 acuteness cuts but a very poor figure in the present case. 
 It was no later than last night you told me that Nina was 
 madly in love with you. Do you remember, as we went 
 upstairs to bed, what you said on the landing? ' That girl 
 
THE END. 603 
 
 is my own. I may marry her to-morrow, or this day three 
 months.' " 
 
 "And I was right." 
 
 "So right were you that she is at this moment the wife of 
 another." 
 
 "And cannot you see why?" 
 
 "I suppose I can; she preferred him to you, and I 
 scarcely blame her." 
 
 "No such thing; there was no thought of preference in 
 the matter. If you were not one of those fellows who mis- 
 take an illustration, and see everything in a figure but the 
 parallel, I should say that I had trained too finely. Now, 
 had she been thoroughbred, I was all right ; as a cocktail I 
 was all wrong." 
 
 "I own I cannot follow you." 
 
 "Well, the woman was angry, and she married that fellow 
 out of pique." 
 
 "Out of pique?" 
 
 "I repeat it. It was a pure case of temper. I would not 
 ask her to sing. I even found fault with the way she gave 
 the rebel ballad. I told her there was an old lady — Amer- 
 icanly speaking — at the corner of College Green, who enun- 
 ciated the words better ; and then I sat down to whist, and 
 would not even vouchsafe a glance in return for those looks 
 of alternate rage or languishment she threw across the table. 
 She was frantic. I saw it. There was nothing she would n't 
 have done. I vow she 'd have married even you at that 
 moment. And with all that, she 'd not have done it if 
 she'd been 'clean-bred.' Come, come, don't flare up and 
 look as if you 'd strike me. On the mother's side she was a 
 Kearney, and all the blood of loyalty in her veins ; but there 
 must have been something wrong with the Prince of Delos. 
 Dido was very angry, but her breeding saved her; she 
 didn't take a Head-Centre because she quarrelled with 
 ^Eneas." 
 
 "You are, without exception, the most conceited — " 
 
 "No, not ass; don't say ass, for 1 'm nothing of the kind. 
 Conceited, if you like, or rather, if your natural politeness 
 insists on saying it, and cannot distinguish between the van- 
 ity of a puppy and the self-consciousness of real power — 
 
604 LORD KILGOBBIN. 
 
 But come, tell me of something pleasanter than all this 
 personal discussion, — how did Mademoiselle convey her 
 tidings ? Have you seen her note ? Was it ' transport ; ' 
 was it high-pitched or apologetic?" 
 
 "Kate read it to me, and I thought it reasonable enough. 
 She had done a daring thing, and she knew it; she hoped 
 the best, and in any case she was not faint-hearted." 
 
 "Any mention of me? " 
 
 "Not a word; your name does not occur." 
 
 "I thought not; she had not pluck for that. Poor girl! 
 the blow is heavier than I meant it." 
 
 "She speaks of Walpole; she encloses a few lines to him, 
 and tells my sister where she will find a small packet of 
 trinkets and such like he had given her." 
 
 "Natural enough all that! There was no earthly reason 
 why she should n't be able to talk of Walpole as easily as 
 of Colenso or the cattle plague ; but you see she could not 
 trust herself to approach my name." 
 
 "You '11 provoke me to kick you, Atlee." 
 
 "In that case I shall sit where I am. But I was going 
 to remark that as I shall start for town by the next train, 
 and intend to meet Walpole, if your sister desires it, I shall 
 have much pleasure in taking charge of that note to his 
 address." 
 
 "All right, I '11 tell her. I see that she and Miss Betty 
 are about to drive over to O' Shea's Barn, and I '11 give your 
 message at once." 
 
 While Dick hastened away on his errand, Joe Atlee sat 
 alone, musing and thoughtful. I have no reason to presume 
 my reader cares for his reflections, nor to know the meaning 
 of a strange smile, half scornful and half sad, that played 
 upon his face. At last he rose slowly, and stood looking 
 up at the grim old castle, and its quaint blending of 
 ancient strength and modern deformity. "Life here, I 
 take it, will go on pretty much as before. All the acts of 
 this drama will resemble each other; but my own little 
 melodrama must open soon. I wonder what sort of house 
 there will be for Joe Atlee' s benefit." 
 
 Atlee was right. Kilgobbin Castle fell back to the ways 
 in which our first chapter found it, and other interests — 
 
THE END. 605 
 
 especially those of Kate's approaching marriage — soon 
 effaced the memory of Nina's flight and runaway match. 
 By that happy law by which the waves of events follow 
 and obliterate each other, the present glided back into the 
 past, and the past faded till its colors grew uncertain. 
 
 On the second evening after Nina's departure, Atlee 
 stood on the pier of Kingston as the packet drew up at the 
 jetty. Walpole saw him, and waved his hand in friendly 
 greeting. ''What news from Kilgobbin?" cried he, as he 
 landed. 
 
 "Nothing very rose-colored," said Atlee, as he handed 
 the note, 
 
 "Is this true?" said "Walpole, as a slight tremor shook 
 his voice. 
 
 "All true." 
 
 "Is n't it Irish, — Irish, the whole of it? " 
 
 "So they said down there; and, stranger than all, they 
 seemed rather proud of it." 
 
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