“Alas, no,” said the cardinal; “my pigeons are my aristocratic acquaintance.  They would leave me if I did not feed them.  My real poor have two legs, like the pigeons, but God gave them no feathers.  They are the misbegotten, the maladroit, the unlucky,—­I stand by that word,—­ the halt, the blind, those with consciences too tender to make their way, reduced gentlefolk, those who have given their lives for the public good and are now forgotten, all these are my poor, and they honor me by their acquaintance.  My pigeons fly to my balcony.  My poor never come near me.  I am obliged, humbly, to go to them.”

“Will money help?” exclaimed Lady Nora; “I have a balance at my banker’s.”

“No, no, my lady,” said the cardinal; “money can no more buy off poverty than it can buy off the bubonic plague.  Both are diseases.  God sent them and He alone can abate them.  At His next coming there will be strange sights.  Some princes and some poor men will be astonished.”

Just then, a woman, short, plump, red-cheeked and smiling, came toward them.  She was no longer young, but she did not know it.

“Your eminence,” said Lady Nora, “I present my aunt, Miss O’Kelly.”

Miss O’Kelly sank so low that her skirts made what children call “a cheese” on the white deck.

“Your imminence,” she said, slowly rising, “sure this is the proud day for Nora, the Tara, and meself.”

“And for me, also,” said the cardinal.  “From now until nine o’clock I shall air my English speech, and I shall have two amiable and friendly critics to correct my mistakes.”

“Ah, your imminence,” laughed Miss O’Kelly, “I don’t speak English.  I speak County Clare.”

“County Clare!” exclaimed the cardinal; “then you know Ennis?  Fifty odd years ago there was a house, just out of the town of Ennis, with iron gates and a porter’s lodge.  The Blakes lived there.”

“I was born in that house,” said Miss O’Kelly.  “It was draughty, but it always held a warm welcome.”

“I do not remember the draught,” said the cardinal, “but I do remember the welcome.  When I was an undergraduate at Oxford, I made a little tour of Ireland, during a long vacation.  I had letters from Rome.  One of them was to the chapter at Ennis.  A young priest took me to that house.  I went back many times.  There was a daughter and there were several strapping sons.  The boys did nothing, that I could discover, but hunt and shoot.  They were amiable, however.  The daughter hunted, also, but she did many other things.  She kept the house, she visited the poor, she sang Irish songs to perfection, and she flirted beyond compare.  She had hair so black that I can give you no notion of its sheen; and eyes as blue as our Venetian skies.  Her name was Nora—­Nora Blake.  She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen—­until yesterday.”

“She was my mother!” exclaimed Miss O’Kelly.

“And my grandmother,” said Lady Nora.