In the palmier days of the Irish gentry there were many households in which the religion of the servants was a matter of considerable importance, and those who could afford exclusiveness, were accustomed to employ only Protestants as indoor servants.  This may seem like an unwarrantable invasion of the inner fortress of another individual, making his views spiritual responsible for his fortunes temporal.  But in Ireland, in the earlier half of the troubled nineteenth century, such differentiation was inspired not by bigotry, but by fear.  When a man’s foes might be, and often were, those of his own household, that his servants should be of his own religion was almost his only safeguard against espionage.  There is somewhat to be said on both sides; it will not be said here, but that there have been times in Ireland when such precautions were required, cannot be ignored.

Robert Evans was a survivor of such a period.  Time was when he strutted, autocratic and imperious as a turkey-cock, ruler of a flock of lesser fowl, all of his own superior creed; brave days when he and Mrs. Dixon, the housekeeper, herded and headed, respectively, a bevy of “decent Protestant maids” into Family Prayers every morning, and packed “the full of two covered cars” off to the Knockceoil Parish Church on Sundays.  Evans rarely went to church, believing that such disciplines were superfluous for one in a state of grace, but the glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party.  With Lady Isabel’s regime had come a slackening of moral fibre, a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in the administration of the household.  Once had Lady Isabel been actually overheard by Evans, offering to a friend, in excuse for the indifferent show made by her household in the parish church, the offensive explanation that “R.C.’s were so sympathetic, and so easy to find, while Protestants were not only scarce, but were so proud of being Protestants, and expected so much admiration”—­here she had perceived the presence of Evans, and had unavailingly begun upon the weather, but Evans’ deep-seated suspicions as to the laxity of the English Church had been confirmed.

It is possible that the greatest shock that Evans was capable of sustaining was administered when he heard of the secession to the enemy of Colonel Tom Coppinger.  Only second to it was the discovery that Colonel Tom’s poisoned offspring was to be received at Mount Music and admitted to the fellowship of its children.

“No!” Evans said to Mrs. Dixon, standing on the hearthrug in the sanctuary of the housekeeper’s room, one wet afternoon, shortly after the Coppinger return:  “I see changes here, better and worse, good and bad, but I didn’t think I’d live to see what I seen to-day—­the children of this house consorting with a Papist!”