Dick Talbot-Lowry, his youth and his income departing together, and the civic powers that he had once exercised, reft from him.  Such power as he had had, he had exercised honourably and with reverent confidence in precedent, and when he had damned Parnell, and had asserted, in stentorian tones, that Cromwell was the only man who had ever known how to govern Ireland, and he, unfortunately, was now in hell; where, the Major would add, he was probably better off, his contribution to constructive politics had ended.  He and his generation, reactionary almost to a man, instead of attempting to ride the waves of the rising tide, subscribed their guineas to construct breakwaters that were pathetic in their futility.  Gallant in resistance, barren in expedient, history may condemn the folly of the.  Old Guard of the “English Garrison,” but it cannot deny, even though it may deride, its fidelity.

CHAPTER XX

Lady Isabel Talbot-Lowry had invited what is concisely spoken of as “people” to tea and tennis.  The month was June, but the weather was March, or at best, a sullen and overcast April.  The purport of the entertainment had been the exhibition, to rival amateurs, of the Mount Music herbaceous borders, which, though “not looking quite their best,” were as nearly approximating to that never-achieved ideal, as is ever the case with either gardens or children; but showers of chill rain had marred the display, and the lawn tennis was fitful, and subject to frequent interruption.  In these circumstances, a fire of turf and logs did not need apologies for its presence, and Lady Isabel and her companion Heads of Households sat with it as their focal point, and thought, as they saw the players flitting to and fro between the showers, and the house, and the lawn tennis grounds, that middle age had privileges that were not to be despised.

The long and lofty drawing-room of Mount Music was a pleasant place enough, even on this showery day.  Some five or six generations of Talbot-Lowrys had lived in it, and left their marks on it, and though the indelible hand of Victoria, in youthful vigour, had had, perhaps, the most perceptible influence on it as a whole, the fancies and fashions of Major Dick’s great-grandmother still held their places.  An ottoman, large as a merry-go-round at a fair, immovable as an island, occupied, immutably, the space in the centre of the room immediately under a great cut-glass chandelier.  Facing it was the fireplace, an affair of complicated design, with “Nelson ropes” and knots, and coils, in worked and twisted brass, and deep hobs, in whose construction the needs of a punch-kettle had not been forgotten.  Above it, a high, delicately-inlaid marble mantelpiece, brought from Italy by Dick’s great-grandfather, was surmounted by a narrow ledge of marble, just wide enough to support the base of a Georgian mirror of flamboyant design, in whose dulled and bluish depths