Lady Isabel, who was still wrestling with the apparently Russian problem in connection with the antique sideboard, attempted no reply to this inquiry, and Mrs. Cotton, considering that her hostess’ mind was now sufficiently prepared, did not wait for her opinion, and swept on to her objective, which was the denunciation of the conduct of the recent concert, and more especially of the disposition of the proceeds.  “Of course, I don’t know in whose hands it lay, Lady Isabel,” she said, raising her tea cup to her lips, and in order to do so curtaining it behind her ample veil, “but the Roman Catholics seemed to consider that it was all to go to them, and the paltry sum I have mentioned was all they gave Mr. Cotton and me for our charities!” Her black eyes snapped nenacingly at Lady Isabel over the rim of the veiled tea cup.

Lady Isabel uttered a soothing and indefinite murmur, and the indictment proceeded.

“Considering that your family, Lady Isabel, took a leading part in the programme, and that I may say the greater number of the half-crown seats were Protestants, I do think that our Church—­”

It avails not to follow Mrs. Cotton’s diatribes further.  Lady Isabel had lived for some five and twenty years in Ireland, but they had not sufficed to expound to her the intricacies of the web of jealousies, hatreds, fears, and stupidities, that has been spun by that intolerant Spirit of the Nation, in order to separate, as far as may be, the two Churches who divide the kindly people of the Island of Saints between them.  Lady Isabel might see that in the distribution of the spoils Mrs. Cotton had possibly a lawful grievance, but she could not, even after five and twenty years, quite understand how solacing to the soul of Mrs. Cotton was the consideration of the wrongs endured by her Church.

“Yes, indeed, Lady Isabel!  Not one penny more!  And then Dr. Mangan to say to Mr. Cotton when I sent him to complain about it, that it was better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick!  That was by the way of making a joke of it!  And that the Hunt wanted it more than we did!  I wonder how much Father Greer left the Hunt!”

Again Mrs. Cotton’s beady eyes snapped several times, in an emotion that was not far from enjoyment.  The iniquities of Father Greer were very dear to her, and she was confident that in this matter of dividing the spoil he had not disappointed her.

Passing on from the concert, Mrs. Cotton dealt with many subjects in a harangue that turned the seamy side of Cluhir to the sun, with the skill of a buyer of old clothes.  Lady Isabel, behind the prisoning tea-table, after a hopeless, helpless glance round an assembly that was either preoccupied or wilfully blind, relapsed into the brain stupor that was sometimes sent, like an anodyne, to those whom fate had consigned to Mrs. Cotton’s keeping.  The Reverend Matthew, in whom a prolonged course of his wife had developed