‘Why, Mrs. Gould, what is wrong with him?’ Alice asked innocently.

‘Don’t you know?’ said May, winking.  ’Haven’t you heard?  But I forgot, he isn’t your side of the county.  He’s married already; at least, so they say.’

‘It is very sad, very sad, indeed,’ murmured Mrs. Gould; ’he’d have been a great match.’

‘And to whom is he married?’ said Alice, whose curiosity was awakened by the air of mystery with which the baronet was surrounded.

‘Well, he’s not exactly married,’ replied May, laughing; ’but he has a large family.’

’May, I will not allow it; it is very wrong of you, indeed, to talk like that—­’

’Now, mother dear, don’t get into a passion; where’s the harm?  The whole country knows it; Violet was talking of it to me only the other day.  There isn’t a man within a mile of us, so we needn’t be on our P’s and Q’s.’

‘And who is the mother of all these children?’ Alice asked.

‘A country-woman with whom he lives,’ said May.  ’Just fancy marrying a man with a little dirty crowd of illegitimate children running about the stable-yard!’

‘The usual thing in such cases is to emigrate them,’ said Mrs. Gould philosophically; and she again distended herself before the fire.

‘Emigrate them!’ cried May; ’if he emigrated them to the moon, I wouldn’t marry such a man; would you, Alice?’

‘I certainly wouldn’t like to,’ and her sense of humour being now tickled by the conversation, she added slyly:  ’but you were counting up the good matches in the county.’

‘Ah! so we were,’ said the old lady.  ’Well, there is Mr. Adair.  I am sure no girl would wish for a better husband.’

’Oh, the old frump! why he must be forty if he’s a day.  You remember, Alice, it was he who took me down to dinner at Lord Dungory’s.  And he talked all the time of his pamphlet on the Amalgamation of the Unions, which was then in the hands of the printer; and the other in which he had pulled Mr. Parnell’s ears, Ireland under the Land League, and the series of letters he was thinking of contributing to the Irish Times on high-farming versus peasant proprietors.  Just fancy, Alice, living with such a man as that!’

‘Well, I don’t know what you girls think,’ said Mrs. Gould, whose opinions were moods of mind rather than convictions, ’but I assure you he passes for being the cleverest man in the county; and it is said that Gladstone is only waiting to give him a chance.  But as you like; he won’t do, so let him pass.  Then there is Mr. Ryan, he ought to be well off; he farms thousands of acres.’

’One might as well marry a herdsman at once.  Did you ever hear what he once said to a lady at a ball; you know, about the docket?’

Alice said that she had heard the story, and the conversation turned on Mr. Lynch.  Mrs. Gould admitted that he was the worser of the two.

‘He smells so dreadfully of whiskey,’ said Alice timidly.