“Did I say it was quite empty?” Miss Bride asked, with some asperity.  “To be sure, there are always people.  But she’ll miss the best of it.  She ought to be there for the Patrick’s Ball and the command nights at the theatre.  The last time I was at the Theatre Royal I was in the Viceregal box.  She was a sweet, pretty creature, and His Excellency had a beautifully turned leg.  We drove to Punchestown with them the following day.  I remember the hundreds and hundreds of jaunting-cars tearing like mad along the road.  To be sure we had outriders, but it was nearly as much as your life was worth, and coming out at the Gap afterwards we had a horse’s hind legs in our carriage, and every one screaming like mad, and the dust fit to choke you.  Even motors couldn’t rival that.”

She spoke with an air of grave exhilaration.  They knew everybody and everything that was fine and gay in the social life of their day.  Perhaps they would know about my fine gentleman.  I only hesitated to ask because in her latter years Miss Bride had adopted a manner of hostility towards the male sex generally, and was apt to snap at any one who showed an interest in it even of the slightest.  However, I screwed up my courage.

“Miss Chenevix,” I began, “I met a gentleman the other day in our wood and I wondered who he might be.  I can’t imagine where he was staying.  And I thought I would ask you if you knew who he was.”

“We could do very well without men,” Miss Bride said sharply.  “In fact, the world could have got on very well without them.  There is nothing a man can do that a woman can not do better.  What was your gentleman like, Bawn?”

Despite her hostility to the male sex Miss Bride was very curious.

“He was very slim and elegant,” I began—­“not very young.”

“Now what do you mean by not very young, Bawn?  Be precise in your statements,” Miss Bride said, with some asperity.

“I should say he was quite forty,” I said, blushing, and wishing I had not mentioned the matter of age.

“Fiddlesticks, child!  Forty is young.  And so you met this young gentleman in the wood.  And what happened?”

“He took Dido’s paw out of a trap.  He was very kind about it,” I returned, conscious of Miss Bride’s severe eye.

“There was no philandering, child, now was there?  You’re not long out of short frocks.  I can’t imagine how the young gentleman came to be in your woods.  You’d better forget all about him, but first tell me what he was like and all that happened.”

“Bride!  The poor child!” said Miss Henrietta, compassionately.

“There was no philandering,” I said composedly.  I am used to Miss Chenevix’s ways.  “How could there be?  He rendered me such a service as any gentleman might have done, and went on his way.  It was only seeing that we have so few strangers—­”

“He might be staying at Damerstown.  They have a houseful.”

“I am sure he was not.”