The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, ’breaching the fortress,’ and pointing out to Diana Merion ’her name on his dirty scrap of paper’:  a shocking sight when the lady’s recollection was the sole point to be aimed at, and the only umpire.  ’As if all of us couldn’t have written that, and hadn’t done it!’ Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned disgusted.  He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving ladies; and the bad manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the race; individual members of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing, honouring.  So the man blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man.  But his hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a fellow-countryman.  His own were of the antecedent century, therefore venerable.

Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows at her friend.  Lady Dunstane motioned her fan, and Diana came, bending head.

‘Are you bound in honour?’

’I don’t think I am.  And I do want to go on talking with the General.  He is so delightful and modest—­my dream of a true soldier!—­telling me of his last big battle, bit by bit, to my fishing.’

’Put off this person for a square dance down the list, and take out Mr. Redworth—­Miss Diana Merlon, Mr. Redworth:  he will bring you back to the General, who must not totally absorb you, or he will forfeit his popularity.’

Diana instantly struck a treaty with the pertinacious advocate of his claims, to whom, on his relinquishing her, Mr. Sullivan Smith remarked:  ’Oh! sir, the law of it, where a lady’s concerned!  You’re one for evictions, I should guess, and the anti-human process.  It’s that letter of the law that stands between you and me and mine and yours.  But you’ve got your congee, and my blessing on ye!’

‘It was a positive engagement,’ said the enemy.

Mr. Sullivan Smith derided him.  ’And a pretty partner you’ve pickled for yourself when she keeps her positive engagement!’

He besought Lady Dunstane to console him with a turn.  She pleaded weariness.  He proposed to sit beside her and divert her.  She smiled, but warned him that she was English in every vein.  He interjected:  ’Irish men and English women! though it’s putting the cart before the horse—­the copper pennies where the gold guineas should be.  So here’s the gentleman who takes the oyster, like the lawyer of the fable.  English is he?  But we read, the last shall be first.  And English women and Irish men make the finest coupling in the universe.’

‘Well, you must submit to see an Irish woman led out by an English man,’ said Lady Dunstane, at the same time informing the obedient Diana, then bestowing her hand on Mr. Redworth to please her friend, that he was a schoolfellow of her husband’s.