’She caught it from contact with one of the inhabitants of this country.  ’Tis the fate of us Irish, and we’re condemned to it for the sin of getting tired of our own.  I begin to sneeze when I land at Holyhead.  Unbutton a waistcoat here, in the hope of meeting a heart, and you’re lucky in escaping a pulmonary attack of no common severity, while the dog that infected you scampers off, to celebrate his honeymoon mayhap.  Ah, but call at her house in shoals, the world ’ll soon be saying it’s worse than a coughing cold.  If you came to lead her out of it in triumph, the laugh ‘d be with you, and the lady well covered.  D’ ye understand?’

The allusion to the dog’s honeymoon had put Arthur Rhodes on the track of the darting cracker-metaphor.

‘I think I do,’ he said.  ’She will soon be at Copsley—­Lady Dunstane’s house, on the hills—­and there we can see her.’

’And that’s next to the happiness of consoling—­if only it had been granted!  She’s not an ordinary widow, to be caught when the tear of lamentation has opened a practicable path or water-way to the poor nightcapped jewel within.  So, and you’re a candid admirer, Mr. Rhodes!  Well, and I’ll be one with you; for there’s not a star in the firmament more deserving of homage than that lady.’

‘Let’s walk in the park and talk of her,’ said Arthur.  ’There’s no sweeter subject to me.’

His boyish frankness rejoiced Sullivan Smith.  ’As long as you like!—­nor to me!’ he exclaimed.  ’And that ever since I first beheld her on the night of a Ball in Dublin:  before I had listened to a word of her speaking:  and she bore her father’s Irish name:—­none of your Warwicks and your . . .  But let the cur go barking.  He can’t tell what he’s lost; perhaps he doesn’t care.  And after inflicting his hydrophobia on her tender fame!  Pooh, sir; you call it a civilized country, where you and I and dozens of others are ready to start up as brothers of the lady, to defend her, and are paralyzed by the Law.  ’Tis a law they’ve instituted for the protection of dirty dogs—­their majority!’

‘I owe more to Mrs. Warwick than to any soul I know,’ said Arthur.

’ Let ‘s hear,’ quoth Sullivan Smith; proceeding:  ’She’s the Arabian Nights in person, that’s sure; and Shakespeare’s Plays, tragic and comic; and the Book of Celtic History; and Erin incarnate—­down with a cold, no matter where; but we know where it was caught.  So there’s a pretty library for who’s to own her now she’s enfranchized by circumstances; and a poetical figure too!’

He subsided for his companion to rhapsodize.

Arthur was overcharged with feeling, and could say only:  ’It would be another world to me if I lost her.’

‘True; but what of the lady?’

‘No praise of mine could do her justice.’

’That may be, but it’s negative of yourself, and not a portrait of the object.  Hasn’t she the brain of Socrates—­or better, say Minerva, on the bust of Venus, and the remainder of her finished off to an exact resemblance of her patronymic Goddess of the bow and quiver?’