Mr. Redworth reserved his assent to the proclamation of any English disadvantage.  A whiff of Celtic hostility in the atmosphere put him on his mettle.  ‘Wherever the man is tried,’ he said.

‘My lady!’ the Irish gentleman bowed to Lady Dunstane.  ’I had the honour . . .  Sullivan Smith . . . at the castle . . .’

She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention between the English gentleman and himself, as to the possession of the loveliest of partners for this particular ensuing dance, and that they had simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his acquaintance with her eminent defunct father—­one of the ever-radiating stars of his quenchless country.

Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of his imaginative logic.

‘There will be dancing enough after supper,’ she said.

’If I could score one dance with her, I’d go home supperless and feasted,’ said he.  ’And that’s not saying much among the hordes of hungry troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet.  See, my lady, the gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up to da capo.  Oh! but it’s a sheep trying to be wolf; he ’s sheep-eyed and he ’s wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous!  Oh, now! who’d believe it!—­the man has dared . . .  I’d as soon think of committing sacrilege in a cathedral!’

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.’