She spoke reproachfully:  ‘Have you no pride in the title of Englishman?’

’I ‘m an Irishman.’

‘We are one nation.’

‘And it’s one family where the dog is pulled by the collar.’

There was a retort on him:  she saw, as it were, the box, but the lid would not open to assist her to it, and she let it go by, thinking in her patriotic derision, that to choose to be likened to the unwilling dog of the family was evidence of a want of saving pride.

Besides, she could not trust to the glibness of her tongue in a contest with a young gentleman to whom talking was as easy as breathing, even if sometimes his volubility exposed him to attack.  A superior position was offered her by her being silent and critical.  She stationed herself on it:  still she was grieved to think of him as a renegade from his country, and she forced herself to say:  ‘Captain O’Donnell talks in that manner.’

’Captain Con is constitutionally discontented because he’s a bard by nature, and without the right theme for his harp,’ said Patrick.  ’He has a notion of Erin as the unwilling bride of Mr. Bull, because her lord is not off in heroics enough to please her, and neglects her, and won’t let her be mistress of her own household, and she can’t forget that he once had the bad trick of beating her:  she sees the marks.  And you mayn’t believe it, but the Captain’s temper is to praise and exalt.  It is.  Irony in him is only eulogy standing on its head:  a sort of an upside down; a perversion:  that’s our view of him at home.  All he desires is to have us on the march, and he’d be perfectly happy marching, never mind the banner, though a bit of green in it would put him in tune, of course.  The banner of the Cid was green, Miss Adister:  or else it’s his pennon that was.  And there’s a quantity of our blood in Spain too.  We’ve watered many lands.’

The poor young English lady’s brain started wildly on the effort to be with him, and to understand whether she listened to humour or emotion:  she reposed herself as well as she could in the contemplation of an electrically-flashing maze, where every line ran losing itself in another.

He added:  ‘Old Philip!’ in a visible throb of pity for his brother; after the scrupulous dubitation between the banner and the pennon of the Cid!

It would have comforted her to laugh.  She was closer upon tears, and without any reason for them in her heart.

Such a position brings the hesitancy which says that the sitting is at an end.

She feared, as she laid aside her music-books, that there would be more to come about Adiante, but he spared her.  He bowed to her departing, and strolled off by himself.

CHAPTER VI

A CONSULTATION:  WITH OPINIONS UPON WELSHWOMEN AND THE CAMBRIAN RACE