‘Ladies?’ Caroline inquired by instinct.

‘And charming,’ said Patrick, ’real dear girls.  Philip might have one, if he would, and half my property, to make it right with her parents.  There’d be little use in proposing it.  He was dead struck when the shaft struck him.  That’s love!  So I determined the night after I’d shaken his hand I’d be off to Earlsfont and try my hardest for him.  It’s hopeless now.  Only he might have the miniature for his bride.  I can tell him a trifle to help him over his agony.  She would have had him, she would, Miss Adister, if she hadn’t feared he’d be talked of as Captain Con has been—­about the neighbourhood, I mean, because he,’ Patrick added hurriedly, ’he married an heiress and sank his ambition for distinction like a man who has finished his dinner.  I’m certain she would.  I have it on authority.’

‘What authority?’ said Caroline coldly.

‘Her own old nurse.’

‘Jenny Williams?’

’The one!  I had it from her.  And how she loves her darling Miss Adiante!  She won’t hear of “princess.”  She hates that marriage.  She was all for my brother Philip.  She calls him “Our handsome lieutenant.”  She’ll keep the poor fellow a subaltern all his life.’

‘You went to Jenny’s inn?’

’The Earlsfont Arms, I went to.  And Mrs. Jenny at the door, watching the rain.  Destiny directed me.  She caught the likeness to Philip on a lift of her eye, and very soon we sat conversing like old friends.  We were soon playing at old cronies over past times.  I saw the way to bring her out, so I set to work, and she was up in defence of her darling, ready to tell me anything to get me to think well of her.  And that was the main reason, she said, why Miss Adiante broke with him and went abroad her dear child wouldn’t have Mr. Philip abused for fortune-hunting.  As for the religion, they could each have practised their own:  her father would have consented to the fact, when it came on him in that undeniable shape of two made one.  She says, Miss Adiante has a mighty soul; she has brave ideas.  Miss Deenly, she calls her.  Ay, and so has Philip:  though the worst is, they’re likely to drive him out of the army into politics and Parliament; and an Irishman there is a barrow trolling a load of grievances.  Ah, but she would have kept him straight.  Not a soldier alive knows the use of cavalry better than my brother.  He wanted just that English wife to steady him and pour drops of universal fire into him; to keep him face to face with the world, I mean; letting him be true to his country in a fair degree, but not an old rainpipe and spout.  She would have held him to his profession.  And, Oh dear!  She’s a friend worth having, lost to Ireland.  I see what she could have done there.  Something bigger than an island, too, has to be served in our days:  that is, if we don’t forget our duty at home.  Poor Paddy, and his pig, and his bit