Oh, Phil! and to think of your youth!  We had you then.  At least we had your heart.  And we should have had the length and strength of you, only for a woman fatal to us as the daughter of Rhys ap Tudor, the beautiful Nesta:—­and beautiful she was to match the mother of the curses trooping over to Ireland under Strongbow, that I’ll grant you.  But she reined you in when you were a real warhorse ramping and snorting flame from your nostrils, challenging any other to a race for Ireland; ay, a Cuchullin you were, Philip, Culann’s chain-bound:  but she unmanned you.  She soaked the woman into you and squeezed the hero out of you.  All for Adiante! or a country left to slavery! that’s the tale.  And what are you now?  A paltry captain of hussars on the General’s staff!  One O’Donnell in a thousand!  And what is she?—­you needn’t frown, Phil; I’m her relative by marriage, and she ’s a lady.  More than that, she shot a dart or two into my breast in those days, she did, I’ll own it:  I had the catch of the breath that warns us of convulsions.  She was the morning star for beauty, between night and day, and the best colour of both.  Welshmen and Irishmen and Englishmen tumbled into the pit, which seeing her was, and there we jostled for a glimpse quite companionably; we were too hungry for quarrelling; and to say, I was one of ’m, is a title to subsequent friendship.  True; only mark me, Philip, and you, Patrick:  they say she has married a prince, and I say no; she’s took to herself a husband in her cradle; she’s married ambition.  I tell you, and this prince of hers is only a step she has taken, and if he chases her first mate from her bosom, he’ll prove himself cleverer than she, and I dare him to the trial.  For she’s that fiery dragon, a beautiful woman with brains—­which Helen of Troy hadn’t, combustible as we know her to have been:  but brains are bombshells in comparison with your old-fashioned pine-brands for kindling men and cities.  Ambition’s the husband of Adiante Adister, and all who come nigh her are steps to her aim.  She never consulted her father about Prince Nikolas; she had begun her march and she didn’t mean to be arrested.  She simply announced her approaching union; and as she couldn’t have a scion of one of the Royal House of Europe, she put her foot on Prince Nikolas.  And he ’s not to fancy he ’s in for a peaceful existence; he’s a stone in a sling, and probably mistaken the rocking that’s to launch him through the air for a condition of remarkable ease, perfectly remarkable in its lullaby motion; ha! well, and I’ve not heard of ambition that didn’t kill its votary:  somehow it will; ‘tis sure to.  There she lies!’

The prophetic captain pointed at the spot.  He then said:  ’And now I’m for my pipe, and the blackest clay of the party, with your permission.  I’ll just go to the window to see if the stars are out overhead.  They’re my blessed guardian angels.’

There was a pause.  Philip broke from a brown study to glance at his brother.  Patrick made a queer face.