He crushed her charitable apologies with references to the letter.

‘We are not certain that Mrs. Adister will object,’ said she.

‘Do you see her reading a speech of her husband’s?’ he remarked.  Presently with something like a moan: 

‘And I am her guest!’

’Oh! pray, do not think Mrs. Adister will ever allow you to feel the lightest shadow . . .’ said Jane.

‘No; that makes it worse.’

Had this been the burden of his thoughts when those two solitary tears forced their passage?

Hardly:  not even in his physical weakness would he consent to weep for such a cause.

’I forgot to mention that Mrs. Adister has a letter from her husband telling her he has been called over to Ireland on urgent business,’ she said.

Philip answered:  ‘He is punctilious.’

‘I wish indeed he had been more candid,’ Jane assented to the sarcasm.

’In Ireland he is agreeably surprised by the flattering proposal of a vacant seat, and not having an instant to debate on it, assumes the consent of the heavenliest wife in Christendom.’

Philip delivered the speech with a partial imitation of Captain Con addressing his wife on his return as the elected among the pure Irish party.  The effort wearied him.

She supposed he was regretting his cousin’s public prominence in the ranks of the malcontents.  ‘He will listen to you,’ she said, while she smiled at his unwonted display of mimicry.

’A bad mentor for him.  Antics are harmless, though they get us laughed at,’ said Philip.

‘You may restrain him from excesses.’

’Were I in that position, you would consider me guilty of greater than any poor Con is likely to commit.’

‘Surely you are not for disunion?’

‘The reverse.  I am for union on juster terms, that will hold it fast.’

‘But what are the terms?’

He must have desired to paint himself as black to her as possible.  He stated the terms, which were hardly less than the affrighting ones blown across the Irish sea by that fierce party.  He held them to be just, simply sensible terms.  True, he spoke of the granting them as a sure method to rally all Ireland to an ardent love of the British flag.  But he praised names of Irish leaders whom she had heard Mr. Rockney denounce for disloyal insolence:  he could find excuses for them and their dupes—­poor creatures, verily!  And his utterances had a shocking emphasis.  Then she was not wrong in her idea of the conspirator’s head, her first impression of him!

She could not quit the theme:  doing that would have been to be indifferent:  something urged her to it.

‘Are they really your opinions?’

He seemed relieved by declaring that they were.

‘Patrick is quite free of them,’ said she.

’We will hope that the Irish fever will spare Patrick.  He was at a Jesuit college in France when he was wax.  Now he’s taking the world.’