Mr. Camminy bowed busily somewhere in the direction between Patrick and the sideboard.

‘Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians,’ Mr. Adister resumed, talking to blunt his impatience for a private discussion with his own.

‘Surgery’s a little in their practice too, we think in Ireland,’ said Patrick.

Mr. Camminy assented:  ‘No doubt.’  He was hungry, and enjoyed the look of the table, but the look of his client chilled the prospect, considered in its genial appearance as a feast of stages; having luminous extension; so, to ease his client’s mind, he ventured to say:  ’I thought it might be urgent.’

‘It is urgent,’ was the answer.

‘Ah:  foreign? domestic?’

A frown replied.

Caroline, in haste to have her duties over, that she might escape the dreaded outburst, pressed another cup of tea on Mr. Camminy and groaned to see him fill his plate.  She tried to start a topic with Patrick.

‘The princess is well, I hope?’ Mr. Camminy asked in the voice of discretion.  ‘It concerns her Highness?’

‘It concerns my daughter and her inheritance from her mad grandmother!’ Mr. Adister rejoined loudly; and he continued like a retreating thunder:  ’A princess with a title as empty as a skull!  At best a princess of swamps, and swine that fight for acorns, and men that fight for swine!’

Patrick caught a glance from Caroline, and the pair rose together.

‘They did that in our mountains a couple of thousand years ago,’ said Mr. Camminy, ’and the cause was not so bad, to judge by this ham.  Men must fight:  the law is only a quieter field for them.’

‘And a fatter for the ravens,’ Patrick joined in softly, as if carrying on a song.

’Have at us, Mr. O’Donnell!  I’m ashamed of my appetite, Miss Adister, but the morning’s drive must be my excuse, and I’m bounden to you for not forcing me to detain you.  Yes, I can finish breakfast at my leisure, and talk of business, which is never particularly interesting to ladies—­though,’ Mr. Camminy turned to her uncle, ’I know Miss Adister has a head for it.’

Patrick hummed a bar or two of an air, to hint of his being fanatico per la musica, as a pretext for their departure.

‘If you’ll deign to give me a lesson,’ said he, as Caroline came away from pressing her lips to her uncle’s forehead.

‘I may discover that I am about to receive one,’ said she.

They quitted the room together.

Mr. Camminy had seen another Miss Adister duetting with a young Irishman and an O’Donnell, with lamentable results to that union of voices, and he permitted himself to be a little astonished at his respected client’s defective memory or indifference to the admonition of identical circumstances.

CHAPTER V

AT THE PIANO, CHIEFLY WITHOUT MUSIC

Barely had the door shut behind them when Patrick let his heart out:  ’The princess?’ He had a famished look, and Caroline glided along swiftly with her head bent, like one musing; his tone alarmed her; she lent him her ear, that she might get some understanding of his excitement, suddenly as it seemed to have come on him; but he was all in his hungry interrogation, and as she reached her piano and raised the lid, she saw it on tiptoe straining for her answer.