Forbery declined the fray.  Patrick was eagerly watchful and dumb.  Rockney finished his coffee with a rap of the cup in the saucer, an appeal for the close of the sitting; and as Dr. Forbery responded to it by pushing back his chair, he did likewise, and the other made a movement.

The disappointed hero of a fight unfought had to give the signal for rising.  Double the number of the ten minutes had elapsed.  He sprang up, hearing Rockney say:  ‘Captain Con O’Donnell is a politician or nothing,’ and as he was the most placable of men concerning his personality, he took it lightly, with half a groan that it had not come earlier, and said, ‘He thinks and he feels, poor fellow!’

All hope of a general action was over.

‘That shall pass for the epitaph of the living,’ said Rockney.

It was too late to catch at a trifle to strain it to a tussle.  Con was obliged to subjoin:  ‘Inscribe it on the dungeon-door of tyranny.’  But the note was peaceful.

He expressed a wish that the fog had cleared for him to see the stars of heaven before he went to bed, informing Mr. Mattock that a long look in among them was often his prayer at night, and winter a holy season to him, for the reason of its showing them bigger and brighter.

’I can tell my wife with a conscience we’ve had a quiet evening, and you’re a witness to it,’ he said to Patrick.  That consolation remained.

‘You know the secret of your happiness,’ Patrick answered.

’Know you one of the secrets of a young man’s fortune in life, and give us a thrilling song at the piano, my son,’ said Con:  ’though we don’t happen to have much choice of virgins for ye to-night.  Irish or French.  Irish are popular.  They don’t mind having us musically.  And if we’d go on joking to the end we should content them, if only by justifying their opinion that we’re born buffoons.’

His happy conscience enabled him to court his wife with assiduity and winsomeness, and the ladies were once more elated by seeing how chivalrously lover-like an Irish gentleman can be after years of wedlock.

Patrick was asked to sing.  Miss Mattock accompanied him at the piano.  Then he took her place on the music-stool, and she sang, and with an electrifying splendour of tone and style.

‘But it’s the very heart of an Italian you sing with!’ he cried.

‘It will surprise you perhaps to hear that I prefer German music,’ said she.

‘But where—­who had the honour of boasting you his pupil?’

She mentioned a famous master.  Patrick had heard of him in Paris.  He begged for another song and she complied, accepting the one he selected as the favourite of his brother Philip’s, though she said:  ‘That one?’ with a superior air.  It was a mellifluous love-song from a popular Opera somewhat out of date.  ‘Well, it’s in Italian!’ she summed up her impressions of the sickly words while scanning them for delivery.