of their lines to perceive an illimitable pride in the man likely to punish him in his offspring, who would inherit that as well; so, as is the way with the livelier races, whether they seize first or second the matter or the spirit of what they hear, the vivid indulgence of his own ideas helped him to catch the right meaning by the tail, and he was enlightened upon a domestic unhappiness, although Mr. Adister had not spoken miserably.  The ‘dash of the mother’ was thrown in to make Adiante, softer, and leave a loophole for her relenting.

The master of Earlsfont stood for a promise of beauty in his issue, requiring to be softened at the mouth and along the brows, even in men.  He was tall, and had clear Greek outlines:  the lips were locked metal, thin as edges of steel, and his eyes, when he directed them on the person he addressed or the person speaking, were as little varied by motion of the lids as eyeballs of a stone bust.  If they expressed more, because they were not sculptured eyes, it was the expression of his high and frigid nature rather than any of the diversities pertaining to sentiment and shades of meaning.

‘You have had the bequest of an estate,’ Mr. Adister said, to compliment him by touching on his affairs.

‘A small one; not a quarter of a county,’ said Patrick.

‘Productive, sir?’

’’Tis a tramp of discovery, sir, to where bog ends and cultivation begins.’

’Bequeathed to you exclusively over the head of your elder brother, I understand.’

Patrick nodded assent.  ’But my purse is Philip’s, and my house, and my horses.’

‘Not bequeathed by a member of your family?’

‘By a distant cousin, chancing to have been one of my godmothers.’

‘Women do these things,’ Mr. Adister said, not in perfect approbation of their doings.

‘And I think too, it might have gone to the elder,’ Patrick replied to his tone.

‘It is not your intention to be an idle gentleman?’

‘No, nor a vagrant Irishman, sir.’

‘You propose to sit down over there?’

‘When I’ve more brains to be of service to them and the land, I do.’

Mr. Adister pulled the arm of his chair.  ’The professions are crammed.  An Irish gentleman owning land might do worse.  I am in favour of some degree of military training for all gentlemen.  You hunt?’

Patrick’s look was, ‘Give me a chance’; and Mr. Adister continued:  ’Good runs are to be had here; you shall try them.  You are something of a shot, I suppose.  We hear of gentlemen now who neither hunt nor shoot.  You fence?’

‘That’s to say, I’ve had lessons in the art.’

‘I am not aware that there is now an art of fencing taught in Ireland.’

‘Nor am I,’ said Patrick; ’though there’s no knowing what goes on in the cabins.’

Mr. Adister appeared to acquiesce.  Observations of sly import went by him like the whispering wind.