one with my people about evictions.  We Irish take strong root.  And honest rent paid over to absentees, through an agent, if you think of it, seems like flinging the money that’s the sweat of the brow into a stone conduit to roll away to a giant maw hungry as the sea.  It’s the bleeding to death of our land!  Transactions from hand to hand of warm human flesh-nothing else will do:  I mean, for men of our blood.  Ah! she would have kept my brother temperate in his notions and his plans.  And why absentees, Miss Adister?  Because we’ve no centre of home life:  the core has been taken out of us; our country has no hearth-fire.  I’m for union; only there should be justice, and a little knowledge to make allowance for the natural cravings of a different kind of people.  Well, then, and I suppose that inter-marriages are good for both.  But here comes a man, the boldest and handsomest of his race, and he offers himself to the handsomest and sweetest of yours, and she leans to him, and the family won’t have him.  For he’s an Irishman and a Catholic.  Who is it then opposed the proper union of the two islands?  Not Philip.  He did his best; and if he does worse now he’s not entirely to blame.  The misfortune is, that when he learns the total loss of her on that rock-promontory, he’ll be dashing himself upon rocks sure to shiver him.  There’s my fear.  If I might take him this . . . ?’ Patrick pleaded with the miniature raised like the figure of his interrogation.

Caroline’s inward smile threw a soft light of humour over her features at the simple cunning of his wind-up to the lecture on his country’s case, which led her to perceive a similar cunning simplicity in his identification of it with Philip’s.  It startled her to surprise, for the reason that she’d been reviewing his freakish hops from Philip to Ireland and to Adiante, and wondering in a different kind of surprise, how and by what profitless ingenuity he contrived to weave them together.  Nor was she unmoved, notwithstanding her fancied perception of his Jesuitry:  his look and his voice were persuasive; his love of his brother was deep; his change of sentiment toward Adiante after the tale told him by her old nurse Jenny, stood for proof of a generous manliness.

Before she had replied, her uncle entered the armoury, and Patrick was pleading still, and she felt herself to be a piece of damask, a very fiery dye.

To disentangle herself, she said on an impulse, desperately

‘Mr. O’Donnell begs to have the miniature for his brother.’

Patrick swung instantly to Mr. Adister.  ’I presumed to ask for it, sir, to carry it to Philip.  He is ignorant about the princess as yet; he would like to have a bit of the wreck.  I shan’t be a pleasant messenger to him.  I should be glad to take him something.  It could be returned after a time.  She was a great deal to Philip—­three parts of his life.  He has nothing of her to call his own.’

‘That!’ said Mr. Adister.  He turned to the virgin Adiante, sat down and shut his eyes, fetching a breath.  He looked vacantly at Patrick.