“There you’re right.  His business is to lend money, and he’ll lend it you as long as you’ve means to repay it; and I’m sure no Connaught man will do more—­that is, if I know them.”

“I suppose he will, but heaven only knows how long that’ll be!” and the young lord threw himself back on the sofa, as if he thought a little meditation would do him good.  However, very little seemed to do for him, for he soon roused himself, and said, “I wonder how the devil, Dot, you do without borrowing?  My income’s larger than yours, bad as it is; I’ve only three horses in training, and you’ve, I suppose, above a dozen; and, take the year through, I don’t entertain half the fellows at Kelly’s Court that you do at Handicap Lodge; and yet, I never hear of your borrowing money.”

“There’s many reasons for that.  In the first place, I haven’t an estate; in the second, I haven’t a mother; in the third, I haven’t a pack of hounds; in the fourth, I haven’t a title; and, in the fifth, no one would lend me money, if I asked it.”

“As for the estate, it’s devilish little I spend on it; as for my mother, she has her own jointure; as for the hounds, they eat my own potatoes; and as for the title, I don’t support it.  But I haven’t your luck, Dot.  You’d never want for money, though the mint broke.”

“Very likely I mayn’t when it does; but I’m likely to be poor enough till that happy accident occurs.  But, as far as luck goes, you’ve had more than me; you won nearly as much, in stakes, as I did, last autumn, and your stable expenses weren’t much above a quarter what mine were.  But, the truth is, I manage better; I know where my money goes to, and you don’t; I work hard, and you don’t; I spend my money on what’s necessary to my style of living, you spend yours on what’s not necessary.  What the deuce have the fellows in Mayo and Roscommon done for you, that you should mount two or three rascals, twice a-week, to show them sport, when you’re not there yourself two months in the season?  I suppose you don’t keep the horses and men for nothing, if you do the dogs; and I much doubt whether they’re not the dearest part of the bargain.”

“Of course they cost something; but it’s the only thing I can do for the country; and there were always hounds at Kelly’s Court till my grandfather got the property, and they looked upon him as no better than an old woman, because he gave them up.  Besides, I suppose I shall be living at Kelly’s Court soon, altogether, and I could never get on then without hounds.  It’s bad enough, as it is.”

“I haven’t a doubt in the world it’s bad enough.  I know what Castleblakeney is.  But I doubt your living there.  I’ve no doubt you’ll try; that is, if you do marry Miss Wyndham; but she’ll be sick of it in three months, and you in six, and you’ll go and live at Paris, Florence, or Naples, and there’ll be another end of the O’Kellys, for thirty or forty years, as far as Ireland’s concerned.  You’ll never do for a poor country lord; you’re not sufficiently proud, or stingy.  You’d do very well as a country gentleman, and you’d make a decent nobleman with such a fortune as Lord Cashel’s.  But your game, if you lived on your own property, would be a very difficult one, and one for which you’ve neither tact nor temper.”