’I’ll tell you what, Mrs. Kendal, you could talk over the Giant’s Causeway if you had a mind,’ said Ulick, with much agitation; ’but you must not talk over me, for your own judgment would be against it.  You know what I am, and what I came of, and what have I in the world except the honour of a gentleman?  Mr. Kendal and yourself have been my kindest friends, and I’ll be grateful to my dying day; but if Mr. Kendal thinks I can submit tamely when he resents what he never ought to have noticed, why, then, what have I to do but to show him the difference?  If his kindness was to me as a gentleman and his equal, I love and bless him for it, but if it be a patronizing of the poor clerk, why, then, I owe it to myself and my people to show that I can stand alone, without cringing, and being thankful for affronts.’

‘Did it ever occur to you to think whether pride be a sin?’

‘’Tis not pride!’ cried Ulick.  It is my duty to my family and my name.  You’d say yourself, as you allowed before now, that it would be mere meanness and servility to swallow insults for one’s own profit; and if I were to say “you’re welcome, with many thanks, to shuffle over my private papers, and call myself to account,” I’d better have given up my name at once, for I’d have left the gentleman behind me.’

’I do believe it is solely for the O’Mores that you are making a duty of implacability!’

’It is a duty not to run from one’s word, and debase oneself for one’s own advantage.’

‘One would think some wonderful advantage was held out to you.’

‘The pleasantest hours of my life,’ murmured he sadly, under his breath.

‘Well, Ulick,’ she said, holding out her hand, ’I’m not quite dissatisfied; I think some day even an O’More will see that there is no exception from the law of forgiveness in their special favour, and that you will not be able to go on resenting what we have suffered from the young of the spider-monkey.’

Even this allusion produced no outward effect; he only shook hands gravely, saying, ’I never did otherwise than forgive, and regret the consequences:  I am very thankful for all your past kindness.’

Worse than the Giant’s Causeway, thought Albinia as she parted from him.  Nothing is so hopeless as that sort of forgiveness, because it satisfies the conscience.

Mr. Kendal predicted that, the Keltic dignity having been asserted, good sense and principle would restore things to a rational footing.  What this meant might be uncertain, but he certainly missed Prometheus, and found Maurice a poor substitute.  Indulgence itself could hardly hold out in unmitigated intercourse with an obstreperous dunce not seven years old, and Maurice, deprived of Gilbert, cut off from Ulick, with mamma busy, and Sophy out of spirits, underwent more snubbing than had ever yet fallen to his lot.  Not that he was much concerned thereat; and Mr. Kendal would resume his book after a lecture upon good manners, and then be roused to find his library a gigantic cobweb, strings tied to every leg of table or chair, and Maurice and the little Awk enacting spider and fly, heedless of the unwilling flies who might suffer by their trap.  Such being the case, his magnanimity was the less amazing when he said, ’Albinia, there is no reason that O’More should not eat his Christmas dinner here.’