Lord Kilgobbin Part 18

'That she does! I think she is the haughtiest girl I ever met. To be sure she was a great beauty.'

'_Was_, Harry! What do you mean by "was"? Lady Maude is not eight-and-twenty.'

'Ain't she, though? Will you have a ten-pound note on it that she's not over thirty-one; and I can tell you who could decide the wager?'

'A delicate thought!--a fellow betting on the age of the girl he's going to marry!'

[Ill.u.s.tration: He entered and Nina arose as he came forward.]

'Ten o'clock!--nearly half-past ten!' said Lockwood, rising from his chair.

'I must go and have some breakfast. I meant to have been down in time to-day, and breakfasted with the old fellow and his daughter; for coming late brings me to a _tete-a-tete_ with the Greek damsel, and it isn't jolly, I a.s.sure you.'

'Don't you speak?'

'Never a word?' She's generally reading a newspaper when I go in. She lays it down; but after remarking that she fears I'll find the coffee cold, she goes on with her breakfast, kisses her Maltese terrier, asks him a few questions about his health, and whether he would like to be in a warmer climate, and then sails away.'

'And how she walks!'

'Is she bored here?'

'She says not.'

'She can scarcely like these people; they 're not the sort of thing she has ever been used to.'

'She tells me she likes them: they certainly like her.'

'Well,' said Lockwood, with a sigh, 'she's the most beautiful woman, certainly, I've ever seen; and, at this moment, I'd rather eat a crust with a gla.s.s of beer under a hedge than I'd go down and sit at breakfast with her.'

'I'll be shot if I'll not tell her that speech the first day I'm down again.'

'So you may, for by that time I shall have seen her for the last time.'

And with this he strolled out of the room and down the stairs towards the breakfast-parlour.

As he stood at the door he heard the sound of voices laughing and talking pleasantly. He entered, and Nina arose as he came forward, and said, 'Let me present my cousin--Mr. Richard Kearney, Major Lockwood; his friend, Mr.

Atlee.'

The two young men stood up--Kearny stiff and haughty, and Atlee with a sort of easy a.s.surance that seemed to suit his good-looking but certainly sn.o.bbish style. As for Lockwood, he was too much a gentleman to have more than one manner, and he received these two men as he would have received any other two of any rank anywhere.

'These gentlemen have been showing me some strange versions of our little incident here in the Dublin papers,' said Nina to Lockwood. 'I scarcely thought we should become so famous.'

'I suppose they don't stickle much for truth,' said Lockwood, as he broke his egg in leisurely fas.h.i.+on.

'They were scarcely able to provide a special correspondent for the event,'

said Atlee; 'but I take it they give the main facts pretty accurately and fairly.'

'Indeed!' said Lockwood, more struck by the manner than by the words of the speaker. 'They mention, then, that my friend received a bad fracture of the forearm.'

'No, I don't think they do; at least so far as I have seen. They speak of a night attack on Kilgobbin Castle, made by an armed party of six or seven men with faces blackened, and their complete repulse through the heroic conduct of a young lady.'

'The main facts, then, include no mention of poor Walpole and his misfortune?'

'I don't think that we mere Irish attach any great importance to a broken arm, whether it came of a cricket-ball or gun; but we do interest ourselves deeply when an Irish girl displays feats of heroism and courage that men find it hard to rival.'

'It was very fine,' said Lockwood gravely.

'Fine! I should think it was fine!' burst out Atlee. 'It was so fine that, had the deed been done on the other side of this narrow sea, the nation would not have been satisfied till your Poet Laureate had commemorated it in verse.'

'Have they discovered any traces of the fellows?' said Lockwood, who declined to follow the discussion into this channel.

'My father has gone over to Moate to-day,' said Kearney, now speaking for the first time, 'to hear the examination of two fellows who have been taken up on suspicion.'

'You have plenty of this sort of thing in your country,' said Atlee to Nina.

'Where do you mean when you say my country?'

'I mean Greece.'

'But I have not seen Greece since I was a child, so high; I have lived always in Italy.'

'Well, Italy has Calabria and the Terra del Lavoro.'

'And how much do we in Rome know about either?'

'About as much,' said Lockwood, 'as Belgravia does of the Bog of Allen.'

'You'll return to your friends in civilised life with almost the fame of an African traveller, Major Lockwood,' said Atlee pertly.

'If Africa can boast such hospitality, I certainly rather envy than compa.s.sionate Doctor Livingstone,' said he politely.

'Somebody,' said Kearney dryly, 'calls hospitality the breeding of the savage.'

'But I deny that we are savage,' cried Atlee. 'I contend for it that all our civilisation is higher, and that cla.s.s for cla.s.s we are in a more advanced culture than the English; that your chawbacon is not as intelligent a being as our bogtrotter; that your petty shopkeeper is inferior to ours; that throughout our middle cla.s.ses there is not only a higher morality but a higher refinement than with you.'

'I read in one of the most accredited journals of England the other day that Ireland had never produced a poet, could not even show a second-rate humorist,' said Kearney.

'Swift and Sterne were third-rate, or perhaps, English,' said Atlee.

'These are themes I'll not attempt to discuss,' said Lockwood; 'but I know one thing, it takes three times as much military force to govern the smaller island.'

'That is to say, to govern the country after _your_ fas.h.i.+on; but leave it to ourselves. Pack your portmanteaus and go away, and then see if we'll need this parade of horse, foot, and dragoons; these batteries of guns and these brigades of peelers.'

'You'd be the first to beg us to come back again.'

'Doubtless, as the Greeks are begging the Turks. Eh, mademoiselle; can you fancy throwing yourself at the feet of a Pasha and asking leave to be his slave?'

'The only Greek slave I ever heard of,' said Lockwood, 'was in marble and made by an American.'

'Come into the drawing-room and I'll sing you something,' said Nina, rising.