“I was not alluding to the papers,” said the marquis, with a trace of his cold sneer. “I rarely read them; there is plenty of fiction in the library. But I have heard from my agent in Connemara. The country is very unsettled.”
“Yes?” said Lord Cecil absently; he had his own ideas about Ireland, and they would probably have much astonished the marquis, who was a Tory of the old and thorough-going sort. But Lord Cecil was not thinking of Ireland, but of Doris Marlowe.
“I imagine you know that I—I suppose I ought to say ‘we’—have a great deal of property there?”
Lord Cecil nodded.
“I suppose so, sir.”
“Yes,” said the marquis, glancing at him from the corners of his cold, keen eyes. “You don’t take much interest in the matter—at present. But you will be marquis very soon, and then——” he laughed. “I don’t envy you your Irish property!”
“I am in no hurry to possess it, sir,” said Lord Cecil.
“I daresay not.”
“But I think the people have some reason for what they are doing.”
“No doubt,” assented the marquis, drily. “You view the business from the patriotic side.”