“The circumstances, I am aware, are different. You have not to revolutionize a country, but you have undertaken just as hard a task: to remodel its social state,—to construct out of the ruined materials of a bankrupt people the elements of national wealth and greatness. Let no man tell me, sir, that this is not a bolder effort than the other. Horse, foot, and dragoons, as poor Grattan used to say, won't aid you here. To your own clear head and your own keen intellect must you trust.”
“My dear Lord,” broke in Dunn, in a voice not devoid of emotion, “you exaggerate both my labor and my capacity. I saw that the holders of Irish property were not the owners, and I determined that they should be so. I saw that the people were improvident, less from choice than necessity, and I gave them banks. I saw land unproductive for want of capital, and I established the principle of loans for drainage and other improvements. I perceived that our soil and our climate favor certain species of cultivation, and as certainly deny some others. I popularized this knowledge.”
“And you call this nothing! Why, sir, where's the statesman can point to such a list of legislative acts? Peel himself has left no such legacy behind him.”
“Ah, my Lord, this is too flattering,—too flattering by half.” And Dunn sipped his wine and looked down. “By the way, my Lord,” said he, after a pause, “how has my recommendation in the person of Miss Kellett succeeded?”
“A very remarkable young woman,—a singularly gifted person indeed,” said the old Lord, pompously. “Some of her ideas are tinctured, it is true, with that canting philanthropy we are just now infected with,—that tendency to discover all the virtue in rags and all the vice in purple; but, with this abatement to her utility, I must say she possesses a very high order of mind. She comes of a good family, doesn't she?”
“None better. The Kelletts of Kellett's Court were equal to any gentry in this county.”
“And left totally destitute?”
“A mere wreck of the property remains, and even that is so cumbered with claims and so involved in law that I scarcely dare to say that they have an acre they can call their own.”
“Poor girl! A hard case,—a very hard case. We like her much, Dunn. My daughter finds her very companionable; her services, in a business point of view, are inestimable. All those reports you have seen are hers, all those drawings made by her hand.”
“I am aware, my Lord, how much zeal and intelligence she has displayed,” said Dunn, who had no desire to let the conversation glide into the great Glengariff scheme, “and I am also aware how gratefully she feels the kindness she has met with under this roof.”