He made his journey safely, and arrived at Holyhead by daybreak. He had meant to go over deliberately all that he should say to the Viceroy, when questioned, as he expected to be, on the condition of Ireland. It was an old story, and with very few variations to enliven it.
How was it that, with all his Irish intelligence well arranged in his mind—the agrarian crime, the ineffective police, the timid juries, the insolence of the popular press, and the arrogant demands of the priesthood—how was it that, ready to state all these obstacles to right government, and prepared to show that it was only by ‘out-jockeying’ the parties, he could hope to win in Ireland still, that Greek girl, and what he called her perfidy, would occupy a most disproportionate share of his thoughts, and a larger place in his heart also? The simple truth is, that though up to this Walpole found immense pleasure in his flirtation with Nina Kostalergi, yet his feeling for her now was nearer love than anything he had experienced before. The bare suspicion that a woman could jilt him, or the possible thought that a rival could be found to supplant him, gave, by the very pain it occasioned, such an interest to the episode, that he could scarcely think of anything else. That the most effectual way to deal with the Greek was to renew his old relations with his cousin Lady Maude was clear enough. ‘At least I shall seem to be the traitor,’ thought he, ‘and she shall not glory in the thought of having deceived me.’ While he was still revolving these thoughts, he arrived at the castle, and learned as he crossed the door that his lordship was impatient to see him.
Lord Danesbury had never been a fluent speaker in public, while in private life a natural indolence of disposition, improved, so to say, by an Eastern life, had made him so sparing of his words, that at times when he was ill or indisposed he could never be said to converse at all, and his talk consisted of very short sentences strung loosely together, and not unfrequently so ill-connected as to show that an unexpressed thought very often intervened between the uttered fragments. Except to men who, like Walpole, knew him intimately, he was all but unintelligible. The private secretary, however, understood how to fill up the blanks in any discourse, and so follow out indications which, to less practised eyes, left no footmarks behind them.
His Excellency, slowly recovering from a sharp attack of gout, was propped by pillows, and smoking a long Turkish pipe, as Cecil entered the room and saluted him. ‘Come at last,’ was his lordship’s greeting. ‘Ought to have been here weeks ago. Read that.’ And he pushed towards him a Times, with a mark on the margin: ‘To ask the Secretary for Ireland whether the statement made by certain newspapers in the North of a correspondence between the Castle authorities and the Fenian leader was true, and whether such correspondence could be laid on the table of the House?’
‘Read it out,’ cried the Viceroy, as Walpole conned over the paragraph somewhat slowly to himself.
‘I think, my lord, when you have heard a few words of explanation from me, you will see that this charge has not the gravity these newspaper-people would like to attach to it.’
‘Can’t be explained—nothing could justify—infernal blunder—and must go.’
‘Pray, my lord, vouchsafe me even five minutes.’
‘See it all—balderdash—explain nothing—Cardinal more offended than the rest—and here, read.’ And he pushed a letter towards him, dated Downing Street, and marked private. ‘The idiot you left behind you has been betrayed into writing to the rebels and making conditions with them. To disown him now is not enough.’
‘Really, my lord, I don’t see why I should submit to the indignity of reading more of this.’