“You’ll gain very little by insolence, old man! With my family you have nothing to do; they were in no wise connected with yours.”
“Be gorra! I knew it,” cried the peasant, slapping his thigh with his hand. “I’d have taken my oath of it. I was as sure of it as I was of my skin that you were not a born gentleman. You may be as rich as you please, and have houses, and lands, and cows, and hones, but there’s not a dhrop of the real blood in your body! I said it the first minute I looked at you, and I say it again.”
Pale and quivering with anger, Grenfell could not utter a word. The savage violence of the peasant came on him so much by surprise, that he was actually overwhelmed by it; and though he darted on the old fellow a look of fury, he turned away without speaking, and entered the house.
Vyner had just received tidings that Mr. M’Kinlay had arrived at Westport to await his instructions, and he was writing a honied line to despatch by the messenger, to say, that he would return there on the morrow, when Grenfell entered, and threw himself into a chair.
“I have met with ruffianism in most shapes, Vyner,” cried he, “but so insolent a scoundrel as that yonder never came across me before.”
“Insolent! Is it possible? What pretext could he have for insolence?”
“I know well, with your infatuation for these people, what a hopeless task it would be to persuade you that they were not miracles of good manners, as well as of loyalty and good conduct. I am quite prepared to hear that I mistook, or misunderstood—that, in short, what I fancied was insult was Irish naïveté.”
“But tell me what passed between you; what he said.”
“I will not.”
“Will you not let me judge of what you accuse him?”