“And like all bearers of good despatches,” said Lord Castlereagh, catching up the tone of the Duke, “I prefer a claim to your Royal Highness's patronage.”
“If you look for Chelsea, my Lord, you are just five minutes too late. Old Sir Harry Belmore has this instant got it.”
“I could have named as old and perhaps a not less distinguished soldier to your Royal Highness, with this additional claim,—a claim I must say, your Royal Highness never disregards”—
“That he has been unfortunate with the unlucky,” said the Duke, laughing, and good-naturedly alluding to his own failure in the expedition to the Netherlands; “but who is your friend?”
“The Knight of Gwynne,—an Irish gentleman.”
“One of your late supporters, eh, Castlereagh?” said the Duke, laughing. “How came he to be forgotten till this hour? Or did you pass him a bill of gratitude payable at nine months after date?”
“No, my Lord, he was an opponent; he was a man that I never could buy, when his influence and power were such as to make the price of his own dictating. Since that day, fortune has changed with him.”
“And what do you want with him now?” said the Duke, while his eyes twinkled with a sly malice; “are you imitating the man that bowed down before statues of Hercules and Apollo at Rome, not knowing when the time of those fellows might come up again? Is that your game?”
“Not exactly, your Royal Highness; but I really feel some scruples of conscience that, having assisted so many unworthy candidates to pensions and peerages, I should have done nothing for the most upright man I met in Ireland.”
“If we could make him a Commissary-General,” said the Duke, laughing, “the qualities you speak of would be of service now: there never was such a set of rascals as we have got in that department! But come, what can we do with him? What 's his rank in the army? Where did he serve?”