“To be sure, I remember him; and he had the insolence—the unparalleled insolence—afterwards to address Miss Martin, as she sat beside me in the carriage, and to tell her that if the rest of the family had been like her the scene that had been that day enacted would never have occurred! Who is this Hosey Lynch? His name is so familiar to me.”
“He is a postmaster of Oughterard, and a kind of factotum in the town.”
“Then make a note of him. He must be dismissed at once.”
“He is not a freeholder, my lady, but only mentioned as an active agent of the Liberal party.”
“Don't adopt that vulgar cant, Miss Henderson,—at least, when speaking to me, They are not—they have no pretensions to be called the Liberal party. It is bad taste as well as bad policy to apply a flattering epithet to a faction.”
“What shall I call them in future, my Lady?” asked Kate, with a most admirably assumed air of innocence.
“Call them Papists, Radicals, Insurgents,—anything, in fact, which may designate the vile principles they advocate. You mentioned Mr. Nelligan, and I own to you I felt ill—positively ill—at the sound of his name. Just to think of that man's ingratitude,—base ingratitude. It is but the other day his son was our guest here,—actually dined at the table with us! You were here. You saw him yourself!”
“Yes, my Lady,” was the quiet reply.
“I 'm sure nothing could be more civil, nothing more polite, than our reception of him. I talked to him myself, and asked him something—I forget what—about his future prospects, and see if this man, or his father—for it matters not which—is not the ringleader of this same movement! I tell you, child, and I really do not say so to hurt your feelings, or to aggravate your natural regrets at your condition in life, but I say it as a great moral lesson,—that low people are invariably deceitful. Perhaps they do not always intend it; perhaps—and very probably, indeed—their standard of honorable dealing is a low one; but of the fact itself you may rest assured. They are treacherous, and they are vindictive!”
“Ennis Cafferty, my Lady, who lives at Broguestown,” said Kate, reading from the list, “sends a petition to your Ladyship, entreating forgiveness if he should have done anything to cause displeasure to the family.”