When, after politely rapping at the door of the parlour, the three entered the room, they found the great actress in precisely the same attitude she had assumed for her last visitor. The dignity of her posture was not without its effect upon the young men. They were not quite so self-confident as they had been outside the door. Each of them looked at the other, so to speak; but somehow none of the three appeared to be fluent. They stood bowing politely, keeping close to the door.
“Who are these persons?” said Mrs. Siddons, as if uttering her thoughts. “Am I in a civilised country or not?”
“Madam,” said Blake, finding his voice, at last, when a slur was cast upon his country. “Madam, Ireland was the home of civilisation when the inhabitants of England were prowling the woods naked, except for a coat of paint.”
Mrs. Siddons sprang to her feet.
“Sir,” she cried, “you are indelicate as well as impertinent. You have no right to intrude upon me without warning.”
“The urgency of our mission is our excuse, madam,” said Blake. “The fact is, madam, to come to the point, the gentleman who visited you just now is our friend.”
“Your friend, sir, is a scoundrel. He grossly insulted me,” said Mrs. Siddons.
“Ah, 't is sorry I am to find you do n't yet understand the impulses of a warmhearted nation, madam,” said Blake, shaking his head. “The gentleman came to compliment you on your acting, and yet you drove him from your door like a hound. That, according to our warmhearted Irish ways, constitutes an offence that must be washed out in blood—ay, blood, madam.”
“What can be your meaning, sir?”
“I only mean, madam, that your husband, whom we all honour on account of the genius—we do n't deny it—the genius and virtue of his wife, will have to meet the most expert swordsman in Ireland in the Phonix Park in the morning, and that Sarah Siddons will be a widow before breakfast time.”