"Yes, that's what Ireland has come to. A lot of poor, ignorant people like Ryan, ruled by a syndicate of ruffians, that make their own laws and don't care a button for the law of God or the law of the land. It's unbelievable, but there it is. And now they'll be going for me. I've had several anonymous letters in the last month, threatening boycotting or worse, if I don't amend my ways. Much I care for them! Look, the rain's cleared off. I'm going to the meet of the hounds at Drumboyne. Would you care to drive with me? If you had a riding habit, we might have ridden."
"But I have a riding habit. It's pretty old, but——"
"Up with you and put it on, then," said Mr. French; "and I'll tell Moriarty to saddle the grey mare for you. She'll be round at the door in ten minutes."
Twenty minutes later, Miss Grimshaw, in a riding habit and covert coat, relic of her money-making days with Hardmuth, was accompanying Mr. French down the drive, she on the grey mare, he on a raw-boned hunter with a head which had suggestions about it of a fiddle and the devil.
She was a good horsewoman. In London, her only extravagance had been an early morning canter in the Park on a hired hack. It was for this she had bought the habit.
They struck the road. It was twenty minutes past nine, and as the meet was at half-past ten, they had plenty of time.
The clouds had ceased raining, had risen to an immense height, and there, under the influence of some wind of the upper atmosphere, had become mackerelled—a grey, peaceful sky, showing here and there through a rift the faintest tinge of blue.
The air smelt of the rain and the rain-wet earth, and the hills lay distinct, grey, peaceful, wonderfully clear.
Nowhere else in the world but in Ireland do you get such weather as this.
Hennessy, the master of the hounds, lived at a place called Barrington Court, seven miles south of Drumboyne. He was a young man, a bachelor, and a pretty fast liver; he owned a good bit of land, and, like every other landowner in the county, was pretty much under the thumb of the league. But he was, unlike French, a diplomat.