'I am sorry to hear it, Sir Horace, for now I fear my visit here is bootless.'
'You judge most correctly, if you have come to ask delay about my projected clearances.'
There was a glare in the sharp eye, and a smile on the thin lips of Snaggs, as Sir Horace said this. I felt my eyes flash fire as anger gathered in my heart; for heaven never intended me either for a temporiser or a diplomatist.
'I was about to speak to you, Sir Horace, not of myself, but of my mother, who is aged, sickly, infirm, and unable to comprehend how any power on earth possesses a law to expel her from Glen Ora.'
'Now, young man, you irritate me! This is the rock upon which all you Celts split your very obtuse heads. The good lady, your mother, with the rest of the people on that portion of my estate, must learn that the tenant has no right in the soil.'
'None whatever, legally or morally,' added Snaggs.
'Your property!' I replied, trembling with passion; 'it would have been as much as your head is worth to have said this to a Mac Innon on the spot where you stand, a hundred years—ay fifty years ago. But it is of my mother I would speak—'
'Nay, sir—excuse me—I will hear nothing; moreover, your presence here is an unwarrantable intrusion; the ladies, Mr. Snaggs, await us at coffee.'
'Oh for a curse upon him whose mad extravagance and folly brought my father's son to this humiliation!'