"We are a fighting race," said she, with admirable caution picking her steps through a long paragraph. "There's—there are times when no one can hold us. This is such a time. A few months back the Fenian trouble could have been settled in one week. Now it will take a year."
"But how?" said Vandervelt. "If you had the making of the scheme, I'm sure it would be a success."
"In this way," she answered, bowing and smiling to his sincere compliment, "by making all the Irish Fenians, that is, those in Ireland, policemen."
The gentlemen laughed with one accord.
"Mr. Sullivan manages his troublesome people that way," she observed triumphantly.
"You are a student of the leader," said Vandervelt.
"Everybody should study him, if they want to win," said Anne.
"And that's wisdom," cried Lord Constantine.
The conversation turned on opera, and the hostess wondered why Honora did not study for the operatic stage. Then they all urged her to think of the scheme.
"I hope," said Anne gently, "that she will never try to spoil her voice with opera. The great singers give me the chills, and the creeps, and the shivers, the most terrible feeling, which I never had since the day Monsignor preached his first sermon, and broke down."