Wolfe smiled gently as he answered:
'I'll take a drive with pleasure, but you'll find me terribly deceitful; for I must grub up money for my daughter's sake; and yet, in certain ways, I'm an impracticable person--a mule with his feet together. Vacillating you think me. In some things you'll find I'm adamant.'
All were glad when at last the chancellor departed. Even my lady admitted that he could be crabbed at times. He was gone, but, like the gentleman in black, he left an evil savour in his wake.
Startled from reverie by the clang of the hall-door, Curran threw aside his bow and scratched his elf-locks pensively.
'No!' he said. 'These laws which they are continually framing are too dreadful. If the testimony of one witness is to be sufficient to convict us, then, are we foredoomed; for any one may be summoned to join in the Kilmainham minuet by the malice of a discharged groom, or the greed of the meanest cowboy. Trial and evidence are not children's baubles; they were not even established for the sole purpose of punishing the guilty; their most precious use is for the security of innocence.'
The little lawyer looked so horror-stricken, that both my lady and the giant burst out a-laughing.
'Come,' said the former, wresting the violoncello from his grasp, 'your music carries you too far. Lord Clare was out of sorts, and played upon your fears. Thank heaven he is no Blunderbore, or he would not be my welcome guest. Now to bed. Sara looks worn out.'
'He has no sense of right and wrong,' grumbled Curran.
'For shame! You are both good men. What a pity you can only agree in looking at each other through distorted glasses!'
'Faix, her ladyship's right,' acquiesced Cassidy, with a grin. 'You magnify the number of the informers. I should be sorry to believe there are half as many as you think.'