“In Ireland.”
“You look like her, I fancy—” thinking of Soane.
“I don’t know.”
Barres had heard Soane hold forth in his cups on one or two occasions—nothing more than the vague garrulousness of a Celt made more loquacious by the whiskey of one Grogan—something about his having been a gamekeeper in his youth, and that his wife—“God rest her!”—might have held up her head with “anny wan o’ thim in th’ Big House.”
Recollecting this, he idly wondered what the story might have been—a young girl’s perverse infatuation for her father’s gamekeeper, perhaps—a handsome, common, ignorant youth, reckless and irresponsible enough to take advantage of her—probably some such story—resembling similar histories of chauffeurs, riding-masters, grooms, and coachmen at home.
The Prophet came noiselessly into the studio, stopped at sight of his little mistress, twitched his tail reflectively, then leaped onto a carved table and calmly began his ablutions.
Barres got up and wound up the Victrola. Then he kicked aside a rug or two.
“This is to be a real party, you know,” he remarked. “You don’t dance, do you?”
“Yes,” she said diffidently, “a little.”