Arrah! Paddy, now can’t ye be aisy’
‘’Tis a beautiful voice,’ said Desmond, standing still to listen. ‘’Twould have been better for poor Blake, maybe, if it hadn’t been so fine; it’s just been the ruin of him.’
‘The horrid old man!’ said Dulcie.
‘I wonder uncle admits him to his table.’
‘Oh, sure, there’s no harm in poor Blake!’ said Desmond. ‘He’s nobody’s enemy but his own, and there’s no better company in Ireland, till he gets too much of the whisky inside him, or sees an attorney.’
‘What makes him hate lawyers so?’ asked Dulcie.
‘Sure he has reason,’ returned the boy, who had all an Irishman’s apparently innate detestation of law and its exponents. ‘He lost one half of his acres in trying to keep the other half, years ago, before you and I were born, and Feagus, who acted for him, played him false. That’s the story, at least, and I don’t find it hard to believe, for he’s an ugly customer, that same Feagus.’
They passed together through the ruined arch, which had been in former times the main point of ingress, through the outer wall of the Castle, the rough and ponderous stones of which had, in these later years of peace, gone to the building of stables, offices, and peasants’ cottages. The main building, a huge castellated mansion with an aspect of great age and rugged strength, contrasted strongly in its air of well-kept prosperity with most proprietorial residences in that part of Ireland. Skirting the side of the Castle, they came upon a garden and pleasaunce, bright with flowering plants and emerald turf, commanding a view of the sea, now shining with the glaring tints of sunset, which were reflected too by the bay-windows of the Castle façade.
A heavy-faced, sullen-looking young man, dressed in an ultra-fashionable dress suit, and strangling in a four-inch collar, was sprawling ungracefully on a garden seat with a newspaper on his knees and a cup of coffee on the rustic table at his elbow. He turned at the sound of footsteps on the garden gravel, and seeing Dulcie, rose clumsily to his feet.
‘His lordship has been asking for you, Lady Dulcie.’