"I will say nothing as to that," Colonel John answered precisely.
"Then, faith, what are you saying?" James asked. Asgill stood by smiling, aware that silence would best fight his battle.
"This," Colonel John returned. "That I know those things of him that make him unfit company here."
"The devil you do!"
"And——"
But James's patience was at an end. "Unfit company for whom?" he cried. "Eh! Unfit company for whom? Is it Darby he'll be spoiling? Or Thaddy the lad? Or"—resentment gradually overcoming irony—"is it Phelim or Morty he'll be tainting the souls of, and he a Protestant like yourself? Curse me, Colonel Sullivan, it's clean out of patience you put me! Are we boys at school, to be scolded and flouted and put right by you? Unfit company? For whom? For whom, sir? I'd like to know. More, by token, I'd like to know also where this is to end—and I will, by your leave! For whom, sir?"
"For your sister," Colonel John replied. "Without saying more, Mr. Asgill is not of the class with whom your grandfather——"
"My grandfather—be hanged!" cried the angry young man—angry with some cause, for it must be confessed that Colonel John, with the best intentions, was a little heavy-handed. "You said you'd be master here, and faith," he continued with bitterness, "it's master you mean to be. But there's a limit! By Heaven, there's a limit——"
"Yes, James, there is a limit!" a voice struck in—a voice as angry as The McMurrough's, but vibrating to a purer note of passion; so that the indignation which it expressed seemed to raise the opposition to Colonel John's action to a higher plane. "There is a limit, Colonel Sullivan!" Flavia repeated, stepping from the foot of the stairs, on the upper flight of which—drawn from her room by the first outburst—she had heard the whole. "And it has been reached! It has been reached when the head of The McMurroughs of Morristown is told on his own hearth whom he shall receive and whom he shall put to the door! Limit is it? Let me tell you, sir, I would rather be the poorest exile than live thus. I would rather beg my bread barefoot among strangers, never to see the sod again, never to hear the friendly Irish tongue, never to smell, the peat reek, than live on this tenure, at the mercy of a hand I loathe, on the sufferance of a man I despise, of an informer, a traitor, ay, an apostate——"
"Flavia! Flavia!" Colonel John's remonstrance was full of pain.