Broadbent [keenly interested].  Eh?  How much?

Doyle.  Forty per annum.

Broadbent.  Forty thousand?

Doyle.  No, forty.  Forty pounds.

Broadbent [much dashed.] That’s what you call a fortune in
Rosscullen, is it?

Doyle.  A girl with a dowry of five pounds calls it a fortune in Rosscullen.  What’s more 40 pounds a year is a fortune there; and Nora Reilly enjoys a good deal of social consideration as an heiress on the strength of it.  It has helped my father’s household through many a tight place.  My father was her father’s agent.  She came on a visit to us when he died, and has lived with us ever since.

Broadbent [attentively, beginning to suspect Larry of misconduct with Nora, and resolving to get to the bottom of it].  Since when?  I mean how old were you when she came?

Doyle.  I was seventeen.  So was she:  if she’d been older she’d have had more sense than to stay with us.  We were together for 18 months before I went up to Dublin to study.  When I went home for Christmas and Easter, she was there:  I suppose it used to be something of an event for her, though of course I never thought of that then.

Broadbent.  Were you at all hard hit?

Doyle.  Not really.  I had only two ideas at that time, first, to learn to do something; and then to get out of Ireland and have a chance of doing it.  She didn’t count.  I was romantic about her, just as I was romantic about Byron’s heroines or the old Round Tower of Rosscullen; but she didn’t count any more than they did.  I’ve never crossed St George’s Channel since for her sake—­never even landed at Queenstown and come back to London through Ireland.

Broadbent.  But did you ever say anything that would justify her in waiting for you?

Doyle.  No, never.  But she is waiting for me.

Broadbent.  How do you know?

Doyle.  She writes to me—­on her birthday.  She used to write on mine, and send me little things as presents; but I stopped that by pretending that it was no use when I was travelling, as they got lost in the foreign post-offices. [He pronounces post-offices with the stress on offices, instead of on post].

Broadbent.  You answer the letters?

Doyle.  Not very punctually.  But they get acknowledged at one time or another.

Broadbent.  How do you feel when you see her handwriting?

Doyle.  Uneasy.  I’d give 50 pounds to escape a letter.

Broadbent [looking grave, and throwing himself back in his chair to intimate that the cross-examination is over, and the result very damaging to the witness] Hm!

Doyle.  What d’ye mean by Hm!?

Broadbent.  Of course I know that the moral code is different in Ireland.  But in England it’s not considered fair to trifle with a woman’s affections.