The man of law murmured an excuse or two; he knew his client’s eye, and how to thaw it.

‘No, Miss Adister, I have not breakfasted,’ he said, taking the chair placed for him.  ’I was all day yesterday at Windlemont, engaged in assisting to settle the succession.  Where estates are not entailed!’

’The expectations of the family are undisciplined and certain not to be satisfied,’ Mr. Adister carried on the broken sentence.  ’That house will fall!  However, you have lost no time this morning.—­Mr. Patrick O’Donnell.’

Mr. Camminy bowed busily somewhere in the direction between Patrick and the sideboard.

‘Our lawyers have us inside out, like our physicians,’ Mr. Adister resumed, talking to blunt his impatience for a private discussion with his own.

‘Surgery’s a little in their practice too, we think in Ireland,’ said Patrick.

Mr. Camminy assented:  ‘No doubt.’  He was hungry, and enjoyed the look of the table, but the look of his client chilled the prospect, considered in its genial appearance as a feast of stages; having luminous extension; so, to ease his client’s mind, he ventured to say:  ’I thought it might be urgent.’

‘It is urgent,’ was the answer.

‘Ah:  foreign? domestic?’

A frown replied.

Caroline, in haste to have her duties over, that she might escape the dreaded outburst, pressed another cup of tea on Mr. Camminy and groaned to see him fill his plate.  She tried to start a topic with Patrick.

‘The princess is well, I hope?’ Mr. Camminy asked in the voice of discretion.  ‘It concerns her Highness?’

‘It concerns my daughter and her inheritance from her mad grandmother!’ Mr. Adister rejoined loudly; and he continued like a retreating thunder:  ’A princess with a title as empty as a skull!  At best a princess of swamps, and swine that fight for acorns, and men that fight for swine!’

Patrick caught a glance from Caroline, and the pair rose together.

‘They did that in our mountains a couple of thousand years ago,’ said Mr. Camminy, ’and the cause was not so bad, to judge by this ham.  Men must fight:  the law is only a quieter field for them.’

‘And a fatter for the ravens,’ Patrick joined in softly, as if carrying on a song.

’Have at us, Mr. O’Donnell!  I’m ashamed of my appetite, Miss Adister, but the morning’s drive must be my excuse, and I’m bounden to you for not forcing me to detain you.  Yes, I can finish breakfast at my leisure, and talk of business, which is never particularly interesting to ladies—­ though,’ Mr. Camminy turned to her uncle, ’I know Miss Adister has a head for it.’

Patrick hummed a bar or two of an air, to hint of his being fanatico per la musica, as a pretext for their departure.

‘If you’ll deign to give me a lesson,’ said he, as Caroline came away from pressing her lips to her uncle’s forehead.