O never forget that old Ireland is weeping
        The bitter salt tears of the mother bereft!

He hummed the spontaneous lines.  He was accused of singing to himself, and a song was vigorously demanded of him by the ladies.

He shook his head.  ‘I can’t,’ he sighed.  ’I was plucking the drowned body of a song out of the waters to give it decent burial.  And if I sing I shall be charged with casting a firebrand at Mr. Rockney.’

Rockney assured him that he could listen to anything in verse.

‘Observe the sneer:—­for our verses are smoke,’ said Con.

Miss Mattock pressed him to sing.

But he had saddened his mind about old Ireland:  the Irish news weighed heavily on him, unrelieved by a tussle with Rockney.  If he sang, it would be an Irish song, and he would break down in it, he said; and he hinted at an objection of his wife’s to spirited Irish songs of the sort which carry the sons of Erin bounding over the fences of tyranny and the brook of tears.  And perhaps Mr. Rockney might hear a tale in verse as hard to bear as he sometimes found Irish prose!—­Miss Mattock perceived that his depression was genuine, not less than his desire to please her.  ’Then it shall be on another occasion,’ she said.

‘Oh! on another occasion I’m the lark to the sky, my dear lady.’

Her carriage was announced.  She gave Patrick a look, with a smile, for it was to be a curious experiment.  He put on the proper gravity of a young man commissioned, without a dimple of a smile.  Philip bowed to her stiffly, as we bow to a commanding officer who has insulted us and will hear of it.  But for that, Con would have manoeuvred against his wife to send him downstairs at the lady’s heels.  The fellow was a perfect riddle, hard to read as the zebra lines on the skin of a wild jackass—­if Providence intended any meaning when she traced them! and it’s a moot point:  as it is whether some of our poets have meaning and are not composers of zebra.  ‘No one knows but them above!’ he said aloud, apparently to his wife.

‘What can you be signifying?’ she asked him.  She had deputed Colonel Arthur to conduct Miss Mattock and Miss Barrow to their carriage, and she supposed the sentence might have a mysterious reference to the plan she had formed; therefore it might be a punishable offence.  Her small round eyes were wide-open, her head was up and high.

She was easily appeased, too easily.

‘The question of rain, madam,’ he replied to her repetition of his words.  ’I dare say that was what I had in my mind, hearing Mr. Mattock and Mr. Rockney agree to walk in company to their clubs.’