simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their
cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly
founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his
acquaintance with her eminent defunct father--one of the ever-radiating
stars of his quenchless country.

Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when
the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of
his imaginative logic.

'There will be dancing enough after supper,' she said.

'If I could score one dance with her, I'd go home supperless and
feasted,' said he. 'And that's not saying much among the hordes of hungry
troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet. See, my lady, the
gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up
to da capo. Oh! but it's a sheep trying to be wolf; he 's sheep-eyed and
he 's wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous! Oh, now! who'd believe
it!--the man has dared . . . I'd as soon think of committing sacrilege in
a cathedral!'

The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, 'breaching the
fortress,' and pointing out to Diana Merion 'her name on his dirty scrap
of paper': a shocking sight when the lady's recollection was the sole
point to be aimed at, and the only umpire. 'As if all of us couldn't have
written that, and hadn't done it!' Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned disgusted.
He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving ladies; and the bad
manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the race; individual members
of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing, honouring. So the man
blackened the race for him, and the race was excused in the man. But his
hatred of bad manners was vehement, and would have extended to a
fellow-countryman. His own were of the antecedent century, therefore
venerable.

Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows at
her friend. Lady Dunstane motioned her fan, and Diana came, bending head.

'Are you bound in honour?'

'I don't think I am. And I do want to go on talking with the General. He
is so delightful and modest--my dream of a true soldier!--telling me of
his last big battle, bit by bit, to my fishing.'

'Put off this person for a square dance down the list, and take out Mr.
Redworth--Miss Diana Merlon, Mr. Redworth: he will bring you back to the
General, who must not totally absorb you, or he will forfeit his
popularity.'

Diana instantly struck a treaty with