emark, and after a moment
resumed,--

"Do you know, then, it was precisely about that very subject of politics
I came out to talk with you to-day. The Duke told me of the generous way
you expressed yourself to him during his visit here, and that although
not abating anything of your attachment to what you feel a national
cause, you never would tie yourself hand and foot to party, but
stand free to use your influence at the dictates of your own honest
conviction. Now, although there is no very important question at issue,
there are a number of petty, irritating topics kept continually before
Parliament by the Irish party, which, without the slightest pretension
to utility, are used as means of harassing and annoying the Government."

"I never heard of this before, Rutledge; but I know well, if the measures
you speak of have Grattan and Flood and Ponsonby, and others of the same
stamp, to support them, they are neither frivolous nor contemptible;
and if they be not advocated by the leaders of the Irish party, you can
afford to treat them with better temper."

"Be that as it may, Walter, the good men of the party do not side with
these fellows. But I see all this worries you, so let 's forget it!" And
so, taking a turn through the room, he stopped opposite a racing print,
and said: "Poor old Gadfly, how she reminds me of old times! going along
with her head low, and looking dead-beat when she was just coming to her
work. That was the best mare ever you had, Carew!"

"And yet I lost heavily on her," said my father, with a half sigh.

"Lost! Why the report goes that you gained above twenty thousand by her
the last year she ran."

"'Common report,' as Figaro says, 'is a common liar;' my losses were
very nearly one-half more! It was a black year in my life. I began it
badly in Ireland, and ended it worse abroad!"

The eager curiosity with which Rutledge listened, suddenly caught my
father's attention, and he stopped short, saying: "These are old stories
now, and scarcely worth remembering. But here comes my wife; she 'll be
glad to see you, and hear all the news of the capital, for she has been
leading a stupid life of it these some weeks back."

However uneasy my mother and MacNaghten might have been lest Rutledge
should have alluded to the newspaper attacks, they were soon satisfied
on that point, and the evening passed over pleasantly in discussing the
sayings and doings of the Dublin world.

It was late when Rutl