himself or his prospects."

"At all events, Gusta, there shall be no ambuscade in the matter, that
I 'm determined on. The Culduffs shall know whom they are to meet. I 'll
write a note to them before I sleep."

"How angry you are for a mere nothing! Do you imagine that the people
who sit round a dinner-table have sworn vows of eternal friendship
before the soup?"

"You are too provoking, too thoughtless," said the other, with much
asperity of voice; and taking up her gloves and her fan from the
chimney-piece, she moved rapidly away and left the room.

CHAPTER XLI. SOME "SALON DIPLOMACIES"

Lord Culduff, attired in a very gorgeous dressing-gown and a cap whose
gold tassel hung down below his ear, was seated at a writing-table,
every detail of whose appliances was an object of art. From a little
golden censer at his side a light blue smoke curled, that diffused a
delicious perfume through the room, for the noble Lord held it that
these adventitious aids invariably penetrated through the sterner
material of thought, and relieved by their graceful influence the more
labored efforts of the intellect.

He had that morning been preparing a very careful confidential despatch;
he meant it to be a state paper. It was a favorite theory of his, that
the Pope might be _exploite_,--and his own phrase must be employed to
express his meaning,--that is, that for certain advantages, not very
easily defined, nor intelligible at first blush, the Holy Father might
be most profitably employed in governing Ireland. The Pope, in fact, in
return for certain things which he did not want, and which we could
not give him if he did, was to do for us a number of things perfectly
impossible, and just as valueless had they been possible. The whole was
a grand dissolving view of millennial Ireland, with all the inhabitants
dressed in green broadcloth, singing, "God save the Queen;" while the
Pope and the Sacred College were to be in ecstasy over some imaginary
concessions of the British Government, and as happy over these
supposed benefits as an Indian tribe over a present of glass beads from
Birmingham.

The noble diplomatist had just turned a very pretty phrase on the
peculiar nature of the priest; his one-sided view of life, his natural
credulity, nurtured by church observances, his easily satisfied greed,
arising from the limited nature of his ambitions, and, lastly, the
simplicity of character engendered by the want of those relatio