nenacingly at Lady
Isabel over the rim of the veiled tea cup.

Lady Isabel uttered a soothing and indefinite murmur, and the
indictment proceeded.

"Considering that _your_ family, Lady Isabel, took a leading part
in the programme, and that I may say the greater number of the
half-crown seats were Protestants, I _do_ think that _our_
Church--"

It avails not to follow Mrs. Cotton's diatribes further. Lady Isabel
had lived for some five and twenty years in Ireland, but they had not
sufficed to expound to her the intricacies of the web of jealousies,
hatreds, fears, and stupidities, that has been spun by that intolerant
Spirit of the Nation, in order to separate, as far as may be, the two
Churches who divide the kindly people of the Island of Saints between
them. Lady Isabel might see that in the distribution of the spoils
Mrs. Cotton had possibly a lawful grievance, but she could not, even
after five and twenty years, quite understand how solacing to the soul
of Mrs. Cotton was the consideration of the wrongs endured by her
Church.

"Yes, indeed, Lady Isabel! Not one penny more! And then Dr. Mangan to
say to Mr. Cotton when I sent him to complain about it, that it was
better than a poke in the eye with a blunt stick! That was by the way
of making a joke of it! And that the Hunt wanted it more than we did!
I wonder how much Father Greer left the Hunt!"

Again Mrs. Cotton's beady eyes snapped several times, in an emotion
that was not far from enjoyment. The iniquities of Father Greer were
very dear to her, and she was confident that in this matter of
dividing the spoil he had not disappointed her.

Passing on from the concert, Mrs. Cotton dealt with many subjects in a
harangue that turned the seamy side of Cluhir to the sun, with the
skill of a buyer of old clothes. Lady Isabel, behind the prisoning
tea-table, after a hopeless, helpless glance round an assembly that
was either preoccupied or wilfully blind, relapsed into the brain
stupor that was sometimes sent, like an anodyne, to those whom fate
had consigned to Mrs. Cotton's keeping. The Reverend Matthew, in whom
a prolonged course of his wife had developed a condition, when in her
society, of semi-hypnotic trance, sat in silence at his hostess' side,
devouring cake, and swallowing cups of tea, until what had apparently
been starvation was averted; he then dreamily withdrew, and joined
himself vaguely, to the group of which Miss Coppinger formed one.
Frederica