that sort of royal airs."

"I don't understand!" said Mrs. Lee. "Why could you not do it now?"

"Because I should make a fool of myself;" replied Ratcliffe, pleased to
think that Mrs. Lee should put him on a level with Washington. She had
only meant to ask why the thing could not be done, and this little touch
of Ratcliffe's vanity was inimitable.

"Mr. Ratcliffe means that Washington was too respectable for our time,"
interposed Carrington.

This was deliberately meant to irritate Ratcliffe, and it did so all
the more because Mrs. Lee turned to Carrington, and said, with some
bitterness:

"Was he then the only honest public man we ever had?"

"Oh no!" replied Carrington cheerfully; "there have been one or two
others."

"If the rest of our Presidents had been like him," said Gore, "we should
have had fewer ugly blots on our short history."

Ratcliffe was exasperated at Carrington's habit of drawing discussion to
this point. He felt the remark as a personal insult, and he knew it to
be intended. "Public men," he broke out, "cannot be dressing themselves
to-day in Washington's old clothes. If Washington were President now, he
would have to learn our ways or lose his next election. Only fools and
theorists imagine that our society can be handled with gloves or long
poles. One must make one's self a part of it. If virtue won't answer our
purpose, we must use vice, or our opponents will put us out of office,
and this was as true in Washington's day as it is now, and always will
be."

"Come," said Lord Skye, who was beginning to fear an open quarrel; "the
conversation verges on treason, and I am accredited to this government.
Why not examine the grounds?"

A kind of natural sympathy led Lord Dunbeg to wander by the side of Miss
Dare through the quaint old garden. His mind being much occupied by the
effort of stowing away the impressions he had just received, he was more
than usually absent in his manner, and this want of attention irritated
the young lady. She made some comments on flowers; she invented some
new species with startling names; she asked whether these were known in
Ireland; but Lord Dunbeg was for the moment so vague in his answers that
she saw her case was perilous.

"Here is an old sun-dial. Do you have sun-dials in Ireland, Lord
Dunbeg?"

"Yes; oh, certainly! What! sun-dials? Oh, yes! I assure you there are a
great many sun-dials in Ireland, Miss Dare."

"I am so glad. But I suppose they are