The maid hazarded a suggestion that Lady Dunseveric had
found life _triste_, too _triste_ to be endurable.

"You are right," said the Comtesse, "she must have died of sheer
dulness. She had two children. That was occupation for a while, no
doubt. But, _mon dieu_, a lady cannot go on having children every year
like a woman of the _bourgeoisie_. It would be too tedious. She died.
She was right. And now I am here in her place. I am here with my lord,
who has good manners but does not care about me, wishes me anywhere but
in his house; a nephew who has no manners and a great deal of stupidity,
and a niece who is much too old to be my niece, and who is too like me
in face and figure for us to get on well together. Otherwise, truly,
she is not like me. She is content to spend all day in a boat on the sea
catching fish. Conceive it yourself, Susanne, she was catching fish,
and her companion was the son of the _cure_, a man of some altogether
impossible Protestant sect."

But the Comtesse had the good manners or the good sense not to grumble
about her surroundings to anyone except her maid. She so far understood
the philosophy of a happy life as to know that pleasure awaits those
only who succeed in making themselves pleasant.

She came down the morning after she arrived in time for breakfast,
although the English breakfast was a meal she had learned to detest, and
the North of Ireland families have made an even more serious business of
it. She expressed a delight which she cannot be supposed to have felt at
the sight of salmon, fried, cold, kippered; ham, eggs, fowl, farles of
home-made bread, oat-cake, honey, jam, butter. To the secret amusement
of Lord Dun-severic she even accepted a bowl of porridge which her
nephew offered her, and then, to the astonishment of Maurice, asked if
she might eat honey with it. She was delightfully optimistic about the
prospects of amusement for the day.

"Where are you going to take me, Una? There are so many things that
I want to see. I recall the letters which Marie, your mother, used to
write to me about wonderful cliffs and gloomy caves and white rocks and
long strands. Of course you have all the business of the house to attend
to. I quite understand. I will wait. But afterwards, where will you take
me?"

Una glanced out of the window. The south wind of the day before had
brought, as south winds usually do in County Antrim, abundant rain.
Maurice, appealed to, gave it as his opinion