wn. I came to the conclusion
that Lady Moyne would have no difficulty in obtaining any subscription
she wanted from the millionaire. They were, of course, intimate with
each other. Lady Moyne had been Conroy's guest in the days when his
London house was a centre of social life. She had sailed with him on
the _Finola_. But this was the first time she had him at Castle Affey;
and therefore the first time he had seen Lady Moyne in her character
as hostess. It is not to be wondered at that he yielded to her charm.
Like all women of real capacity Lady Moyne was at her best in her own
house.

But she was too clever a hostess to devote herself entirely to one
guest. She took Babberly for a drive later in the afternoon and I felt
that my time had come. I determined to be true to my trust and to make
myself agreeable to Conroy. Unfortunately he did not seem to want my
company. He went off for a long walk with Malcolmson. This surprised
me. I should have supposed beforehand that talk about artillery would
have bored Conroy; and Malcolmson, since this Home Rule struggle
began, has talked of nothing else.

I spent the afternoon with Mr. Cahoon, and we talked about Home Rule,
of course.

"What those fellows want," he said, "is to get their hands into our
pockets. But it won't do."

"Those fellows" were, plainly, the Nationalist leaders.

"Taxation?" I said.

"Belfast will be the milch cow of the Dublin Parliament," said Cahoon.
"Money will be wanted to feed paupers and pay priests in the south and
west. We're the only people who have any money."

I had never before come in contact with a man like Cahoon, and I was
very much interested in him. His contempt, not only for our
fellow-countrymen in Leinster, Munster and Connacht, but for all the
other inhabitants of the British Isles was absolute. He had a way of
pronouncing final judgment on all the problems of life which
fascinated me.

"That's all well enough in its way," he would say; "but it won't do in
Belfast. We're business men."

I think he said those words five times in the course of the afternoon,
and each time they filled me with fresh delight. If the man had been a
fool I should not have been interested in him. If he had been a simple
crude money maker, a Stock Exchange Imperialist, for instance, I
should have understood him and yawned. But he was not a fool. A man
cannot be a fool who manages successfully a large business, who keeps
in touch with the swift vici