itle
to it. "True for you, a harder case than mine you 'll not hear of in a
summer's day. My elegant fine place, my beautiful domain, the seat of
my ancestors, or, if they were n't, they were my wife's, and that 's
all the same; and to be sitting here, in a foreign country r hundreds
of miles away from home. Oh dear, oh dear! but that's a change!" For an
instant the thought overwhelmed him, and he was silent; then, fixing
his eyes on Foglass, he added, in a dreamy soliloquy, "Hundreds of miles
away from home, drinking bad brandy, with a deaf chap in a red wig for
company."

"I call yours a case of downright oppression, Dalton," resumed the
other, who fortunately overheard nothing of the last remark. "If you had
been residing in Persia or the Caucasus even in the Danubian Provinces
we 'd have made you a case for the Foreign Office. You 'd have had your
compensation, sir. Ay, faith! you 'd have had a good round sum for the
murder of your father, old what 's his name? You 'd have had your claim,
sir, for the loss of that fine boy the Austrians have taken from you,
Mrs. Dalton's wardrobe, and all that sort of thing. I must repeat my
conviction, you 've been grossly infamously treated!"

"And just to think of my own flesh and blood, Stephen, my uncle!"

"I can't think of him, sir! I can't bear to think of him!" cried
Foglass, with enthusiasm.

"A count of the Empire!" resumed Dalton; "a field-marshal, and a
something else, with his Maria Teresa!"

"At his age he might give up those habits," said Foglass, who had
converted the Cross of the Empress into a very different relationship.

"And now, there 's Kate," said Dalton, who never heard his comment,
"there 's Kate, my own favorite of them all! thinks no more about us
than if we did n't belong to her!"

"Living in splendor!" mumbled Foglass. "Boundless extravagance!"

"Just so! Wasting hundreds flinging the money about like chaff!"

"I saw a ball dress of hers myself, at Madame Fanchone's, that was to
cost three thousand francs!"

"Three thousand francs! How am I to bear it all?" exclaimed Dalton,
fiercely. "Will any man tell me how an Irish gentleman, with an
embarrassed estate, and in the present times, can meet such extravagance
as that? Three thousand francs! and, maybe, for a flimsy rag that
wouldn't stand a shower of rain! Oh, Fogles, you don't know the man that
's sitting before you, hale and stout and hearty as he looks, the
trials he has gone through, and