this confounded _contretemps_. There goes De Vere. I say, Dudley, whom
have we at dinner to-day?'

'Harrington and the Asgills, and that set,' replied he, with an insolent
shrug of his shoulder.

'More of it, by Jove,' said O'Grady, biting his lip. 'One must be as
particular before these people as a young sub. at a regimental mess.
There's not a button of your coat, not a loop of your aiguillette, not
a twist of your sword-knot, little Charley won't note down; and as there
is no orderly-book in the drawing-room, he will whisper to his grace
before coffee.'

'Whatabore!'

'Ay, and to think that all that time we might have been up to the very
chin in fun. The Rooneys to-day will outdo even themselves. They've got
half-a-dozen new lords on trial; all the judges; a live bishop; and,
better than all, every pretty woman in the capital. I've a devil of a
mind to get suddenly ill, and slip off to Paul's for the dessert.'

'No, no, that's out of the question; we must only put up with our
misfortunes as well as we can. As for me, the dinner here is, I think,
the worst part of the matter.'

'I estimate my losses at a very different rate. First, there is the
three hundred, which I should certainly have had from Paul, and which
now becomes a very crooked contingency. Then there's the dinner and two
bottles--I speak moderately--of such burgundy as nobody has but himself.
These are the positive _bona fide_ losses: then, what do you say to my
chance of picking up some lovely girl, with a stray thirty thousand,
and the good taste to look out for a proper fellow to spend it with?
Seriously, Jack, I must think of something of that kind one of these
days. It's wrong to lose time; for, by waiting, one's chances diminish,
while becoming more difficult to please. So you see what a heavy blow
this is to me: not to mention my little gains at short-whist, which in
the half-hour before supper I may fairly set down as a fifty.'

'Yours is a very complicated calculation; for, except the dinner, and
I suppose we shall have as good a one here, I have not been able to see
anything but problematic loss or profit.'

'Of course you haven't: your English education is based upon grounds far
too positive for that; but we mere Irish get a habit of looking at the
possible as probable, and the probable as most likely. I don't think we
build castles more than our neighbours, but we certainly go live in them
earlier; and if we do, now and then, get a ch