old nurse who could always drive with her. She had as many
priests to stay with her as could be needed--and even the priests did
not want a gorgeous chapel in that place where it would have merely
seemed an invidious instance of ostentation. They were perfectly
ready to celebrate Mass for Leonora and her nurse, when they stayed at
Branshaw, in a cleaned-up outhouse. But Edward was as obstinate as a hog
about it. He was truly grieved at his wife's want of sentiment--at her
refusal to receive that amount of public homage from him. She appeared
to him to be wanting in imagination--to be cold and hard. I don't
exactly know what part her priests played in the tragedy that it all
became; I dare say they behaved quite creditably but mistakenly. But
then, who would not have been mistaken with Edward? I believe he was
even hurt that Leonora's confessor did not make strenuous efforts to
convert him. There was a period when he was quite ready to become an
emotional Catholic.

I don't know why they did not take him on the hop; but they have queer
sorts of wisdoms, those people, and queer sorts of tact. Perhaps they
thought that Edward's too early conversion would frighten off other
Protestant desirables from marrying Catholic girls. Perhaps they saw
deeper into Edward than he saw himself and thought that he would make
a not very creditable convert. At any rate they--and Leonora--left him
very much alone. It mortified him very considerably. He has told me that
if Leonora had then taken his aspirations seriously everything would
have been different. But I dare say that was nonsense. At any rate, it
was over the question of the chapel that they had their first and
really disastrous quarrel. Edward at that time was not well; he supposed
himself to be overworked with his regimental affairs--he was managing
the mess at the time. And Leonora was not well--she was beginning to
fear that their union might be sterile. And then her father came over
from Glasmoyle to stay with them.

Those were troublesome times in Ireland, I understand. At any rate,
Colonel Powys had tenants on the brain--his own tenants having shot at
him with shot-guns. And, in conversation with Edward's land-steward,
he got it into his head that Edward managed his estates with a
mad generosity towards his tenants. I understand, also, that those
years--the 'nineties--were very bad for farming. Wheat was fetching only
a few shillings the hundred; the price of meat was so lo