, of habits perhaps
startling and certainly perfidious. However, the lady was philanthropic
in a rural way, and Father Riccoboni enlightened her as to the reasons
why his enterprising countrymen leave their smiling land, and open small
ice-shops in little English towns, or, less ambitious, invest their
slender capital in a monkey and a barrel-organ.

'I don't so very much mind barrel-organs myself,' said Logan; 'I don't
know anything prettier than to see the little girls dancing to the music
in a London side street.'

'But do not the musicians all belong to that dreadful Camorra?' asked the
lady.

'Not if they come from the North, madam,' said the Jesuit. 'And do not
all your Irish reapers belong to that dreadful Land League, or whatever
it is called?'

'They are all Pap---' said Lady Mary, who then stopped, blushed, and
said, with some presence of mind, 'paupers, I fear, but they are quite
safe and well-behaved on this side of the Irish Channel.'

'And so are our poor people,' said the Jesuit. 'If they occasionally use
the knife a little--_naturam expellas furca_, Mr. Logan, but the knife is
a different thing--it is only in a homely war among themselves that they
handle it in the East-end of London.'

'_Coelum non animum_,' said Logan, determined not to be outdone in
classical felicities; and, indeed, he thought his own quotation the more
appropriate.

At this moment a great silvery-grey Persian cat, which had sat hitherto
in a stereotyped Egyptian attitude on the arm of the Earl's chair, leaped
down and sprang affectionately on the shoulder of the Jesuit. He
shuddered strongly and obviously repressed an exclamation with
difficulty, as he gently removed the cat.

'Fie, Meriamoun!' said the Earl, as the puss resumed her Egyptian pose
beside him. 'Shall I send the animal out of the room? I know some
people cannot endure a cat,' and he mentioned the gallant Field Marshal
who is commonly supposed to share this infirmity.

'By no means, my lord,' said the Jesuit, who looked strangely pale. 'Cats
have an extraordinary instinct for caressing people who happen to be born
with exactly the opposite instinct. I am like the man in Aristotle who
was afraid of the cat.'

'I wish we knew more about that man,' said Miss Willoughby, who was
stroking Meriamoun. 'Are _you_ afraid of cats, Lord Scremerston?--but
you, I suppose, are afraid of nothing.'

'I am terribly afraid of all manner of flying things that buzz a