ficulties with which he
daily contended, formed the main subjects of his conversation.

In the palmier days of the Irish gentry there were many households in
which the religion of the servants was a matter of considerable
importance, and those who could afford exclusiveness, were accustomed
to employ only Protestants as indoor servants. This may seem like an
unwarrantable invasion of the inner fortress of another individual,
making his views spiritual responsible for his fortunes temporal. But
in Ireland, in the earlier half of the troubled nineteenth century,
such differentiation was inspired not by bigotry, but by fear. When a
man's foes might be, and often were, those of his own household, that
his servants should be of his own religion was almost his only
safeguard against espionage. There is somewhat to be said on both
sides; it will not be said here, but that there have been times in
Ireland when such precautions were required, cannot be ignored.

Robert Evans was a survivor of such a period. Time was when he
strutted, autocratic and imperious as a turkey-cock, ruler of a flock
of lesser fowl, all of his own superior creed; brave days when he and
Mrs. Dixon, the housekeeper, herded and headed, respectively, a bevy
of "decent Protestant maids" into Family Prayers every morning, and
packed "the full of two covered cars" off to the Knockceoil Parish
Church on Sundays. Evans rarely went to church, believing that such
disciplines were superfluous for one in a state of grace, but the
glory of the House of Talbot-Lowry demanded a full and rustling pew of
female domestics, while the coachman, and a footman or a groom, were
generally to be relied on to give a masculine stiffening to the party.
With Lady Isabel's _regime_ had come a slackening of moral fibre,
a culpable setting of attainments, or of convenience, above creed, in
the administration of the household. Once had Lady Isabel been
actually overheard by Evans, offering to a friend, in excuse for the
indifferent show made by her household in the parish church, the
offensive explanation that "R.C.'s were so sympathetic, and so easy to
find, while Protestants were not only scarce, but were so proud of
being Protestants, and expected so much admiration"--here she had
perceived the presence of Evans, and had unavailingly begun upon the
weather, but Evans' deep-seated suspicions as to the laxity of the
English Church had been confirmed.

It is possible that the greates