ent to the proclamation of any English
disadvantage. A whiff of Celtic hostility in the atmosphere put him on
his mettle. 'Wherever the man is tried,' he said.

'My lady!' the Irish gentleman bowed to Lady Dunstane. 'I had the honour
... Sullivan Smith... at the castle...'

She responded to the salute, and Mr. Sullivan Smith proceeded to tell
her, half in speech, half in dots most luminous, of a civil contention
between the English gentleman and himself, as to the possession of the
loveliest of partners for this particular ensuing dance, and that they
had simultaneously made a rush from the Lower Courts, namely, their
cards, to the Upper, being the lady; and Mr. Sullivan Smith partly
founded his preferable claim on her Irish descent, and on his
acquaintance with her eminent defunct father--one of the ever-radiating
stars of his quenchless country.

Lady Dunstane sympathized with him for his not intruding his claim when
the young lady stood pre-engaged, as well as in humorous appreciation of
his imaginative logic.

'There will be dancing enough after supper,' she said.

'If I could score one dance with her, I'd go home supperless and
feasted,' said he. 'And that's not saying much among the hordes of
hungry troopers tip-toe for the signal to the buffet. See, my lady, the
gentleman, as we call him; there he is working his gamut perpetually up
to da capo. Oh! but it's a sheep trying to be wolf; he 's sheep-eyed
and he 's wolf-fanged, pathetic and larcenous! Oh, now! who'd believe
it!--the man has dared... I'd as soon think of committing sacrilege in a
cathedral!'

The man was actually; to quote his indignant rival, 'breaching the
fortress,' and pointing out to Diana Merion 'her name on his dirty scrap
of paper': a shocking sight when the lady's recollection was the sole
point to be aimed at, and the only umpire. 'As if all of us couldn't
have written that, and hadn't done it!' Mr. Sullivan Smith groaned
disgusted. He hated bad manners, particularly in cases involving
ladies; and the bad manners of a Saxon fired his antagonism to the
race; individual members of which he boasted of forgiving and embracing,
honouring. So the man blackened the race for him, and the race was
excused in the man. But his hatred of bad manners was vehement,
and would have extended to a fellow-countryman. His own were of the
antecedent century, therefore venerable.

Diana turned from her pursuer with a comic woeful lifting of the brows
at h