blessed climate,' said
Lockwood, as he pitched his cigar away. 'Heigh-ho! We 're too late for the
train to town, I see.'

'You'd not go back, would you?'

'I should think I would! That old den in the upper castle-yard is not very
cheery or very nice, but there is a chair to sit on, and a review and a
newspaper to read. A tour in a country and with a climate like this is a
mistake.'

'I suspect it is,' said Walpole drearily.

'There is nothing to see, no one to talk to, nowhere to stop at!'

'All true,' muttered the other. 'By the way, haven't we some plan or
project for to-day--something about an old castle or an abbey to see?'

'Yes, and the waiter brought me a letter. I think it was addressed to you,
and I left it on my dressing-table. I had forgotten all about it. I'll go
and fetch it.'

Short as his absence was, it gave Walpole time enough to recur to his
late judgment on his tour, and once more call it a 'mistake, a complete
mistake.' The Ireland of wits, dramatists, and romance-writers was a
conventional thing, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rain-soaked,
dreary-looking, depressed reality. 'These Irish, they are odd without being
droll, just as they are poor without being picturesque; but of all the
delusions we nourish about them, there is not one so thoroughly absurd as
to call them dangerous.'

He had just arrived at this mature opinion, when his friend re-entered and
handed him the note.

'Here is a piece of luck. _Per Bacco_!' cried Walpole, as he ran over the
lines. 'This beats all I could have hoped for. Listen to this--"Dear Mr.
Walpole,--I cannot tell you the delight I feel in the prospect of seeing a
dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, which is it? "'

'Who writes this?'

'A certain Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whom I knew at Rome; one of the
prettiest, cleverest, and nicest girls I ever met in my life.'

'Not the daughter of that precious Count Kostalergi you have told me such
stories of?'

'The same, but most unlike him in every way. She is here, apparently
with an uncle, who is now from home, and she and her cousin invite us to
luncheon to-day.'

'What a lark!' said the other dryly.

'We'll go, of course?'

'In weather like this?'

'Why not? Shall we be better off staying here? I now begin to remember how
the name of this place was so familiar to me. She was always asking me if
I knew or heard of her mother's brother, the Lord Kilgobbin, and, to tell
truth, I fancied