nt, and by
his pleasant and jolly talk he is making Walpole even forget it at times.'

This was exactly what Atlee was doing. Watching carefully the sick man's
face, he plied him with just that amount of amusement that he could bear
without fatigue. He told him the absurd versions that had got abroad of the
incident in the press; and cautiously feeling his way, went on to tell
how Dick Kearney had started from town full of the most fiery intentions
towards that visitor whom the newspapers called a 'noted profligate' of
London celebrity. 'If you had not been shot before, we were to have managed
it for you now,' said he.

'Surely these fellows who wrote this had never heard of me.'

'Of course they had not, further than you were on the Viceroy's staff; but
is not that ample warranty for profligacy? Besides, the real intention was
not to assail you, but the people here who admitted you.' Thus talking, he
led Walpole to own that he had no acquaintanceship with the Kearneys, that
a mere passing curiosity to see the interesting house had provoked his
request, to which the answer, coming from an old friend, led to his visit.
Through this channel Atlee drew him on to the subject of the Greek girl
and her parentage. As Walpole sketched the society of Rome, Atlee, who had
cultivated the gift of listening fully as much as that of talking, knew
where to seem interested by the views of life thrown out, and where to show
a racy enjoyment of the little humoristic bits of description which the
other was rather proud of his skill in deploying; and as Atlee always
appeared so conversant with the family history of the people they were
discussing, Walpole spoke with unbounded freedom and openness.

'You must have been astonished to meet the "Titian Girl" in Ireland?' said
Joe at last, for he had caught up the epithet dropped accidentally in the
other's narrative, and kept it for use.

'Was I not! but if my memory had been clearer, I should have remembered she
had Irish connections. I had heard of Lord Kilgobbin on the other side of
the Alps.'

'I don't doubt that the title would meet a readier acceptance there than
here.'

'Ah, you think so!' cried Walpole. 'What is the meaning of a rank that
people acknowledge or deny at pleasure? Is this peculiar to Ireland?'

'If you had asked whether persons anywhere else would like to maintain such
a strange pretension, I might perhaps have answered you.'

'For the few minutes of this visit t