"These old pictures, some of them are good." She smiled. "That's Gilles de Kyteler--not the one who came with Strongbow but a later one. And that's Fulke Kyteler, who rebelled with Silken Thomas, and tried to burn the Archbishop of Cashel in his own cathedral. They were very disappointed when they found the archbishop had slipped out. And that--" she pointed to a polished oval of black stone, framed in antique silver--"is Dame Alice Kyteler's magical mirror. She was the greatest of the Irish witches." She gave him tea and listened to him talk of America and of his work there. He was some sort of engineer, building bridges. She got an impression of him standing on an artifice of some kind, with plans in his hand, directing a whole crowd of workmen. He had been in Brazil and in China. "You must be a good engineer," she said in her direct way. "I 'm supposed to be a very good engineer," he laughed. "Do you make a great deal of money?" "A good deal. Not a great deal." "I 'm glad," she said. He looked at her in surprise. She was dusting her fingers daintily, but her eyes smiled. She was really glad. And he said to himself, "My soul! we 're friends." She took him into the garden, and he laughed. "And I brought you flowers." There was a little shade of disappointment in his laugh. "Indeed and indeed--" she looked him in the eyes and lied sweetly--"'Twas I needed them, for it's the devil and all for me to get any flowers out of my own garden. My two old gardeners are that mean! Darby 'd begrudge me a daisy for fear it 'd leave an unsightly gap in the grass. There he is, watching me for fear I 'll pull a leaf. Darby, this is Mr. O'Conor, and I 'm showing him the garden." "If he 'd come fifteen years ago, your Ladyship, or even ten years ago, he 'd have seen the like would have made his heart glad. But in the latter years, with the bad weather that's in it, now too much rain and now not enough rain at all, and the wind that nothing is a shelter against, and the soil that's growing poor, for all the time that's spent on it, till it's hard to rear anything, even a head o' cabbage itself--m'lady, will you for God's sake leave off pulling at that hedge?" She took him to see old Fenian in the paddock, and she liked the way he pulled the jumper's ears, ran his firm hand down the fetlocks. "Was he a great horse?" "Nearly the greatest of his day," she answered. "He never won a Grand National, but was third twice and second once. He had a great heart. No horse tried harder. The people loved him.... Kelleher, this is Mr. O'Conor, from America." "From America, is it, your Ladyship? Oh, sure, they 've fine horses over there. But they 've got to come to us for the hunters. Begging your Ladyship's pardon, but was your Honor ever in Kansas City?" "I was." "D' your Honor ever meet a man named Hannigan out there? Red Hannigan, they called him, a holy terror for bloody murder, the same man was." "I don't think so."