Lord Glengariff would have felt excessively offended could any one have supposed him anxious or uneasy on the score of Dunn's coming. That a great personage like himself should be compelled occasionally in life to descend to the agencies of such people was bad enough, but that he should have any misgivings about his co-operation or assistance, was really intolerable; and yet, we blush to confess, these were precisely the thoughts which troubled his Lordship throughout the whole of that long day. “Not that Dunn has ever forgotten himself with _me_,--not that he has ever shown himself unmindful of our respective stations,--so much I must say,” were the little scraps of consolation that he repeated over and over to himself, while grave doubts really oppressed him that we had fallen upon evil days, when men of that stamp usurped almost all the influence that swayed society. No easy matter was it, either, to resolve what precise manner to assume towards him. A cold and dignified bearing might possibly repel all confidence, and an easy familiarity be just as dangerous as surrendering the one great superiority his position conferred. It was true his Lordship had never yet experienced any difficulty on such a score,--of all men, he possessed a consummate sense of his own dignity, and suffered none to infringe it; but “this fellow Dunn had been spoiled.” Great men--greater men than Lord Glengariff himself--had asked him to dinner. He had passed the thresholds of certain fine houses in Piccadilly, and well-powdered lackeys in Park Lane had called “Mr. Dunn's carriage.” Now, the Irishman that has soared to the realm of whitebait with a minister, or even a Star and Garter luncheon with a Secretary of State, becomes, to the eyes of his home-bred countrymen, a very different person from the celebrity of mere Castle attentions and Phoenix Park civilities. Dunn was this, and more. He lounged into the Irish Office as into his own lodgings, and he walked into the most private chambers of Downing Street as if by right. Consulted or not, he had the reputation of holding the patronage of all Ireland in his hands; and assuredly they who attained promotion were not slow in testifying to what quarter they owed their gratitude. Some of that mysterious grandeur that clung to the old religions of the Greeks seems to hover round the acts of a great Government, till the Ministers, like Priests or Augurs, appear less equals and fellow-men than stewards and dispensers of immense bounties intrusted to their keeping. There was about Dunn's manner much to foster this illusion. He was a blending of mystery with the deepest humility, but with a very evident desire that you should neither believe one nor the other. It was the same conscious power looming through the affected modesty of his pretensions that offended Lord Glengariff, and made him irritable in all his intercourse with him.