A heavy-faced, sullen-looking young man, dressed in an ultra-fashionable dress suit, and strangling in a four-inch collar, was sprawling ungracefully on a garden seat with a newspaper on his knees and a cup of coffee on the rustic table at his elbow. He turned at the sound of footsteps on the garden gravel, and seeing Dulcie, rose clumsily to his feet. ‘His lordship has been asking for you, Lady Dulcie.’ ‘Dinner is over, I suppose?’ said Dulcie. ‘Yes, dinner is over,’ said the young man, scowling, ‘and so is the fight.’ ‘We’ve heard all about the fight from Blake. We met him on the rocks,’ said Desmond. The young man took no heed of the remark, and did not even look at the speaker. ‘I’m getting pretty tired of living down here among these savages,’ he continued to Lady Dulcie, with an attempt at the accent of a certain type of London men, a drawl which struggled vainly against a pronounced Dublin brogue. ‘Bottles flying at people’s heads--it isn’t my style, you know.’ ‘Sure,’ said Desmond, ‘if we’re so savage as all that, ’twould be a charity to stop here among us and civilize us. We’re willing to learn, Mr. Richard Conseltine, and willing to teach the little we know.’ The young dandy looked at him with a heavy insolence, in which there was a lurking touch of fear, but did not deign to address him. ‘His lordship’s awf’ly upset. My father’s with him, and the doctor’s been sent for.’ ‘I’ll go and see him,’ said Dulcie. ‘Desmond, you might go and ask Mrs. O’Flaherty for some dinner for both of us. I’m as hungry as a hunter.’ ‘I’ll follow you directly,’ said Desmond. ‘You’ll come at once, if you please,’ she said, with a pretty imperiousness. ‘Come!’ They went away together, young Conseltine following them with a deepening of his usual ill-bred, angry scowl. ‘The supercilious brute!’ said Desmond under his breath. ‘One fight a day is quite enough, Desmond,’ whispered Lady Dulcie. ‘Fight!’ said Desmond. ‘Much of a fight ’twould be. I’d-----’ ‘Quite so,’ Dulcie interrupted him quietly. ‘I know you’d--and as I don’t want you to, you’ll just go quietly, and ask to have some dinner laid for us, and keep out of his way for the rest of the evening.’ CHAPTER II.--LORD KILPATRICK.