‘Well, Mathew, I’m not often mistaken! The woman that has managed an estate for more than forty years, been her own land-steward and her own law-agent, doesn’t make a great many blunders; and, as I said before, if Mathew has no friend to tell him the truth among the men of his acquaintance, it’s well that there is a woman to the fore, who has courage and good sense to go up and do it.’ She looked fixedly at him, as though expecting some concurrence in the remark, if not some intimation to proceed; but neither came, and she continued. ‘I suppose you don’t read the Dublin newspapers?’ said she civilly. ‘I do, and every day the post brings them.’ ‘You see, therefore, without my telling you, what the world is saying about you. You see how they treat “the search for arms,” as they head it, and “the Maid of Saragossa!” O Mathew Kearney! Mathew Kearney! whatever happened the old stock of the land, they never made themselves ridiculous.’ ‘Have you done, Miss Betty?’ asked he, with assumed calm. ‘Done! Why, it’s only beginning I am,’ cried she. ‘Not but I’d bear a deal of blackguarding from the press--as the old woman said when the soldier threatened to run his bayonet through her: “Devil thank you, it’s only your trade.” But when we come to see the head of an old family making ducks and drakes of his family property, threatening the old tenants that have been on the land as long as his own people, raising the rent here, evicting there, distressing the people’s minds when they’ve just as much as they can to bear up with--then it’s time for an old friend and neighbour to give a timely warning, and cry “Stop.’” ‘Have you done, Miss Betty?’ And now his voice was more stern than before. ‘I have not, nor near done, Mathew Kearney. I’ve said nothing of the way you’re bringing up your family--that son, in particular--to make him think himself a young man of fortune, when you know, in your heart, you’ll leave him little more than the mortgages on the estate. I have not told you that it’s one of the jokes of the capital to call him the Honourable Dick Kearney, and to ask him after his father the viscount.’ ‘You haven’t done yet, Miss O’Shea?’ said he, now with a thickened voice. ‘No, not yet,’ replied she calmly--‘not yet; for I’d like to remind you of the way you’re behaving to the best of the whole of you--the only one, indeed, that’s worth much in the family--your daughter Kate.’ ‘Well, what have I done to wrong _her_?’ said he, carried beyond his prudence by so astounding a charge. ‘The very worst you could do, Mathew Kearney; the only mischief it was in your power, maybe. Look at the companion you have given her! Look at the respectable young lady you’ve brought home to live with your decent child!’ ‘You’ll not stop?’ cried he, almost choking with passion.