‘Do; and tell her that I gave you the same commission for Miss O’Shea, and was grieved that both should have been done by deputy!’ And with this he hurried away. CHAPTER XXIII A HAPHAZARD VICEROY When the Government came into office, they were sorely puzzled where to find a Lord-Lieutenant for Ireland. It is, unhappily, a post that the men most fitted for generally refuse, while the Cabinet is besieged by a class of applicants whose highest qualification is a taste for mock-royalty combined with an encumbered estate. Another great requisite, beside fortune and a certain amount of ability, was at this time looked for. The Premier was about, as newspapers call it, ‘to inaugurate a new policy,’ and he wanted a man who knew nothing about Ireland! Now, it might be carelessly imagined that here was one of those essentials very easily supplied. Any man frequenting club-life or dining out in town could have safely pledged himself to tell off a score or two of eligible Viceroys, so far as this qualification went. The Minister, however, wanted more than mere ignorance: he wanted that sort of indifference on which a character for impartiality could so easily be constructed. Not alone a man unacquainted with Ireland, but actually incapable of being influenced by an Irish motive or affected by an Irish view of anything. Good-luck would have it that he met such a man at dinner. He was an ambassador at Constantinople, on leave from his post, and so utterly dead to Irish topics as to be uncertain whether O’Donovan Rossa was a Fenian or a Queen’s Counsel, and whether he whom he had read of as the ‘Lion of Judah’ was the king of beasts or the Archbishop of Tuam! The Minister was pleased with his new acquaintance, and talked much to him, and long. He talked well, and not the less well that his listener was a fresh audience, who heard everything for the first time, and with all the interest that attaches to a new topic. Lord Danesbury was, indeed, that ‘sheet of white paper’ the head of the Cabinet had long been searching for, and he hastened to inscribe him with the characters he wished. ‘You must go to Ireland for me, my lord,’ said the Minister. ‘I have met no one as yet so rightly imbued with the necessities of the situation. You must be our Viceroy.’