One was a tall, sunburnt, soldierlike man of six or seven-and-thirty, powerfully built, and with that solidity of gesture and firmness of tread sometimes so marked with strong men. A mere glance at him showed he was a cold, silent, somewhat haughty man, not given to hasty resolves or in any way impulsive, and it is just possible that a long acquaintance with him would not have revealed a great deal more. He had served in a half-dozen regiments, and although all declared that Henry Lockwood was an honourable fellow, a good soldier, and thoroughly ‘safe’--very meaning epithet--there were no very deep regrets when he ‘exchanged,’ nor was there, perhaps, one man who felt he had lost his ‘pal’ by his going. He was now in the Carbineers, and serving as an extra aide-de-camp to the Viceroy. Not a little unlike him in most respects was the man who sat opposite him--a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark moustache, and a beard _en Henri Quatre_, to the effect of which a collar cut in Van Dyck fashion gave an especial significance. Cecil Walpole was disposed to be pictorial in his get-up, and the purple dye of his knickerbocker stockings, the slouching plumage of his Tyrol hat, and the graceful hang of his jacket, had excited envy in quarters where envy was fame. He too was on the viceregal staff, being private secretary to his relative the Lord-Lieutenant, during whose absence in England they had undertaken a ramble to the Westmeath lakes, not very positive whether their object was to angle for trout or to fish for that ‘knowledge of Ireland’ so popularly sought after in our day, and which displays itself so profusely in platform speeches and letters to the Times. Lockwood, not impossibly, would have said it was ‘to do a bit of walking’ he had come. He had gained eight pounds by that indolent Phoenix-Park life he was leading, and he had no fancy to go back to Leicestershire too heavy for his cattle. He was not--few hunting men are--an ardent fisherman; and as for the vexed question of Irish politics, he did not see why he was to trouble his head to unravel the puzzles that were too much for Mr. Gladstone; not to say, that he felt to meddle with these matters was like interfering with another man’s department. ‘I don’t suspect,’ he would say, ‘I should fancy John Bright coming down to “stables” and dictating to me how my Irish horses should be shod, or what was the best bit for a “borer.”’ He saw, besides, that the game of politics was a game of compromises: something was deemed admirable now that had been hitherto almost execrable; and that which was utterly impossible to-day, if done last year would have been a triumphant success, and consequently he pronounced the whole thing an ‘imposition and a humbug.’ ‘I can understand a right and a wrong as well as any man,’ he would say, ‘but I know nothing about things that are neither or both, according to who’s in or who’s out of the Cabinet.