Lucy gave him one of her kind, compassionate looks, which always made her seem beautiful, and said, "I should forgive you. I should tell you that you were too young for your years; but I should forgive you, I'm sure." "That's what I wanted to know," said Urquhart, and remained silent for a while. When he resumed it was abruptly, on a totally new matter. "I shall bring my sister over to you after this. She's here. I don't know whether you'll like her. She'll like you." "Where is she?" Lucy asked, rather curious. "She's over there, by our hostess. That big black hat is hers. She's underneath it." Lucy saw a spry, black-haired youngish woman, very vivacious but what she herself called "good." James would have said, "Smart." Not at all like her brother, she thought, and said so. "She's not such a scoundrel," Urquhart admitted, "but she takes a line of her own. Her husband's name is Nugent. He is South Irish, where we are North. That boy who went with us to the play is her son. He is a lively breed--so it hasn't turned out amiss. She's not at all your sort, but as you know the worst of us you may as well know what we can do when we exert ourselves." He added, "My old father, now with Beelzebub, was a terror." "Do tell me about him." "It would take too long. He was very old-fashioned in most ways. They used to call him King Urquhart in Donegal. The worst of it was that he knew good claret and could shoot. That makes a bad combination. He used to sit on a hogshead of it in his front yard and challenge all and sundry to mortal combat. He really did. Duels he used to call them. He said, 'Me honour's involved, d'ye see?' and believed it. But they were really murders, because he was infallible with a revolver. He adored my mother, but she couldn't do anything with him. 'Tush, me dear,' he used to say, 'I wouldn't hurt a hair of his bald head.' And then he'd have to bolt over to France for a bit and keep quiet. But everybody liked him, I'm sorry to say. They gave him a public funeral when he died. They took him out of the hearse--imagine the great sooty plumes of it--and carried him to the chapel--half a mile away." Lucy didn't know how much of this to believe, which made it none the worse. "He was a Catholic?" "He was." "And so are you?" He looked up. "Eh? I suppose I am--if any." "What _do_ you mean?" she insisted. "Well," he said. "It's there, I expect. You don't get rid of it." She considered this to herself.