Sure the late lord would have spared his widow had he realised the worries which would come on her by reason of the proximity of Gillin. The mistress of the Little House gave excellent rowdy suppers, and entertained the _élite_ of Dublin. The judges bibbed her claret, and shook the night air with choruses, whereas they only paid state visits to the abbey once or twice a year. Her nurse's shebeen--a tumble-down festering hostelry thatched with decaying straw--was no better than a dog-boy's boozing ken, a disgraceful trysting-place for drunken soldiers, who were enticed thither by its excellent poteen. Jug Coyle's shock-pated daughter Biddy was a scandal to the neighbourhood, so recklessly did she profess to adore sodgers; while as for mischief, there was none perpetrated within ten miles round but that red-poled slattern was at the bottom of it. By-and-by Old Jug hung out a sign, a rude picture of a chained man, with 'The Irish Slave' as cognizance; and after that mysterious persons were seen to arrive at unseasonable hours who might or might not be United Irishmen. My lady knew all these doings, and hoped fervently that the new clients would turn out conspirators, for in that case there seemed a chance that she might sweep away the nuisance which vexed her day by day. I say _she_ advisedly, because Shane was too busily engaged as King of Cherokees, to look after his property, and was only too thankful to his mother for undertaking the management of the estates. In intervals of complaining about the still absent tea-maker, the countess exposed her views for the hundredth time, as to the enormity of the obnoxious Gillin, to her ally Lord Clare, who smiled and nodded. The chancellor was a constant visitor at the Abbey, riding over frequently to dinner for a gossip or a game of cards with his old friend. He told her the last scandal, discussed the political situation, dropped hints about the movements of the patriots, lamented the mad folly of her brother Arthur's _protégé_; and unconsciously she came to see things through his spectacles, living herself a retired life. Not but what she heard something of the other side from Mr. Curran; but then he seemed to avoid these subjects, while Lord Clare delighted in gloating on them. The two mortal foes met frequently at the Abbey as on neutral ground, and snarled and showed their teeth, and thereby exemplified in their own persons one of the most singular features of a society now happily died away. During the last tempestuous years which preceded the Union, members of all parties were accustomed to meet in social intercourse, dining to-day with men they would hang tomorrow, even in some cases advancing funds out of their own pockets to secure the escape of those whom it was their duty to convict. The cause of the anomaly is not far to seek. Dublin society, though magnificent, was limited to a tiny circle. Absenteeism being voted low, the great families became interwoven by a series of