Arthur looked wistfully at his sister, then at his child, who, the paroxysm past, was a cold statue again--haughty, unabashed. To look at her, you would feel assured that she had done right, while all the rest were wrong. Some people are incorrigible, and Miss Wolfe was evidently one of them. Her father suspected shrewdly that she had learnt the song at Curran's. He knew that she worshipped Tone, and that she had been in the habit of meeting him at the Priory. But he never had the courage to stand between the Catholic and the Protestant champion of her faith. As usual, he temporised, striving to serve two masters, and, as usual, suffered for his weakness. Lord Clare read him like a book, and was disgusted with his friend. Wolfe's sensitive conscience was constantly racked by doubts which a natural diffidence magnified into bugbears. Clare's inflexibly ambitious mind despised the hysterics of the country which he governed; brazen and hard, he was a fit tool for Mr. Pitt. As he looked at Arthur, who hung his head over his daughter's escapade, he decided that this was a square peg in a round hole. As attorney-general, acts might be demanded of him by-and-by, from which he would shrink with lamentable want of character. What if he were to shillyshally when prompt action was urgent! He might upset the deftest schemes, overturn the most skilful combinations, by his bungling. Only a few minutes ago, his tell-tale face had shown how he disapproved of the one witness project. What a pity it was that the inoffensive fellow had ever been promoted, for as a simple lawyer he would have been pushed by events into the background. Well, well! He must be tried, and trotted forth to test his mettle. If he were proved wanting, there would be nothing for it but to pass him on again--to shelve him somewhere in the Lords, where he might drone harmlessly. But this outrageous bit of scorn--his daughter! My lady must have a hard time with her. She was going awry, as hysterical girls will; yet surely the dowager was more than capable of coping with this febrile phase of a strong nature half developed? Then the astute idea passed through the schemer's brain of how convenient it would be if the budding Joan of Arc could be used as an unconscious spy upon her party. An ingenious notion, but one difficult to carry out--a delicate game, which would have to be worked through the countess, who was a crotchety soured woman, with a nice sense of honour, who would slave night and day for a cause which she esteemed a rightful one, but who would rather cut off her hand than stoop to what she knew was a meanness--provided that it did not affect her interests.