'They certainly should have learnt manners from their betters,' acquiesced my lady, lowering her standard. She had seen but little of the world of late, had been content to view events through coloured glasses, and the hasty glimpse of garish daylight which had just flashed out saddened and shocked her. She began unconsciously to wonder whether Lord Clare had always spoken the truth. It would be hard, she felt, to lose faith in her old friend. Then the tangle of long-rooted prejudice, parted for an instant, closed round her again. 'Well, well! the squireens might possibly be more brutish than was desirable; but they were at least Protestants, and as such, superior to the Helots over whom they tyrannized!' This reflection was a comfort to my lady; for she was not a bad woman, but one whose sympathies had been narrowed by the hardness of the world, and who had grown as uncharitable as many excellent people are who, professing to be more enlightened than their neighbours, are certain that they only are right, and all those who differ from them wrong. Doreen lay back on the cushions, too sore in mind and body to carry on the argument. All that she could distinctly realise was that hope had flown away; that Theobald had been near at hand and was gone; that perhaps he had been captured and executed. What must he have suffered to have been within touch of motherland, only to be swept back again to sea! Hope, forsooth! What is hope? too often but long-drawn disappointment in disguise! The party jerked and jolted over the interminable road. The hostelries at Drogheda and Dundalk were full. It was well that my lord had ridden forward, for so many families were beginning to steal out of Dublin that, as an ostler put it, there was a 'furious penury of beds.'