“I'm sure of it, Miss Martin. I'm certain that he is a most accomplished whip, and as such perfectly sure to find favor in _your_ eyes. Let him come up here at once, however. Say I want him immediately,” added he, sternly; and Mary despatched a servant with the message, and sat down in front of her uncle, neither uttering a word nor even looking towards the other. “After all, Molly,” said he, in the quiet, indolent tone so natural to him--“after all, what does it signify who's in or who's out? I don't care a brass farthing about party or party triumphs; and even if I did, I 'm not prepared--What are you laughing at,--what is it amuses you now?” asked he, half testily, while she laughed out in all the unrestrained flow of joyous mirth. “I have been waiting for that confession this half-hour, uncle, and really I was beginning to be afraid of a disappointment. Why, dearest uncle, you were within a hair's breadth of forgetting your principles, and being actually caught, for once in your life, prepared and ready.” “Oh, is that it? Is it my embarrassment, then, that affords you so much amusement?” “Far from it,” said she, affectionately. “I was only laughing at that quiet little nook you retire to whenever you ought to be up and doing. Unprepared you say. Not a bit of it. Indisposed, indolent, unwilling, indifferent, any of these you like; but with a mind so full of its own good resources, and as ready to meet every contingency as any one's, don't say you are unprepared. Come, now, bear with me this once, dearest uncle, and don't be angry if I throw myself, like a rock or sandbank, betwixt you and your harbor of refuge. But I hear Mr. Scanlan's voice, and so I shall leave you. Be resolute, uncle, determined, and--'prepared'!” And with a gesture half menace and half drollery, she left the room as the attorney entered it. Scanlan, like most of those who came but casually in contact with Martin, had conceived a low idea of his capacity,--lower by far than it deserved, since behind his indolence there lay a fund of good common-sense,--a mine, it must be acknowledged, that he seldom cared to work. The crafty man of law had, however, only seen him in his ordinary moods of careless ease and idleness, and believed that pride of family, fortune, and position were the only ideas that found access to his mind, and that by a dexterous allusion to these topics it would always be an easy task to influence and direct him. “What's this my niece has been telling me of Lord Kilmorris?” said Martin, abruptly, and without even replying to the salutations of the other, who hovered around a chair in an uncertainty as to whether he might dare to seat himself uninvited,--“he's going to contest the borough with us, is n't he?” Scanlan leaned one arm on the back of the chair, and in a half-careless way replied,-- “He is afraid that you and he don't quite agree, sir. He leans to measures that he suspects you may not altogether approve of.”