"The man who has Bullfinch." Lord Mallow was in the place of honour next his hostess. Involuntarily Violet glanced in that direction, and was startled to find the Irishman's good-humoured gaze meeting hers, just as if he had been watching her for the last half-hour. "How do I like him? Well, he seems very good-natured." "Seems good-natured. You ought to be able to give me a more definite answer by this time. You have lived in the same house with him--let me see, is it three or four days since he came?" "He has been here nearly a week." "A week! Why then you must know him as well as if he were your brother. There is no man living who could keep himself dark for a week. No; I don't believe the most inscrutable of men, born and bred in diplomatic circles, could keep the secret of a solitary failing from the eyes of those who live under the same roof with him for seven days. It would leak out somehow--if not at breakfast, at dinner. Man is a communicative animal, and so loves talking of himself that if he has committed murder he must tell somebody about it sooner or later. And as to that man," continued Rorie, with a contemptuous glance at the single-minded Lord Mallow, "he is a creature whom the merest beginner in the study of humanity would know by heart in half-an-hour." "What do you know about him?" asked Vixen laughing. "You have had more than half-an-hour for the study of his character." "I know ever so much more than I want to know." "Answered like a Greek oracle." "What, have you taken to reading Greek?" "No; but I know the oracles were a provoking set of creatures who answered every inquiry with an enigma. But I won't have you abuse Lord Mallow. He has been very kind to Bullfinch, and has promised me that he will never part with him. The dear old horse is to have a comfortable stable and kindly treatment to his dying day--not to be sent out to grass in his old age, to shiver in a dreary solitude, or to be scorched by the sun and tormented by the flies." "He has promised all that, has he? He would promise a good deal more, I daresay," muttered Rorie, stooping over his rosebud. "Do you think him handsome? Do women admire a fresh complexion and black whiskers, and that unmistakable air of a hairdresser's wax model endowed with animation?" "I see you consider him an idiot," said Vixen laughing. "But I assure you he is rather clever. He talks wonderfully about Ireland, and the reforms he is going to bring about for her."