There are few things that so stimulate life, both social and vegetable, in a country neighbourhood, as the rivalry that exists, sometimes unconfessed, sometimes bursting into an open flame, among the garden owners of the district. The Bruff garden was a little exalted and removed from such competition, but the superiority had its depressing aspect for Lady Dysart in that it was counted no credit to her to excel her neighbours, although those neighbours took to themselves the highest credit when they succeeded in excelling her. Of all these Mr. Lambert was the one she most feared and respected. He knew as well, if not better than she, the joints in the harness of Doolan the gardener, the weak battalions in his army of bedding-out plants, the failures in the ranks of his roses. Doolan himself, the despotic and self-confident, felt an inward qualm when he saw Mr. Lambert strolling slowly through the garden with her ladyship, as he was doing this very afternoon, his observant eye taking in everything that Doolan would have preferred that it should not take in, while he paid a fitting attention to Lady Dysart’s conversation.

“I cannot understand why these Victor Verdiers have not better hearts,” she was saying, with the dejection of a clergyman disappointed in his flock. “Mrs. Waller told me they were very greedy feeders, and so I gave them the cleanings of the scullery drain, but they don’t seem to care for it. Doolan, of course, said Mrs. Waller was wrong, but I should like to know what you thought about it.”

Mr. Lambert delivered a diplomatic opinion, which sufficiently coincided with Lady Dysart’s views, and yet kept her from feeling that she had been entirely in the right. He prided himself as much on his knowledge of women as of roses, and there were ultra feminine qualities in Lady Dysart, which made her act up to his calculations on almost every point. Pamela did not lend herself equally well to his theories; “she hasn’t half the go of her mother. She’d as soon talk to an old woman as to the smartest chap in Ireland,” was how he expressed the fine impalpable barrier that he always felt between himself and Miss Dysart. She was now exactly fulfilling this opinion by devoting herself to the entertainment of his wife, while the others were amusing themselves down at the launch; and being one of those few who can go through unpleasant social duties with “all grace, and not with half disdain hid under grace,” not even Lambert could guess that she desired anything more agreeable.

“Isn’t it disastrous that young Hynes is determined upon going to America?” remarked Lady Dysart presently, as they left the garden; “just when he had learned Doolan’s ways, and Doolan is so hard to please.”

“America is the curse of this country,” responded Mr. Lambert gloomily; “the people are never easy till they get there and make a bit of money, and then they come swaggering back, saying Ireland’s not fit to live in, and end by setting up a public-house and drinking themselves to death. They’re sharp enough to know the only way of making money in Ireland is by selling drink.” Lambert spoke with the conviction of one who is sure, not only of his facts, but of his hearer’s sympathy. Then seeing his way to a discussion of the matter that had brought him to Bruff, he went on, “I assure you, Lady Dysart, the amount of money that’s spent in drink in Lismoyle would frighten you. It’s easy to know where the rent goes, and those that aren’t drunken are thriftless, and there isn’t one of them has the common honesty to give up their land when they’ve ruined it and themselves. Now, there’s that nice farm, Gurthnamuckla, down by the lake-side, all going to moss from being grazed year after year, and the house falling to pieces for the want of looking after; and as for paying her rent—” he broke off with a contemptuous laugh.

“Oh, but what can you expect from that wretched old Julia Duffy?” said Lady Dysart good-naturedly; “she’s too poor to keep the place in order.”

“I can expect one thing of her,” said Lambert, with possibly a little more indignation than he felt; “that she’d pay up some of her arrears, or if she can’t, that she’d go out of the farm. I could get a tenant for it to-morrow that would give me a good fine for it and put the house to rights into the bargain.”

“Of course, that would be an excellent thing, and I can quite see that she ought to go,” replied Lady Dysart, falling away from her first position; “but what would happen to the poor old creature if she left Gurthnamuckla?”

“That’s just what your son says,” replied Lambert with an almost irrepressible impatience; “he thinks she oughtn’t to be disturbed because of some promise that she says Sir Benjamin made her, though there isn’t a square inch of paper to prove it. But I think there can be no doubt that she’d be better and healthier out of that house; she keeps it like a pig-stye. Of course, as you say, the trouble is to find some place to put her.”

Lady Dysart turned upon him a face shining with the light of inspiration.

“The back-lodge!” she said, with Delphic finality. “Let her go into the back-lodge when Hynes goes out of it!”

Mr. Lambert received this suggestion with as much admiration as if he had not thought of it before.

“By Jove! Lady Dysart, I always say that you have a better head on your shoulders than any one of us! That’s a regular happy thought.”

Any new scheme, no matter how revolutionary, was sure to be viewed with interest, if not with favour, by Lady Dysart, and if she happened to be its inventor, it was endowed with virtues that only flourished more strongly in the face of opposition. In a few minutes she had established Miss Duffy in the back-lodge, with, for occupation, the care of the incubator recently imported to Bruff, and hitherto a failure except as a cooking-stove; and for support, the milk of a goat that should be chained to a laurel at the back of the lodge, and fed by hand. While these details were still being expanded, there broke upon the air a series of shrill, discordant whistles, coming from the direction of the lake.

“Good heavens!” ejaculated Lady Dysart. “What can that be? Something must be happening to the steam-launch; it sounds as if it were in danger!”

“It’s more likely to be Hawkins playing the fool,” replied Lambert ill-temperedly. “I saw him on the launch with Miss Fitzpatrick just after we left the pier.”

Lady Dysart said nothing, but her expression changed with such dramatic swiftness from vivid alarm to disapproval, that her mental attitude was as evident as if she had spoken.

“Hawkins is very popular in Lismoyle,” observed Lambert, trepidly.

“That I can very well understand,” said Lady Dysart, opening her parasol with an abruptness that showed annoyance, “since he takes so much trouble to make himself agreeable to the Lismoyle young ladies.”

Another outburst of jerky, amateur whistles from the steam launch gave emphasis to the remark.

“Oh, the trouble’s a pleasure,” said Lambert acidly. “I hope the pleasure won’t be a trouble to the young ladies one of these days.”

“Why, what do you mean?” cried Lady Dysart, much interested.

“Oh, nothing,” said Lambert, with a laugh, “except that he’s been known to love and ride away before now.”

He had no particular object in lowering Hawkins in Lady Dysart’s eyes, beyond the fact that it was an outlet for his indignation at Francie’s behaviour in leaving him, her oldest friend, to go and make a common laughing-stock of herself with that young puppy, which was the form in which the position shaped itself in his angry mind. He almost decided to tell Lady Dysart the episode of the Limerick tobacconist’s daughter, when they saw Miss Hope-Drummond and Captain Cursiter coming up the shrubbery path towards them, and he was obliged to defer it to a better occasion.

“What was all that whistling about, Captain Cursiter?” asked Lady Dysart, with a certain vicarious severity.

Captain Cursiter seemed indisposed for discussion. “Mr. Hawkins was trying the whistle, I think,” he replied with equal severity.

“Oh, yes, Lady Dysart!” broke in Miss Hope-Drummond, apparently much amused; “Mr. Hawkins has nearly deafened us with that ridiculous whistle; they would go off down the lake, and when we called after them to ask where they were going, and told them they would be late for tea, they did nothing but whistle back at us in that absurd way.”

“Why? What? Who have gone? Whom do you mean by they?” Lady Dysart’s handsome eyes shone like stars as they roved in wide consternation from one speaker to another.

“Miss Fitzpatrick and Mr. Hawkins!” responded Miss Hope-Drummond with childlike gaiety; “we were all talking on the pier, and we suddenly heard them calling out ‘good-bye!’ And Mr. Hawkins said he couldn’t stop the boat, and off they went down the lake! I don’t know when we shall see them again.”

Lady Dysart’s feelings found vent in a long-drawn groan. “Not able to stop the boat! Oh, Captain Cursiter, is there any danger? Shall I send a boat after them? Oh, how I wish this house was in the Desert of Sahara, or that that intolerable lake was at the bottom of the sea!”

This was not the first time that Captain Cursiter had been called upon to calm Lady Dysart’s anxieties in connection with the lake, and he now unwillingly felt himself bound to assure her that Hawkins thoroughly understood the management of the Serpolette, that he would certainly be back in a few minutes, and that in any case, the lake was as calm as the conventional mill-pond. Inwardly he was cursing himself for having yielded to Hawkins in putting in to Bruff; he was furious with Francie for the vulgar liberties taken by her with the steam-whistle, an instrument employed by all true steam-launchers in the most abstemious way; and lastly, he was indignant with Hawkins for taking his boat without his permission, and leaving him here, as isolated from all means of escape, and as unprotected, as if his clothes had been stolen while he was bathing.

The party proceeded moodily into the house, and, as moodily, proceeded to partake of tea. It was just about the time that Mrs. Lambert was asking that nice, kind Miss Dysart for another cup of very weak tea—“Hog-wash, indeed, as Mr. Lambert calls it”—that the launch was sighted by her proprietor crossing the open space of water beyond Bruff Point, and heading for Lismoyle. Almost immediately afterwards Mrs. Lambert received the look from her husband which intimated that the time had arrived for her to take her departure, and some instinct told her that it would be advisable to relinquish the prospect of the second cup and to go at once.

If Mr. Lambert’s motive in hurrying back to Lismoyle was the hope of finding the steam-launch there, his sending along our friend the black mare, till her sleek sides were in a lather of foam, was unavailing. As he drove on to the quay the Serpolette was already steaming back to Bruff round the first of the miniature headlands that jagged the shore, and the good turkey-hen’s twitterings on the situation received even less attention than usual, as her lord pulled the mare’s head round and drove home to Rosemount.

The afternoon dragged wearily on at Bruff; Lady Dysart’s mood alternating between anger and fright as dinner-time came nearer and nearer and there was still no sign of the launch.

“What will Charlotte Mullen say to me?” she wailed, as she went for the twentieth time to the window and saw no sign of the runaways upon the lake vista that was visible from it. She found small consolation in the other two occupants of the drawing-room. Christopher, reading the newspaper with every appearance of absorbed interest, treated the alternative theories of drowning or elopement with optimistic indifference; and Miss Hope-Drummond, while disclaiming any idea of either danger, dwelt on the social aspect of the affair so ably as almost to reduce her hostess to despair. Cursiter was down at the pier, seriously debating with himself as to the advisability of rowing the long four miles back to Lismoyle, and giving his opinion to Mr. Hawkins in language that would, he hoped, surprise even that bland and self-satisfied young gentleman. There Pamela found him standing, as desolate as Sir Bedivere when the Three Queens had carried away King Arthur in their barge, and from thence she led him, acquiescing with sombre politeness in the prospect of dining out for the second time in one week, and wondering whether Providence would again condemn him to sit next Miss Hope-Drummond, and prattle to her about the Lincolnshire Cursiters. He felt as if talking to Pamela would make the situation more endurable. She knew how to let a man alone, and when she did talk she had something to say, and did not scream twaddle at you like a peacock. These unamiable reflections will serve to show the irritation of Captain Cursiter’s mind, and as he stalked into dinner with Lady Dysart, and found that for her sake he had better make the best of his subaltern’s iniquity, he was a man much to be pitied.