and I'm afraid the saffron buns are cold. Milord brought us over such a
large packet to-day. We must have some heated up. They won't be a
minute.'

'Oh, mamma, I assure you I am not in the least hungry!' cried Olive.

'_La beauté n'a jamais faim, elle se nourrit d'elle même,'_ replied Lord
Dungory, who had just returned from the pleasure-ground whither he had
gone for a little walk with Arthur.

'You will find Milord the same as ever--_toujours galant_; always
thinking of _la beauté, et les femmes_.'

Lord Dungory was the kind of man that is often seen with the Mrs. Barton
type of woman. An elderly beau verging on the sixties, who, like Mrs.
Barton, suggested a period. His period was very early Victorian, but he
no longer wore a silk hat in the country. A high silk hat in Galway
would have called attention to his age, so the difficulty of costume was
ingeniously compromised by a tall felt, a cross between a pot and a
chimney-pot. For collars, a balance had been struck between the
jaw-scrapers of old time and the nearest modern equivalent; and in the
tying of the large cravat there was a reminiscence, but nothing more, of
the past generation.

He had modelled himself, consciously or unconsciously, on Lord
Palmerston, and in the course of conversation one gathered that he was
on terms of intimacy with the chiefs of the Liberal party, such as Lord
Granville and Lord Hartington, and if the listener was credited with any
erudition, allusion was made to the most celebrated artists and authors,
and to their works. There was a celebrated Boucher in Dungory Castle,