The Goulds were of an excellent county family. They had for certainly
three generations lived in comfortable idleness, watching from their big
square house the different collections of hamlets toiling and moiling,
and paying their rents every gale day. It was said that some ancestor,
whose portrait still existed, had gone to India and come back with the
money that had purchased the greater part of the property. But, be this
as it may, in Galway three generations of landlordism are considered
sufficient repentance for shopkeeping in Gort, not to speak of Calcutta.
Since then the family history had been stainless. Father and son had in
turn put their horses out to grass in April, had begun to train them
again in August, had boasted at the Dublin horse-show of having been out
cub-hunting, had ridden and drunk hard from the age of twenty to
seventy. But, by dying at fifty-five, the late squire had deviated
slightly from the regular line, and the son and heir being only twelve,
a pause had come in the hereditary life of the Goulds. In the interim,
however, May had apparently resolved to keep up the traditions so far as
her sex was supposed to allow her.

They lived in one of those box-like mansions, so many of which were
built in Ireland under the Georges. On either side trees had been
planted, and they stretched to the right and left like the wings of a
theatre. In front there was a green lawn; at the back a sloppy
stableyard. The latter was May's especial delight, and when Mr. Scully
was with them, it seemed impossible to induce her to leave it. He
frequently rode over to Beechgrove, and towards the end of the afternoon
it became easy to persuade him to stay to dinner. And, as the night
darkened and the rain began to fall, the inhospitality of turning him
out was insisted on by May, and Mrs. Gould sent up word that a room was
to be prepared for him. Next morning he sent home for a change of
things, and thus it was not infrequent for him to protract his visit to