least we had your heart. And we should have had the length and strength
of you, only for a woman fatal to us as the daughter of Rhys ap Tudor,
the beautiful Nesta:--and beautiful she was to match the mother of the
curses trooping over to Ireland under Strongbow, that I'll grant you.
But she reined you in when you were a real warhorse ramping and snorting
flame from your nostrils, challenging any other to a race for Ireland;
ay, a Cuchullin you were, Philip, Culann's chain-bound: but she unmanned
you. She soaked the woman into you and squeezed the hero out of you.
All for Adiante! or a country left to slavery! that's the tale. And what
are you now? A paltry captain of hussars on the General's staff! One
O'Donnell in a thousand! And what is she?--you needn't frown, Phil; I'm
her relative by marriage, and she 's a lady. More than that, she shot a
dart or two into my breast in those days, she did, I'll own it: I had the
catch of the breath that warns us of convulsions. She was the morning
star for beauty, between night and day, and the best colour of both.
Welshmen and Irishmen and Englishmen tumbled into the pit, which seeing
her was, and there we jostled for a glimpse quite companionably; we were
too hungry for quarrelling; and to say, I was one of 'm, is a title to
subsequent friendship. True; only mark me, Philip, and you, Patrick:
they say she has married a prince, and I say no; she's took to herself a
husband in her cradle; she's married ambition. I tell you, and this
prince of hers is only a step she has taken, and if he chases her first
mate from her bosom, he'll prove himself cleverer than she, and I dare
him to the trial. For she's that fiery dragon, a beautiful woman with
brains--which Helen of Troy hadn't, combustible as we know her to have
been: but brains are bombshells in comparison with your old-fashioned
pine-brands for kindling men and cities. Ambition's the husband of
Adiante Adister, and all who come nigh her are steps to her aim. She
never consulted her father about Prince Nikolas; she had begun her march
and she didn't mean to be arrested. She simply announced her approaching