III. MORRISON'S HOTEL


At about five o'clock on the evening of the day of Sheil's speech, Lord
Ballindine and his friend, Walter Blake, were lounging on different
sofas in a room at Morrison's Hotel, before they went up to dress for
dinner. Walter Blake was an effeminate-looking, slight-made man, about
thirty or thirty-three years of age; good looking, and gentlemanlike,
but presenting quite a contrast in his appearance to his friend Lord
Ballindine. He had a cold quiet grey eye, and a thin lip; and, though
he was in reality a much cleverer, he was a much less engaging man. Yet
Blake could be very amusing; but he rather laughed at people than with
them, and when there were more than two in company, he would usually
be found making a butt of one. Nevertheless, his society was greatly
sought after. On matters connected with racing, his word was
infallible. He rode boldly, and always rode good horses; and, though
he was anything but rich, he managed to keep up a comfortable snuggery
at the Curragh, and to drink the very best claret that Dublin could
procure.

Walter Blake was a finished gambler, and thus it was, that with about
six hundred a year, he managed to live on equal terms with the richest
around him. His father, Laurence Blake of Castleblakeney, in County
Galway, was a very embarrassed man, of good property, strictly
entailed, and, when Walter came of age, he and his father, who could
never be happy in the same house, though possessing in most things