necessary to my style of living, you spend yours on what's not
necessary. What the deuce have the fellows in Mayo and Roscommon done
for you, that you should mount two or three rascals, twice a-week,
to show them sport, when you're not there yourself two months in the
season? I suppose you don't keep the horses and men for nothing, if you
do the dogs; and I much doubt whether they're not the dearest part of
the bargain."

"Of course they cost something; but it's the only thing I can do for
the country; and there were always hounds at Kelly's Court till my
grandfather got the property, and they looked upon him as no better
than an old woman, because he gave them up. Besides, I suppose I shall
be living at Kelly's Court soon, altogether, and I could never get on
then without hounds. It's bad enough, as it is."

"I haven't a doubt in the world it's bad enough. I know what
Castleblakeney is. But I doubt your living there. I've no doubt you'll
try; that is, if you _do_ marry Miss Wyndham; but she'll be sick of
it in three months, and you in six, and you'll go and live at Paris,
Florence, or Naples, and there'll be another end of the O'Kellys, for
thirty or forty years, as far as Ireland's concerned. You'll never do
for a poor country lord; you're not sufficiently proud, or stingy.
You'd do very well as a country gentleman, and you'd make a decent
nobleman with such a fortune as Lord Cashel's. But your game, if you
lived on your own property, would be a very difficult one, and one for
which you've neither tact nor temper."

"Well, I hope I'll never live out of Ireland. Though I mayn't have tact
to make one thousand go as far as five, I've sense enough to see that
a poor absentee landlord is a great curse to his country; and that's