He was now in the Carbineers, and serving as an extra aide-de-camp to the Viceroy.
Not a little unlike him in most respects was the man who sat opposite him--a pale, finely-featured, almost effeminate-looking young fellow, with a small line of dark moustache, and a beard _en Henri Quatre_, to the effect of which a collar cut in Van Dyck fashion gave an especial significance.

Cecil Walpole was disposed to be pictorial in his get-up, and the purple dye of his knickerbocker stockings, the slouching plumage of his Tyrol hat, and the graceful hang of his jacket, had excited envy in quarters where envy was fame.

He too was on the viceregal staff, being private secretary to his relative the Lord-Lieutenant, during whose absence in England they had undertaken a ramble to the Westmeath lakes, not very positive whether their object was to angle for trout or to fish for that 'knowledge of Ireland' so popularly sought after in our day, and which displays itself so profusely in platform speeches and letters to the Times.
Lockwood, not impossibly, would have said it was 'to do a bit of walking' he had come.

He had gained eight pounds by that indolent Phoenix-Park life he was leading, and he had no fancy to go back to Leicestershire too heavy for his cattle.

He was not--few hunting men are--an ardent fisherman; and as for the vexed question of Irish politics, he did not see why he was to trouble his head to unravel the puzzles that were too much for Mr.
Gladstone; not to say, that he felt to meddle with these matters was like interfering with another man's department.