party of the aristocracy would fall from the effeminate hands of the
supersubtle and cultivated Mr. Balfour into the firm and tight grip of
the rugged, uncultured country gentleman who sits remote and neglected
close to him. There are the tightness and firmness of a death-trap in
the large, strong mouth, a dangerous gleam in the steady eyes, infinite
powers of firmness, inflexibility, and of even cruelty in the whole
expression, not in the least softened, but rather heightened and exalted
by the pretty constant smile--the smile that indicates the absence alike
of the heat of passion or the touch of pity, and that speaks aloud of
the unquestioning and dogged resolve of the aristocrat to fight for
privilege to the death.

[Sidenote: What a cruel face!]

"Ah, what a cruel face!" exclaimed an Irish Member by my side as Mr.
Lowther turned back and shouted, "Order, order!" at the Irish
benches--the good-humoured smile absent for a few moments, and
revelations given into abyssmal depths. But Mr. Lowther soon recovered
himself, smiled with his usual blandness, and once more dropped the hood
over his inner nature. But it was a moment which brought its revelations
to any keen observer; especially if he could have seen the answering
looks from a pair of blazing Celtic eyes--also characteristic in their
way of all the passion, rage, and secular intrepidity of the smaller
and weaker race that has carried on a struggle for seven centuries--over
battlefields strewn with the conquered dead--past gallows stained by
heroic blood--past prisons and hulks where noble hearts ate themselves
wearily and slowly to death. It was as in one glance all the contrast,
the antipathies, the misunderstanding which had separated one type of
Irishmen from one type of Englishmen through hundreds of years.