The Irish novelist and playwright's novel begins: An eight-mile drive over rain-washed Irish roads in the quick-falling dusk of autumn is an experience trying to the patience, even to the temper of the average Saxon. Yet James Milbanke made neither comment nor objection as mile after mile of roadway spun away like a ribbon behind him, as the mud rose in showers from the wheels of the old-fashioned trap in which he sat and the half-trained mare between the shafts swerved now to the right, now to the left, her nervous glance caught by the spectral shapes of the blackthorn hedges or the motionless forms of the wayside donkeys lying asleep in the ditches. Perhaps this stoicism was the outcome of an innate power to endure; perhaps it was a merely negative quality illustrating the lack of that doubtful blessing, imagination.