An Irish Cousin; vol. 2/2

The fire in the library was dying out. I had been sitting on the hearthrug in front of it for some time, with my elbows resting on the seat of a low armchair, from whose depths Jinny’s snores rose with quiet regularity. The window had been grey with the last of the dull light when I first sat down there, and, without stirring, I had watched the grey fading by imperceptible changes from mere blankness into an absolute darkness, that invaded the room and filled it like a cloud.

The turf fire, with soft noises of subsidence, had sunk lower and lower in the grate, and, abandoning its effort to light up the heavy lines of bookshelves, now did little more than edge with a feeble glow the shadow of the chimney-piece upon the ceiling. A few minutes before, a flicker had leaped up from the red embers; it had not lasted long, but the transient glare had made my eyes ache. For two or three seconds afterwards the blackened fragments of a sheet of note-paper had been shaken and lifted uncertainly by the thin turf smoke, and they were now drifting away with it up the chimney. My hand, lying open upon my knee, still retained the sensation of holding something which had been clasped tightly in it all the afternoon—the letter which I had just burnt—and it seemed to me that in my heart there was the same sense of emptiness and loss.

It had cost me something to burn it, and as the flame crept over the pages, I had come near snatching it back again. But after all there was no need to keep it; its contents were not so long nor so intricate, I thought bitterly, that there was any fear of my forgetting them.

Nothing could have been more simply put; nothing could have expressed more incisively the writer’s meaning. Even in the first moment of reading it, I had been at no loss to understand it. In the legitimate amusement of flirting with “An American girl,” he had gone a little farther than he had intended, and he now lost no time in removing any undue impression that his words might have made upon her. What was it that Willy had told me long ago—how long ago?—“He could tell you many a queer story of a Yankee girl he met at Cannes!”

Possibly he would now be able to add another “queer story of a Yankee girl” to his repertoire—how, in the course of a most ordinary flirtation, he had discovered one afternoon that this girl was losing her head, and how he had been obliged to leave the country so as to avoid further difficulties.

The last scrap of the letter fluttered upwards out of sight as this idea, which it had suggested, came into my mind. The intolerable sting of the thought acted on me like physical pain. I started up, but by the time I was on my feet I was ashamed of it. “No,” I said to myself vehemently, “he would never do that; I have no right even to think it of him. And although, I suppose, he has changed his mind now for some reason or other, I know he was in earnest when he was speaking to me; I am sure of it. Perhaps he lost his head too—men very often say more than they intend—and then when he got home he thought better of it, and felt it was only fair to let me understand as soon as possible that he meant nothing serious. How could I have been such a fool as to let half a dozen words upset my peace of mind?” I asked myself desperately. “Whatever he meant by them, it is no use my thinking about him any more. I had better begin at once, as he has done, to try and forget it all,” I thought, as I groped my way out of the room; “but just now I feel as if it would take me all my life.”

As I dressed for dinner, I shrank from the prospect of the long difficult hours that lay between me and the solitude of my own room. But I think that my powers of further suffering must have been exhausted; a benumbing weariness was my only sensation as I sat at the dinner-table, and, looking from my uncle to my cousin, felt, in some far-off way, that our lives were converging to their point of closest contact, perhaps to their climax of mutual suffering.

I had not energy to talk, and I occupied myself for the most part in efforts to keep up the semblance of eating my dinner. Willy went on with his in a kind of resigned surliness, taking as little notice of me as was compatible with common politeness. This state of things I should much have preferred to any open signs of enmity or friendship, if I had not noticed that my uncle was narrowly observing us, and was even making various attempts to involve us both in the conversation, which had hitherto been little more than a monologue upon his part. Beyond an occasional grunt, Willy did not even try to respond; and as for me, though I did my best, utter mental and bodily fatigue made the framing of a sentence too laborious for me.

Several times during the progress of dinner, I found that Roche was looking at me with anxious interest; and once or twice he came to my rescue with unexpected tact, by quietly changing my plate as quickly as possible, so that my uncle should not see how little I had eaten of what he had sent me.

Dinner was longer, and Uncle Dominick more determinately talkative, than usual; but at last there came a break in his harangue, and I took advantage of it to make my escape into the drawing-room. I sat for a long time over the fire by myself, lying in an armchair without any wish to move. I felt as if I had sunk to the bottom of a deep sea, whose waves were rushing and surging over my head, and I wondered dully if this was what people felt like when they were going to have a bad illness. My mind kept stupidly repeating one short sentence, “Let me say good-bye! Let me say good-bye!” They were the last words I had seen of Nugent’s letter as it curled up in the flame of the library fire, and they now beat to and fro in my brain with sing-song monotony.

I believe I must have dozed, for the noise of the door opening aroused me with a shivering start. Willy came into the room with a newspaper in his hand, and, sitting down at the other side of the fire without speaking to me, began to read it. I fell back in my chair again, waiting till the striking of ten o’clock should give me a reasonable excuse for going to bed. The crackling of Willy’s newspaper and the sleepy tick of the clock were the only sounds in the room. I had never before seen Willy read a newspaper so attentively, and I watched him with languid interest from under my half-closed eyelids, while he steadily made his way through it. Now he had turned it inside out, and was reading the advertisements; certainly it did not take much to amuse him. Could he have felt, on that day after the dance, as dead to all the things that used to interest him as I did now?

It was only four evenings ago since I had listened miserably to the passionate words which I had not been able to prevent him from saying; he must have forgotten them already, or how else could he sit there with such stolid composure? If he could recover his equanimity in four days, perhaps in a week I should have begun to forget that persistent sentence which still kept pace with my thoughts.

The dining-room door opened and shut with a loud bang, and I heard the sound of uncertain footsteps crossing the hall. The crackling of the newspaper ceased, and a sudden rigidity in Willy’s attitude showed me that he was listening. The step paused outside the door, and then, after some preliminary rattling, the handle was turned. Willy jumped up and walked quickly to the door, as if with the intention of stopping whoever was there from coming in. Before he reached it, however, it opened, and I saw that it was his father whose entrance he had been trying to prevent.

“It’s not worth while your coming in, sir,” he said; “Theo’s awfully tired, and she’s going to bed.”

“Tired! what right has she to be tired?” said my uncle, loudly, coming into the room as he spoke. He put his hand on Willy’s shoulder and pushed him to one side. “Get out of my way! Why should I not come in if I like?”

He walked very slowly and deliberately to the fireplace, and stood on the rug with his back to the fire, swinging a little backwards and forwards from his toes to his heels. There was some difference in his manner and appearance which I could not account for. His face was ghastly white; a scant lock of iron-grey hair hung over his forehead; and the dark rings I had seen about his eyes in the morning had now changed to a purplish red.

“And what have you two been doing with yourselves all the evening? Making the most of your time, Willy, I hope? Perhaps that was why you tried to keep me out just now?”

He began to laugh at what he had said in a way very unusual with him.

“Theo,” Willy said abruptly, interrupting his father’s laughter, “you’re looking dead beat; I’ll go and light your candle.”

“What are you in such a hurry about?” demanded Uncle Dominick, turning on Willy with unexpected fierceness. “Don’t you know it is manners to wait till you’re asked?”

Willy did not answer, but went out into the hall; and I, feeling both scared and angry, got up with the intention of following him as quickly as possible.

“Good night, Uncle Dominick,” I said icily.

He bent forward and took hold of my arm, leaning his whole weight upon it.

“Look here,” he whispered confidentially; “how has that fellow been behaving? You haven’t forgotten our little talk this morning, eh?”

“I remember it quite well, Good night,” I repeated, trying to pull my arm from his detaining hand, and move away.

The action nearly threw him off his balance; he gave a stagger, and was in the act of recovering himself by the help of my arm, when Willy came back with the lighted candle.

“For goodness sake, let her go to bed,” he said, striding over to where we were standing, and looking threateningly at his father.

Uncle Dominick dropped my arm. “What the devil do you mean by interfering with me, sir?” he said. “Let me tell you that I will not stand this behaviour on your part any longer! I suppose you think you can treat your cousin and me as if we were no better than your low companions? I know where you spent your afternoon to-day. I know what those infernal people are plotting and scheming for. But I can tell you, that if they can make a fool of you they shall not make one of me! This house is mine. And you may tell them from me, that as sure as I am standing here”—emphasizing each word with a trembling hand, while he clutched the mantelshelf with the other—“you shall never set foot in it, or touch one penny of my money, if——”

“Look here!” said Willy, stepping forward between me and his father; “that’s enough; you’d better shut up.”

“How dare you speak to me like that? Your conduct is not that of a gentleman, sir!—not that of a gentleman! I say, sir, it is not—that—of——” His voice had grown thicker and more unsteady at every word.

“Here’s your candle,” said Willy, thrusting the candlestick into my hand; “you’d better go.”

“She shall not be ordered about by you!” thundered my uncle, making an ineffectual step or two to stop me. “She shall stay here as long as I like. I will be master in my own house. Come back here!”

He spoke with such fury that I was afraid to go, and looked irresolutely to Willy for help. But before he could speak, my uncle’s mood had changed.

“Let her go if she likes,” he said suddenly, staring at me with a sort of stupefaction. “Good God! Let her go if she likes; let her go!” he cried, covering his eyes with his hands and dropping into a chair, and as I slipped out of the room I heard him groan.

CHAPTER VIII.

PAIN.

I do not often get a headache, but the one which woke me next morning seemed determined to bring my average of pain up to the level of that of less fortunate people. All day long it pressed like a burning cap over my head, till my pillow felt as if it were a block of wood, and the thin chinks of light that came through the closed shutters cut my eyes like the blades of knives. The infrequent sounds in the quiet house—the far-off shutting of a door, the knocking of the housemaid’s broom against the wainscot in the corridor, or an occasional footstep in the hall—all jarred upon my aching brain as if it had lost some accustomed shelter, and the blows of sound struck directly upon its bruised nerves.

The wretchedness of the day before had given way to the supremacy of physical suffering. I lay in my darkened room, thinking of nothing except how best to endure the passing of the slow hours. Once, as the clock in the hall struck three, I was conscious of some association connected with the sound, and remembered that this was the hour at which I should have been starting for Mount Prospect.

But it had all lost reality. Even the horror of that scene with my uncle and Willy in the drawing-room had been for the time obliterated, wiped out by the pain, of which it had partly been the cause. All that I felt was that some trouble surely was there, and, though in abeyance for to-day, it was already in possession of to-morrow, and of many to-morrows.

When, on the next morning, after breakfast in bed, I made my way downstairs, I felt as if a long time had gone by since I had crossed the hall. The house was cold and deserted. I dreaded meeting my uncle, but I saw no one; there was not even a dog to wish me good morning. In the drawing-room, the fire had only just been lighted; the blinds were drawn to the top of the windows, showing the various layers of dust in the room, from the venerable accumulation under the piano, to the lighter and more recent coating on the tables. I went straight to the writing-table, and, regardless of the cheerless glare from the sheet of grey sea, I began a letter to Aunt Jane.

Upstairs, in the early hours of the morning, it had seemed an easy and not disagreeable thing to do—to write and tell her that my Irish visit was over, and that, as soon as her answer had come, I should be ready to start for America. But when the letter was closed and directed, I sat looking at it for a long time, feeling that I had done something akin to making my will. The best part of my life was over; into these past three months had been crushed its keenest happiness and unhappiness, and this was what they had amounted to. They had none the less now to fall into the background, and soon would have no more connection with my future life than if they had never been.

I had convinced myself so thoroughly that by writing to Aunt Jane I had closed this epoch in my life, that when, a few minutes afterwards, Willy came into the room, I was almost surprised to find that he was as awkward and constrained as when I had seen him last.

“Oh! I didn’t know you were in here, Theo,” he said apologetically, stopping short half-way across the room. “I only came in to look for a pen.”

“Come in, Willy,” I answered, with an appearance of ease which was the result of the high, unemotional standpoint on which I had taken up my position. “I have just finished my letter-writing.”

“I hope your head’s all right to-day? The governor was asking after you yesterday,” he said, rolling his cap in his hands, and looking at the ground. “He was very sorry to hear your headache was so bad.”

I knew that he was trying, as well as he could, to apologize for his father’s outbreak and its too obvious cause.

“That was very kind of him,” I made haste to answer. “My headache is quite well. I was thinking of going out, as it looks as if the east wind had gone.”

“Yes, it’s a nice day. I dare say it would do you good to go out.”

Nothing could have made me feel more plainly the break that had come in what had been such “a fair fellowship” than his making no offer to come with me, and I realized with sharp regret that I had done well in writing that letter to Aunt Jane.

Willy turned to leave the room.

“I wanted to tell you about this letter,” I said. “I have just written to Aunt Jane to say that I am going back to America in about a fortnight.”

His back had been towards me when I began to speak, but he faced round with an exclamation of astonishment.

“What! going away? Why are you doing that?”

His face was red with surprise, and he had forgotten his shyness.

“I thought Uncle Dominick would have told you. I spoke to him a couple of days ago.”

“He never said so to me. On the contrary——” Willy stopped. “I mean, he didn’t give me the least idea you were going.”

“For all that, I am afraid I must go. I have been here an immense time already,” I said, finding some difficulty in maintaining an easy and conventional tone.

“Indeed, you haven’t!” he blurted out. “You know you told me you meant to stay on into the spring, and—and you know”—looking steadily over my head out of the window while he spoke—“there’s no reason why——”

“Oh yes, there is, Willy,” I said, interrupting him. “Poor Aunt Jane has been by herself all this time. I ought not to leave her alone any more.”

“Well, and won’t you be leaving us alone too?”—still without changing the direction of his eyes.

“Oh! you will be no worse off than you were before I came,” I answered, with the hasty indiscretion of argument.

He did not reply, and I had time to be sorry for my thoughtlessness, before he said, with an assumption of carelessness—

“Well, I’m going out now, and I advise you to do the same.” He left the room; but, reopening the door, put his head in—“I say, don’t send that letter,” he said, and shut the door again before I could answer.

I did not meet Uncle Dominick at lunch. Roche told me not to wait for him, as he was not well, and would probably not come in; and I had almost finished my solitary meal before Willy appeared. He and I were both more at our ease than we had been at our first meeting that morning. I do not know what had operated in his case, but for myself, I felt more than ever that I had become a different person—a person to whom nothing mattered very much, whose only link with the everyday life of the past and present was a very bitter and humiliating pain.

“I have to go into Moycullen this afternoon,” said Willy, occupying himself very busily with the carving of the cold beef. “I was wondering if you might care to ride there. The horse wants exercise, and I thought perhaps—you said something about wanting fresh air——”

I did not know how to refuse an invitation so humbly given, although my first inclination had been to do so.

“It is rather a long ride,” I began doubtfully.

“Well, you can turn back whenever you like.”

I debated with myself. As I was going away so soon, it could not make much real difference to any one; and Uncle Dominick had specially asked me not to neglect Willy. Besides—I could not help it—some faint hope struggled up in my heart that in Moycullen I might hear something of the O’Neills.

“Very well,” I said finally; “I will go with you.”

Willy and I had often ridden to Moycullen. It was a long ride, but we had established a short cut across the fields at one place which considerably shortened the distance; though experience had shown us that the amount of jumping it involved, and the rough ground to be crossed, did away with any great saving of time. To-day we went in off the road at the usual gap, and as we cantered over the grass to the accustomed spot in each fence, the free stride of the horse, and the tingling of the wind in my cheeks, brought back the old feeling of exultant independence, the last remnant of my headache cleared away, and for the time I even forgot that quiet, incessant aching at my heart.

One or two successful conflicts with his horse had done much to restore Willy’s confidence and self-possession.

“It’s a long time since we had a ride now,” he said, after we had come out over a bank on to the road again.

“Yes; I was just thinking the same. I am very glad I came out.”

“We must try and get a look at the hounds next week; they meet pretty close—that is to say”—continuing his sentence with something of a jerk—“if you’re not too busy packing for America then.”

I did not answer, and Willy said nothing more until we had pulled up into a walk on some rising ground, from which we could see the town of Moycullen straggling out of an opening between two hills, its whitewashed houses showing dimly through the blue smoke which lay about it like a lake.

“And did you send that letter, after all?” Willy said, in an unconcerned way.

“Yes,” I answered; “you know I always write to Aunt Jane on Friday.”

“Then you mean to say you are really going back?”

I nodded.

“Well, I suppose you know best,” he said coldly.

Alaska put her foot on a stone, and stumbled slightly.

“Hold up, you confounded fool!” he said, chucking up her head roughly, and digging his spurs in.

The mare reared and plunged, and to steady her we broke into a trot, which brought us into the crooked, crowded streets of Moycullen.

It was market-day, and the carts that had come in with their loads of butter, turf, fowls, and old women blocked our way in every direction. I remained on my horse’s back while Willy went off about his business, and for the next half-hour I only caught glimpses of him, doubling round the immovable groups of talkers, and eluding the beggars with practised skill as he dived in and out of the little shops. Willy’s satisfaction and confidence in the warehouses of Moycullen, and the amount of shopping which he contrived to do there, had always been a matter of fresh surprise to me.

Beggars pestered me; little boys exasperated me by offers to hold Blackthorn, regardless of the fact that I was on his back; and women clustered round me on the pavement and discussed my lineage and appearance, but I was too dispirited to be much amused by their comments. The glow of my gallop had faded out; I felt cold and tired, and thought that Willy had never before been so long over his shopping.

At last he appeared unexpectedly at my horse’s shoulder.

“I was thinking that you must be dead for want of your tea. I’ve just ordered some at Reardon’s, and you must come and drink it before we go home.”

I assented without much interest, and began to push Blackthorn through the crowd. At the hotel I dismounted, and followed Willy listlessly into the dark, unsavoury commercial room, the only available apartment in which we could have tea. Its sole occupant got up in obedience to a whisper from the boots, and hurriedly conveyed himself and his glass of whiskey and water from the room which had been allotted to him and the gentlemen of his profession, and I sat down at the long oil-cloth-covered table and began to pour out the tea, while Willy battered the fire into a blaze. He had evidently made up his mind to be cheerful, but as evidently he was not quite certain as to what to talk about.

I listened with as much intelligence as I could muster to such pieces of news as he had picked up during his shopping, but our conversation gradually slackened, and finally came to a full stop. I slowly drank the contents of my enormous teacup, wondering why it was that at country hotels the bread and butter and the china were alike abnormally thick. I noticed that Willy had looked at me undecidedly once or twice during the last few minutes, and at length he said, in a way that showed he had been framing the question for some time—

“I suppose, if you went to America, you’d be coming back again?”

“Come back!” I echoed. “No, I do not think there is the least chance of my doing that.”

I had finished my tea, and got up as I spoke.

“Then you’ve done with the old country altogether?”

“Yes; altogether,” I answered resolutely, turning aside to study one of the oleographs on the walls.

I could not have said another word, but, in a sort of defiance of my own weakness, I began to hum a tune, one that had been in my mind unrecognized all day. Now as I hummed it the straining sweetness of the notes of a violin filled my memory, and I knew where and how I had heard it last.

Willy said nothing more, but finished his tea, and, getting up, rang the bell and ordered the horses to be brought round. We had to stand for a minute in the doorway while they were coming. A cold wind was springing up with the sunset; the pale yellow light was contending with the newly lighted street-lamps, and over my head a large jet of gas flickered drearily behind the name “Reardon” on the fan-light.

“Hullo! look at the Clashmore wagonette,” Willy said suddenly. “It’s coming along now behind that string of turf-carts.”

The turf-carts lumbered slowly down the narrow street, the chestnuts and wagonette having, perforce, to follow at a foot-pace. On the box, sharply outlined against the frosty sky, I saw Nugent’s figure, and inside was a huddled mass of furs, which I supposed was Madam O’Neill. My first instinct was to shrink back into the hall, but it was too late; Willy was already taking off his hat, and I bowed mechanically as Nugent lifted his, and drove past without speaking.

We rode quickly and steadily homewards through the darkening hills, an occasional word only breaking the silence between us. I had no wish to speak, no wish for anything but to escape from this miserable place, and to forget all that had happened to me since the night when I had first driven along this very road. This was the fulfilment of the foolish, unacknowledged hope which had been my real reason for to-day’s ride. I had met Nugent, and could take home with me the certainty that I had made no mistake as to what his letter had meant, and that he, for his part, would be quite sure that I had treated him, and was now treating my cousin, in a manner worthy even of the evil traditions of “American girls.”

It was quite dark when we got to Durrus, but, as the gates swung back, I could see that it was Anstey who had opened them for us. I rode through a little in advance of Willy, who had checked his horse in order to let me go first. I thought I caught the sound of a whispered word or two from Anstey, and, with the clang of the closing gate, I distinctly heard Willy say in a low voice, “No, I can’t.”

I rode fast up the avenue so that he should not overtake me. I was sick at heart at this confirmation of what my uncle had told me. Everything was going wrong. I had spoilt my own life, and now I had to stand by and see Willy ruin his, knowing that I had it, perhaps, in my power to save him, and yet feeling incapable of doing so.

When I met Uncle Dominick at dinner, his manner was more blandly affectionate than I had ever known it, and but for the recollections which his haggard face called up, I should have thought that the scene of two nights ago had been a dream.

CHAPTER IX.

GARDEN HILL.

Wednesday was the Burkes’ At Home day. They were the only people in the country who had taken to themselves a “day,” and to go and see them, and to eat their peculiarly admirable cakes, had become a recognized method of spending that afternoon. To-day, at about four o’clock, when I came in, their small drawing-room was full of people, and their confidential little copper tea-kettle was already making incessant journeys between the fireplace and the tea-table.

Mr. Jimmy Barrett was carrying about cups of tea, steering his perilous way among the low velvet-covered tables and basket chairs with a face expressive of the liveliest apprehension. He was the only young man present—a fact in itself sufficiently overwhelming, and now made doubly so by the attentions which, faute de mieux, were being bestowed upon him by Miss Dennehy, a young lady whom I remembered as having been much sought after at the Mount Prospect dance.

He took the first opportunity of sitting down in an unconspicuous position behind his mother’s chair, from whence he returned feeble and evasive rejoinders to the badinage levelled at him from the sofa, on which were seated Miss Dennehy and the rector’s daughter, Miss Josie Horan. His mother, a lady whose ample proportions were a tacit reproach to her son’s meagreness of aspect, reclined imposingly in a chair by the fire, and several other ladies whom I did not know were sitting round the room.

The Misses Burke and their mother welcomed me effusively.

“Where’s Willy? I haven’t seen him this long while,” said Miss Mimi, regarding me with an expression of heartiest curiosity and good fellowship.

“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Burke; “we were wondering what had become of you both.”

She was a brisk little old lady, whose bright black eyes and hooked nose were suggestive of an ancient parrakeet, and whose voice further carried out the idea. I knew well that any cross-examination that she might subject me to would be as water unto wine compared with Miss Mimi’s, and I gladly turned and addressed myself to her, and left Willy, who had just come into the room, to satisfy Miss Mimi’s thirst for information.

His entrance caused a perceptible flutter in the room, and the occupants of the sofa at once began a loud and attractive conversation.

“I’m dying to hear more about the ball,” began Miss Horan. “Aggie, you’re really no good at all”—this with artless petulance to Miss Dennehy. “I’m sure Captain Sarsfield could give a better account of it. He wasn’t sitting on the stairs all the time; were you, Captain Sarsfield?”

“I don’t think she should ask us these questions, should she, Captain Sarsfield?” responded Miss Dennehy. “I think ’tis very wrong to tell tales out of school!”

I, from the low chair which I had taken beside Mrs. Barrett, listened in some anxiety to a discussion which for both Willy and me was of so singularly discomposing a character. Willy, however, was equal to the occasion. Having fittingly assured Miss Dennehy of his abhorrence of tale-bearing, he provided himself with a cup of tea and a wedge of cake, and proceeded with unimpaired equanimity to seat himself on the sofa between Miss Horan and Miss Dennehy.

I had seldom seen Miss Horan, except behind the harmonium in her father’s church, and should certainly never have suspected her of the social gifts which she now displayed. She had a flat little face, set in a shock of hair which had once been short and had not yet become long. Her pale blue eyes almost watered with pride and excitement, as she found that her conversation with Willy was attracting the attention of the rest of the room.

“And who was the belle of the room, Captain Sarsfield?” she asked, when Willy had comfortably settled down to his tea.

“Well, as you weren’t there, Miss Horan,” answered my cousin, shamelessly, “I wasn’t able to make up my mind about it.”

A delighted titter ran round the room at this sally; as it ceased, Mrs. Barrett broke the monumental silence which she had hitherto preserved.

“My Jimmy,” she said, in a heavy, distinct voice, that lent an almost Scriptural tone to her utterances, casting an eye of disfavour at Miss Josie, “told me that Miss Sarsfield and Miss O’Neill were the belles of the ball.”

Deep as was my dismay at this unlooked-for statement, it was far excelled by that of its originator. On Willy’s arrival he had altogether effaced himself; but now, from his refuge behind his mother’s chair, I heard him inarticulately disclaiming the dashing criticism attributed to him.

“Oh,” said Miss Mimi, jovially, “we all know that Jimmy has an eye for a pretty girl! I thought,” she continued, addressing Miss Dennehy, “they were very bad about introducing people the other night. Didn’t you, Aggie?”

“Really, I didn’t notice it, Miss Burke; but I heard a great many complaining about it, and I know the Croly girls like to keep their gentlemen friends to themselves,” Miss Dennehy replied.

“Well,” said Miss Horan, “I saw Sissy Croly yesterday, and she said that, indeed, she was introducing gentlemen all the evening. Oh, and she was mad with the O’Neills! She said that Connie O’Neill thought no one good enough to dance with but that officer they had staying at Clashmore; and as for Mr. O’Neill, he pretended he was engaged for every dance, and her fawther”—it was thus that Miss Horan pronounced “father”—“found him, after supper, sitting in the library reading the paper.”

“Oh, I dare say,” said Miss Dennehy. “I know he was engaged to me for the last extra, and as he didn’t choose to come for it, I didn’t choose to wait for him; did I, Captain Sarsfield?”

Mrs. Burke’s continuous twitter of talk did not so engross me that I could not hear all this, and remember that it was Willy who, after his unavailing search for me, had become Nugent’s substitute, and something in the rigid twist of his neck away from my direction told me that he too had not forgotten the antecedents of that dance. Since her last speech Mrs. Barrett had been as silent as she was motionless. I should almost have thought she was asleep, but her eyes wandered to each person’s face as they spoke, and somehow suggested to me the idea of an intelligent restless spirit imprisoned in a featherbed. She now saved Willy the necessity of replying.

“I wonder why the young ladies in this country are so anxious to dance with Nugent O’Neill, as they all abominate him so much?” she inquired solemnly.

Miss Horan and Miss Dennehy looked speechlessly round for sympathy at this accusation, but before their indignation found words, a diversion was created by the entrance of Mrs. Jackson-Croly and her daughters. Miss Sissy Croly lingered at the door to speak to some one in the hall. I recognized the voice which replied to her, though I could not hear the words, and some instinct of self-defence made me rush into conversation with Jimmy Barrett before Nugent followed Miss Croly into the room.

Since the day I had gone into Moycullen I had been slowly and, as I thought, successfully hardening my heart. I had made a mistake, but it was not an irretrievable one, and here was an opportunity of proving to myself how little it had really affected me. So I talked sedulously to Mr. Jimmy Barrett, until, Mrs. Croly’s greetings to the Burkes over, manners demanded that I should shake hands with her. Nugent was standing near, speaking to Miss Burke, and as I turned from Mrs. Croly he paused in his conversation.

“How do you do, Miss Sarsfield?” he said formally; then, after a moment’s silence, he spoke again to Miss Burke—“Yes, I was to have started off yesterday, but I could not manage it, and I thought I should like to see you before I go, as I may not be back again for some time.”

“Why, every one is going away from the country!” said Miss Mimi, directing her discourse to me. “Willy was saying, now this minute, that he was afraid you were thinking of being off too?”

“Yes; I have been thinking of it, but I am not sure. I have to wait for an answer from my aunt in Boston before I arrange anything,” I said, with a confusion which took me unawares.

Miss Burke looked at me with delighted sagacity.

“Oh, now, I know quite well what that means! I don’t believe you’re going away at all—do you, Mr. O’Neill?”

In spite of my own embarrassment, it gave an indefinable pleasure to see, in the imperfect light afforded by Miss Burke’s lace-shrouded windows, that Nugent’s imperturbable face was slowly changing in colour from its usual brown to a dull crimson.

But Miss Mimi, in the fullness of her heart, did not wait for his answer.

“I’ll talk to Willy about it,” she went on. “I’ll engage he won’t let you be running away from us like this!”

The fact that Nugent had turned away, and was speaking to Miss Croly, gave me sufficient assurance to make some airy response. But I had lost confidence in myself, and, cutting short the conversation, I again took refuge in my chair near Mrs. Barrett.

For some little time Mrs. Jackson-Croly’s voice dominated the room, and obviated all necessity for conversation on the part of any one else. She also was talking of going away.

“Yes, Mrs. Burke,” she said; “I’m thinking of taking the girls to Southsea. There’s such nice military society there. I always like to take them to England as often as I can, on account of the accent. I loathe a Cork brogue! My fawther took me abroad every year; he was so alormed lest I’d acquire it, and I assure you, when we were children, he used to insist on mamma’s putting cotton wool in our ears when we went to old Mr. Flannagan’s church, for fear we’d ketch his manner of speaking.”

“Dear, dear!” said Mrs. Burke, sympathetically, wholly unmoved by this instance of the refinement of Mrs. Croly’s father. “Poor old Johnny Flannagan! He had a beautiful voice in the pulpit. I declare”—turning to me—“sometimes you’d think the people out in the street would hear him, and the next minute you’d think ’twas a pigeon cooing to you.”

At another time I should probably have been inclined to lead Mrs. Burke on to more reminiscences of this gifted divine, but my sole idea now was to get away as soon as possible. I looked to see if Willy had nearly finished his tea, but found that it was still in progress; in fact, when I looked round, Miss Dennehy and Miss Horan were engaged in throwing pieces of cake into his open mouth, loud laughter announcing equally the success or failure of their aim. Willy caught my eye, and guiltily shut his mouth.

“Do you want the horses, Theo?” he said, rightly interpreting my look, and hastily getting up from the sofa, while small pieces of cake fell off him in every direction. “I’ll go round and see about them.”

“Now, you needn’t be in such a hurry, Willy,” said Miss Burke, getting up. “There’s just light enough left to show your cousin my new Plymouth Rocks. I’ve been telling her all about them; and I’ve the doatiest little house built for them in the yard! Come along, Miss Sarsfield; we’ll slip out by the greenhouse while he’s getting the horses;” and, snatching up a purple woollen antimacassar from the back of the chair, she wrapped her head and shoulders in it, and with total unconsciousness of her extraordinary appearance she led me out of the room.

The evening had grown very cold. I had felt smothered in the little drawing-room, but now I shivered as I stood by the wired enclosure in the corner of the garden, watching the much-vaunted Plymouth Rocks picking and scratching about their gravel yard, and listening with simulated intelligence to Miss Burke’s harangue upon their superiority to all other tribes of hens. Beyond the fact that hens laid eggs in greater or less profusion, I knew nothing about them. But, fortunately, Miss Mimi’s enthusiasm asked for no more than the stray word or two of ignorant praise with which I filled up her infrequent pauses.

My eyes took in, without losing any detail of absurdity, the effect of her large face and majestic nose, surmounted by the purple antimacassar, but my brain did not seem to receive any definite impression from it. Every faculty was deadened by the battle between pride and despair that was being fought out in me again. I had persuaded myself that that fight was over and done with; but now as I stood in the damp twilight, and looked at the firelit drawing-room windows, I felt that this time despair might be likely to get the mastery.

Miss Mimi’s voice broke strangely in on my thoughts.

“Well, now, wait a moment till I go round to the back,” she said. “Me greatest beauties are roosting in the house; but I must run into the kitchen for the key, and then I can get in and poke them out for you to see them.”

She went round through a door in the thick fuchsia hedge, which encircled the garden and divided it from the yard, and left me standing by myself in the chilly silence of the evening. I had almost forgotten what I was waiting there for, though it could not have been more than three or four minutes since Miss Burke left me, when I heard steps come through the yard, and the faint smell of cigarettes penetrated the hedge. A horse’s hoofs clattered on the stones as it was led out of the stable.

“Well, good-bye, Nugent,” said Willy’s voice. “Will you be away long?”

“Yes; I dare say I shall not be home for some time. I am thinking of going abroad for a bit.”

“Abroad? Where to? Is it to Cannes again? Or will you take a run over to—to the U-nited States?” said Willy, with an indifferent assumption of an American accent.

One or two movements from the horse filled the brief silence which ensued, and when Nugent spoke again it was evident he had mounted.

“No,” he said; “that’s about the last place I should ever want to go to. Well, good-bye. I suppose I shall find you here when I get back?” He went on a few steps, and stopped. “Say good-bye to Miss Sarsfield for me, will you?” he said, and rode out of the yard.

PART III.

PROFIT AND LOSS.

CHAPTER I.

A THREAT.