After we had gone about a quarter of a mile, my companion pulled up.

“I think our best chance is to wait here,” he said, “From the way the hounds were running, they are almost certain to come this way eventually.”

The road up which we had ridden formed the only pass between the hills on either side of us, and beyond was a low-lying level stretch of country.

“If he’ll only run down that way——” Mr. O’Neill began, but suddenly stopped, and silently pointed with his whip to the hill at our right.

“What is it?” I asked, in incautiously loud tones.

He looked for an instant as if he were going to shake his whip at me, and again pointed, this time to a narrow strip of field beside the road. I saw what looked like a little brown shadow fleeting across it, and in another moment the fox appeared on the top of the wall a few yards ahead of us. He looked about him as if considering his next move, and then, seeing us, he leaped into the road and, running along it, vanished over the crest of the hill.

Mr. O’Neill turned to me with such excitement that he seemed a different person. “Here are the hounds!” he said, “and not a soul with them.”

Down the hill the pack came like a torrent, and were over the wall in a second. They spread themselves over the road in front of us as if at fault; but one of the little black-and-tan hounds justified Mr. Dennehy’s good opinion by picking up the line, and at once the whole pack were racing full cry up the road.

I have often looked back with considerable amusement to that moment. I was suddenly possessed by a kind of frenzy of excitement that deprived me of all power of speech. I heard my companion tell me to keep as close to him as I could, but I was incapable of any response save an inebriated smile and a wholly absurd flourish of my whip.

As this does not purport to be a hunting-story, I will not describe the run which followed. I believe it lasted fifteen minutes, and included some of the traditional “big leps” of the country. But to me it was merely an indefinite period of delirious happiness. I scarcely felt Blackthorn jump, and was only conscious of the thud of the big bay horse’s hoofs in front of me and the rushing of the wind in my ears, At last a wood seemed to heave up before me; the bay horse was pulled up sharply, and I found myself almost in the middle of the hounds.

“By George! he’s just saved his brush,” said Mr. O’Neill, breathlessly; “he’s gone to ground in there, and I am afraid we shall never get him out. I hope you are none the worse for your gallop,” he continued politely. “It was pretty fast while it lasted.” He dismounted as he spoke, and began to investigate the hole in which the fox had taken refuge, and while he was thus engaged I saw Mr. Dennehy on his yellow horse coming across the next field. When he came up he was, rather to my surprise, amiably pleased at our success in picking up the hounds, and regretted we had not killed our fox.

“You two and meself were the only ones in this run,” he said.

My thoughts at once reverted to poor Willy. I asked Mr. Dennehy if he had seen anything of him, and heard that he had passed my cousin, slowly making his way home.

“Oh, I think I ought to go home at once,” I said to Mr. O’Neill. “I might overtake him if you will tell me where I am to go.”

“If you will allow me, I think you had better let me show you the way,” he answered, with a resumption of the stiff manner which had at first struck me. Although I was quite aware that politeness alone prompted this offer, my ignorance of the country made it impossible for me to refuse it. Trusting, however, that by speedily overtaking Willy I should be able to release my unwilling pilot, I wished Mr. Dennehy good morning, and we made the best of our way to the nearest road.

Our way lay through what seemed to me a chessboard of absurdly small fields. I could not imagine where all the stones came from that were squandered in the heaping up of the walls that divided them from each other, nor did I greatly care, so long as the necessity of jumping them gave me something to amuse me, and made conversation with Mr. O’Neill disjointed and unexacting.

What little I had seen of him at the covert-side had not inspired me with any anxiety to pursue his acquaintance, and once we had got out on to the road, with all the responsibilities of a tête-à-tête staring us in the face, my heart died within me. Never had I met any one who was so difficult to talk to. I found that I was gradually assuming the ungrateful position of a catechist, and, while filled with smothered indignation at my companion’s perfunctory answers, I could not repress a certain admiration for the composure with which he allowed the whole stress of discourse to rest upon my shoulders. I at length made up my mind to give myself no more trouble in the cause of politeness, and resolved that until he chose to speak I would not do so.

A long silence was the result. We rode on side by side, my companion staring steadily between his horse’s ears, while I wondered how soon we should be likely to meet Willy, and thought how very much more I should have preferred his society.

“I suppose you find this place rather dull?” Mr. O’Neill’s uninterested voice at last broke the silence. “I have always heard that American young ladies had a very gay time.”

I at once felt that this insufferable young man was trying to talk down to my level—the level of an “American young lady”—and my smouldering resentment got the better of my politeness.

“I very seldom find myself bored by places. It is, as a rule, the people of the place that bore me.”

“Really,” he returned, with perfect serenity. “Yes, I dare say that is true; but ladies do not generally get on very well without shop and dances.”

“Strange as it may appear, neither of those entrancing occupations are essential to my happiness.”

Mr. O’Neill turned and looked at me with faint surprise, but made no reply. Another pause ensued, and I began to repent of my crossness.

It was clearly my turn to make the next remark, and I said, in a more conciliatory voice—

“I suppose you don’t have very much to do here, either?”

“Oh, I am not here very much, and I can always get as much shooting and fishing as I want; but I fancy my sisters find it rather dull.”

“Are your sisters fond of music? I was very glad to find a piano at Durrus.”

His face assumed for the first time a look of interest.

“My elder sister plays a good deal; and Connie has a banjo, though I cannot say she knows much about it; and I play the fiddle a little. I believe in these parts we are considered quite a gifted family.”

I felt that I had, so to speak, “struck ile.”

“Do you play the violin?” I said, with excitement. “I delight in playing accompaniments! I hope you will bring your music with you when you come to dinner.”

“Oh, thanks very much; my sister always accompanies me,” he responded coolly.

His deliberate self-possession was infinitely exasperating in my then state of mind, and I repented the enthusiasm that had laid me open to this snub. I was hurriedly framing an effective rejoinder, when he again spoke, this time in tones of considerable amusement.

“Do you see that man leading a lame horse down the road? If he is not a chimney-sweep, I think he must be your cousin.”

As we came nearer, I was secretly unspeakably tickled by Willy’s inky and bedraggled appearance; but I was too proud to join in Mr. O’Neill’s open amusement, until I noticed for the first time the incongruously rakish effect imparted to Willy’s forlorn figure by the fact that his hat had been crushed in. My injured dignity collapsed, and, holding on to my saddle for support, I laughed till the tears poured down my cheeks.

It was at this singularly unpropitious moment that Willy, hearing our horses’ feet, turned round.

“Oh, there you are!” he called out. “Did you meet the hounds?” Then, in a voice which showed his good temper had not returned. “You seem to be greatly amused, whatever you did.”

I thought it better to ignore the latter part of the sentence, and dashed at once into a confused account of our exploits, Mr. O’Neill helping out my narrative with a few geographical details; to all of which Willy listened with morose attention.

“And Blackthorn jumped splendidly, Willy,” I said. “I was so sorry you weren’t there.”

“H’m!” said Willy; “very kind of you, I’m sure.”

Mr. O’Neill saw that the situation was becoming strained.

“As I can’t be of any further help to you or Miss Sarsfield,” he said, “I think I will go back and look for the hounds;” and, wishing us good-bye, he rode off.

“Well,” Willy began viciously, “you seem to find O’Neill cheerful enough, after all.”

“Indeed, I don’t, Willy,” I said, with vigour; “he was perfectly odious.”

“You didn’t look as if you thought him so a while ago, when you were both near falling off your horses with laughing. I suppose”—with sudden penetration—“that it was at me you were laughing.”

“Oh no, Willy; at least, it was not exactly you—indeed, it was only your hat.”

Even at this supreme moment the air of disreputable gaiety of Willy’s headgear was too much for me, and my voice broke into a hysterical shriek. This was the last straw. With a wrathful glance, he turned his back upon me, and stalked silently on beside Alaska. Blackthorn and I followed meekly in the rear, and in this order we soberly proceeded to Durrus.

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CHAPTER XII.

A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY.

The evening before had been, as far as Willy had been concerned, of a rather complicated type. I had done all in my power to efface from his mind the memory of my unfortunate laughter, but until dinner was over he had remained implacable. Uncle Dominick, on the contrary, had been unusually bland and talkative. It appeared that Madam O’Neill and her eldest daughter had called on me while I was out, and my uncle, having met them on the drive, had brought them in, given them tea, and had even gone so far as to ask the two girls to come with their brother to dinner the next night. He had given me to understand that this unusual hospitality was on my account—“Although,” he added, “I have no doubt you two young people are quite well able to amuse each other.” The look which accompanied this was, under the circumstances, so peculiarly embarrassing, that, in order to change the conversation, I made the mistake of beginning to describe the hunt. Too soon I discovered that to slur over Willy’s disaster would be impossible, and my obvious efforts to do so did not improve matters.

“So you went off with young O’Neill,” my uncle had said, with a change of look and voice that frightened me; and nothing more was said on the subject.

My discomfiture was perhaps the cause of the alteration in Willy’s demeanour after dinner. Success far beyond my expectations, or indeed my wishes, was the result of my conciliatory advances. I went to bed feeling that I had more than regained the position I had held in Willy’s esteem, and a little flurried by the difficulties of so ambiguous a relationship as that of first cousins.

From all this, it may be imagined that when I heard from Roche that “the masther was gone to town, and would not be home for lunch,” I regarded the combined absences of Willy and his father as little short of providential.

I observed that the magenta and yellow dahlias which had decorated the table on my arrival still held their ground, albeit in an advanced stage of decay; and, remembering the glories of the autumn leaves, I suggested to Roche that with his permission I might be able to improve upon the present arrangement.

A little elated by the expectation of surprising Willy with the unusual splendour of the dinner-table, and not without an emulative thought of the O’Neills, I determined to ransack the shrubberies for the most glowing leaves wherewith to carry out my purpose. A few minutes later, I left the house with a capacious basket in my hand, feeling a delightful sense of freedom, and full of the selfish, half-savage pleasure of a solitary and irresponsible voyage of discovery.

I wandered down the nearest path to the sea, and, keeping to the shore, came to the little promontory which, with its few ragged trees, I could see from the windows of my room. There was a certain romance about this lonely wind and wave beaten point that had always attracted me to it. When, in the early light, I saw the fir trees’ weird reflection in the quiet cove, I used to wonder if they had ever been a landmark for some western Dick Hatteraick; and now, as I scrambled about, and tugged at the tough bramble-stems that trailed in the coarse grass, I was half persuaded that any one of the rough boulders might close the entrance of a smuggler’s long-forgotten “hide.”

I had soon gathered as many blackberry-leaves as I wanted, and, sitting down beside one of the old trees, I leaned my cheek against its seamy trunk and looked across the grey rollers to the horizon.

A narrow black line stole from behind the eastern point of Durrusmore Harbour, leaving a dark stain on the sky as it went, and from where I sat I fancied I could hear the beat of machinery.

It was the first time I had noticed the passing of one of the big American steamers, and I watched the great creature move out of sight with a strange conflict of feeling. Uppermost, I think, was the thought of what my regret would be if I were at that moment on board her, bound for America. I was a little ashamed when I reflected how soon the newer interests had superseded the old. I had been but a week in Ireland, and already the idea of leaving it for America was akin to that of emigration. What, I wondered, was the charm that had worked so quickly? Was this subtle familiarity and satisfaction with my new life merely the result of æsthetic interest, or had it the depth of an inherited instinct?

I could not tell; I could only feel a strange presentiment that my existence had hitherto been nothing but a preface, and that I was now on the threshold of what was to be, for good or evil, my real life.

I picked up my basket and retraced my steps down the little slope, till I again found myself in the shrubbery walk. On one point my mind was clear. My liking for Durrus was in no perceptible degree influenced by my feeling for my uncle and my cousin. I reiterated this to myself as I strolled along in the damp shade of over-arching laurels towards the plantation which lay between the sea and the lodge.

Uncle Dominick was anything but a person to inspire immediate affection; and then Willy—well, Willy certainly had many attractive points, but, although he was a pleasant companion, he could not be said to be either very cultured or refined.

I left the path and strayed through the wood, stopping here and there to rob the branches of their lavish autumn loveliness. A sluggish little stream crept among the trees, and along its banks the ferns grew thickly. I knelt down in the stubbly yellow grass beside it, where the pale trunk of a beech tree stooped over the water, and picked the small delicate ferns that were clustering between its roots. Having gathered all within reach, I still knelt there, watching a little procession of withered beech-leaves making their slow way down the stream, and studying my own dark reflection on the water.

I was at length startled by the sound of voices that seemed to come from the path I had just left, but from where I was, the thickness of the intervening laurels prevented me from seeing to whom they belonged.

It soon became evident that one of the speakers was a country girl. She was talking rapidly and earnestly; but what she said was unintelligible to me till she and her companion came to the point in the path which was nearest to me, when, after a momentary pause, the soft voice broke out—

“Ye won’t lave me for her, will ye, now? Ye said ye’d hold by me always, and now——”

Something between a sob and a choke ended the sentence. Several sobs followed; and then the girl’s voice went on excitedly—

“Ah! ’tis no use your goin’ on like that; ye know ye want to have done with me entirely.”

I could hear no reply; but that reassurance and consolation were offered was obvious, for as the footsteps died away I heard something like a broken laugh from the girl, with some faint echo of it from a man’s voice.

“Who can she be?” I thought, with instinctive compassion. There was a certain perplexing familiarity in the low pathetic voice, and I walked home, feeling unnecessarily depressed and troubled by what I had heard, and wondering sadly at the self-abandonment which had led to such an appeal.

The path by which I returned skirted the garden and formed a loop with the one by which I had first entered the wood. As I approached the broader walk, I saw a girl’s figure flit down the other path, and I had just time to recognize it as being that of Anstey Brian. Simultaneously came the recollection of the pleading voice in the wood, and in an instant I knew why it had been familiar.

“Then it must have been Anstey,” I thought, feeling both sorry and surprised. The entreaty in her voice had made it very plain how serious a matter her trouble was to her, and the helplessness of her quick surrender showed that she had lost all power of resistance or resentment. I was astonished to think that so pretty a girl as Anstey should have cause to reproach her sweetheart with want of constancy. “Who could he be?” I wondered. Then, remembering that the path she was on was a usual short cut from the lodge to the yard, I came to the conclusion that one of the Durrus stablemen must have been the object of this broken-hearted appeal. I determined that I would try and find out something further about Anstey and her lover, and wondered if it would be of any use to mention the subject to Willy.

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CHAPTER XIII.

A DINNER-PARTY.

Uncle Dominick had, of course, taken in the elder Miss O’Neill, and as far as they were concerned nothing was left to be desired. Conversation of a fluent and high-class order was evidently her strong point. She at once entered upon a discussion of Irish politics with my uncle in a manner deserving of all praise, and as I surreptitiously studied her pale, plain, intellectual face, with the dark hair severely drawn back, and heard her enunciate her opinions in clearly framed sentences, I became deeply conscious of my own general inferiority.

Nevertheless, I did what in me lay to talk to Nugent O’Neill, who had taken me in, thus leaving to Willy the necessary and, as I thought, congenial task of entertaining Miss Connie. Nothing could apparently be better arranged. Nugent had exchanged his frigid, uninterested civility of the day before for an excellent semblance of sociability, beneath which, as it seemed to me, he concealed a curious observation of all that I said. He had a dark clever face, with strong well-cut features, and blue eyes, with a pleasanter expression in them than I had at first expected to see there. His voice would have been monotonous in its quietness and unexcitability had it not been for a certain humorous, semi-American turn which he occasionally imparted to his sentences. He annoyed me, but at the same time he was interesting; moreover—which was to me a very strong point in his favour—he was evidently as much alive as I to the fact that for the next hour and a half it would be our solemn duty to amuse each other, and to that intent we both performed prodigies of agreeability.

But Willy was the cause of disaster. I became gradually aware that silence was settling down upon him and Connie, and that, instead of devoting himself to her, he, with his eyes fixed on me and my partner, was listening moodily to what we were saying. When this had gone on for some minutes, during which Connie crumbled her bread and looked cross, I was exasperated to the point of bestowing a glance upon him calculated to awaken in him a sense of his bad manners. Far, however, from accepting my reproof, Willy returned my look with a gaze of admiring defiance, and projected himself into our conversation by flatly contradicting what Nugent was saying. The latter rose many degrees in my estimation by ignoring the interruption till he had reached the end of his sentence. Then, with a tolerating smile, he looked past me to Willy, and asked him what he had said.

Willy’s dark eyebrows met in a way that unpleasantly reminded me of his father.

“If it wasn’t worth listening to, it’s not worth repeating,” he said aggressively.

Terrified by the turn things were taking, I struck in quickly, “Oh, Willy! have you told Miss O’Neill what you heard to-day about the Jackson-Crolys giving a ball?”

“No; I thought she’d have heard it herself,” he returned ungraciously.

“As it happens, I had heard nothing about it,” said Connie, from the other side of the table; “but I cannot say that I feel much excited at the prospect of one of their dances.”

“I am looking forward to it immensely,” I said, persevering with my topic. “I want very much to see a real Irish ball.”

“Yes,” said Nugent, reflectively; “you will see that to great perfection at the Jackson-Crolys’. They excel in old Irish hospitality. They do that kind of thing in quite the traditional way. Little Croly offers you whiskey the moment you get into the hall; and, though you may not believe it, Mrs. Jackson-Croly orders champagne to be put into all the carriages when people are coming away. The guests are generally pretty happy by that time, and she says it is to keep their hearts up on the way home.”

“That’s quite true,” observed Connie; “and, as well as I remember, you were not at all above drinking it next day.”

“Do they dance jigs at these entertainments?” I asked. “If so, I am afraid I shall be rather out of it.”

“Oh yes,” said Willy, with what was intended to be biting sarcasm; “and horn-pipes and Highland flings. They always do at Irish dances.”

“Nonsense, Willy! They don’t really, do they, Mr. O’Neill?”

“It is always well to be prepared for emergencies,” he answered, “so I should advise you to have some lessons from Willy. I have been told that step-dancing is his strongest suit.”

“Who told you that?” demanded Willy.

“One of our men was at McCarthy’s wedding the other day, and said he saw you there.”

“Oh yes,” supplemented Connie. “He said, ‘The sight would lave your eyes to see Mr. Sarsfield and that little gerr’l of owld Michael Brian’s taking the flure, and they so souple and so springy.’”

Willy did not appear to be at all amused by this flattering opinion, or by the admirable accent in which it was repeated. On the contrary, he looked rather disconcerted, and, with a glance towards the other end of the table, he said awkwardly—

“Oh, one has to do these sort of things now and then. The people like it, and it doesn’t do me any harm.”

“On the contrary,” said Nugent, “I am sure it is a most healthy exercise. But I thought it rather spoiled your leg for a top-boot.”

Willy was known to favour knee-breeches as being especially becoming to him, and at this, to my great relief, he turned his back upon us, and plunged into an ostentatiously engrossing conversation with Connie. At last we were in smooth water, and with almost a sigh of relief I heard Nugent take up the thread of our discourse at the point where Willy had broken it off.

It was evident that he could be pleasant enough when he chose; and though I felt that this new development was almost as offensive in another way as his deliberate dullness yesterday, I was now very grateful for its timely help. At the same time, I bore in mind with resentment my unremunerated toil during our ride, and reflected bitterly on the fact that people who only talk when it pleases them, receive far more credit when they do so than those who from a sense of duty exhaust themselves conversationally.

Uncle Dominick and Henrietta had up to this not caused me a moment’s anxiety. We were now at dessert, and yet the flow of their discourse had never flagged. In fact, my uncle seemed at present to be delivering a species of harangue, to which Henrietta was attending with a polite unconvinced smile. This was all as it should be, and my respect for Henrietta’s social gifts increased tenfold. Unfortunately, however, it soon became evident that the discussion, whatever it was, was taking rather too personal a tone, and my uncle’s voice became so loud and overbearing that Nugent and I were constrained to listen to him.

“You amaze me,” he was saying. “I cannot believe that any sane person can honestly hold such absurd theories. What! do you mean to tell me that one of my tenants, a creature whose forefathers have lived for centuries in ignorance and degradation, is my equal?”

“His degradation is merely the result of injustice,” said Miss O’Neill, coolly adjusting her pince-nez.

“I deny it,” said my uncle, loudly. His usually pale face was flushed, and his eyes burned. “But that is not the point. What I maintain is that any fusion of classes such as you advocate, would have the effect of debarring the upper while it entirely failed to raise the lower orders. If you were to marry your coachman, as, according to your theories of equality, I suppose you would not hesitate to do, do you think these latent instincts of refinement that you talk about would make him a fit companion for you and your family? You know as well as I do that such an idea is preposterous. It is absurd to suppose that the natural arrangement of things can be tampered with. This is a subject on which I feel very strongly, and it shocks me to hear a young lady in your position advance such opinions!”

Henrietta’s face assumed an aggravating expression, clearly conveying her opinion that further argument would be thrown away. Uncle Dominick gulped down a glass of wine, and glared round the table. There was a general silence, and I took advantage of it to make a move to the drawing-room.

I was wholly taken aback by my uncle’s violence, and could not help fearing that the number of times his glass had been replenished had had something to say to it. Willy’s temper had also been so uncertain that I dreaded an outbreak between him and his father, and, in the interval of waiting for their reappearance, I found myself making the most absent and ill-chosen answers to Henrietta’s questions upon the culture and political status of American women, while I listened anxiously for the sound of the opening of the dining-room door. My only consolation was, that Nugent would, for his own sake, do his best to keep the peace, and I was surprised to find how much I relied on his powers of doing so.

In my preoccupied state of mind, it is not to be wondered at that Henrietta soon appeared to come to the conclusion that I was incapable of giving her any information on the subjects in which she was interested, and that I was generally a person of limited abilities. She leaned back in her chair with the exhausted air of one who relinquishes a hopeless task, and, taking up a photograph-book, she tacitly made me over to her sister.

Connie’s ideas ran in less exalted grooves. The run of the day before was to her a topic of inexhaustible interest; and when she found that my humility in the matter of hunting equalled my ignorance, she expanded into extreme graciousness, and was soon in the full tide of narration. The story-teller who treats of hunting with any real enthusiasm generally loses all mental perspective, and sacrifices artistic unity to historical accuracy. Then, as now, I was amazed at the powers of memory and merciless fidelity to detail with which those who have taken part in a run can afterwards describe it, and I listened with reverence befitting the neophyte to Connie’s adventures by flood and field. Foxes and fences, hounds and hunters, were revolving in my brain, when the opening of the door brought the story to a conclusion, and Willy came into the room, followed by Nugent. He marched directly to the sofa where I was sitting, and deposited himself beside me with such determination that the rebound of its springs almost lifted me into the air.

This behaviour was really intolerable. Willy had not before shown any very pronounced partiality for me, and why he should have selected this evening for a demonstration of affection it would be hard to say. One thing was clear: it must be suppressed with a strong hand, or a dead-lock would ensue. Nugent was standing on the hearthrug, with apparently no prospect of entertainment before him save what he could derive from talking to his sisters; while those two young ladies were well aware that no reasonable hostess could ask them to dinner and expect them to devote their evening to conversing with their brother, and, pending action on my part, were sitting in expectant silence. I turned upon Willy in desperation.

“You must talk to them,” I hissed in his ear.

To which, with equal emphasis, he whispered back, “I won’t!” fixing upon me a blandly stubborn gaze that infuriated me beyond the bounds of endurance.

I leaped from my seat, and, with a timely recollection of Nugent’s violin, I walked over to him and asked if he had remembered to bring it. He admitted apologetically that it was in the hall, adding, with unexpected modesty, that he had only brought it because I had asked him to do so. I had some acquaintance with the ways of amateur violinists, and speedily recognized the diffidence which conceals a yearning to play at all hazards. My intention to dislike him was softened by the discovery that he was not at all points so superior as I had believed, and I was pleased to notice some hurry and trepidation in his manner while he was tuning his violin. Henrietta advanced upon the piano with an air of sisterly resignation, and, concealing a yawn, tapped a note for Nugent to tune by.

While he was thus engaged, I cast an anxious eye round the room. My uncle had now come in, and, with his elbow on the chimney-piece, was looking into the fire. Connie had taken possession of the ancient photograph-book which her sister had put down, and, in company with Willy, was silently and methodically turning over its yellow pages. Well did I know its contents. Ladies in preposterously inflated skirts, with rows of black velvet round the tail; and gentlemen clad from head to heel in decent black, each with his back to an Italian landscape, and his tall hat on a Grecian pedestal near him—all alike undistinguishable and unknown. I felt sincerely for Connie; but other occupation there was none, and I had done my best on her behalf.

I was at first inclined to agree with Nugent in his own estimate of his playing, and I saw with unworthy amusement that he was extremely nervous; but as he went on he steadied down, and played with considerable sweetness and delicacy. The keen notes vibrated in the dim, lofty room, and tingling in the many hanging crystals of the old glass chandelier. I forgot the indignation which he had yesterday aroused in me, and remained leaning on the piano, conscious only of the pleasure I was receiving, until the player ceased, and began to unscrew his bow preparatory to putting it away.

“Please play something else,” I said hastily. “Won’t you try this Suite of Corelli’s? I know it so well.”

“I am afraid my sister doesn’t know the accompaniment,” he answered, with a dubious look at Henrietta, who was rising from the piano.

Her bored manner had already told me that she looked on accompanying her brother as a task beneath her powers, and the thought struck me with paralyzing conviction that I ought to have asked her to play a solo. However, this was not the moment to rectify the error; Nugent was lingering over the putting away of his violin, with an obvious desire to play again.

“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to try it?” he said to me, after another glance at Henrietta’s unresponsive face.

“Perhaps if it was not very difficult I might be able——” I said, and checked myself, remembering the snub I had received on that very subject.

But now that I had admitted so much, Nugent held me to my word, and firmly proceeded to arrange the piano part on the desk for me.

“I don’t envy you, Miss Sarsfield,” remarked Henrietta, with a cold little laugh; “Nugent’s ideas of counting are excessively primitive.”

Decidedly Henrietta was annoyed.

“I am the class of savage who cannot count more than five,” he replied, addressing me; “but I do my best.”

Miss O’Neill laughed again. “You will have to play it for him,” she said, moving away from the piano; “Nugent is a regular bully.”

I scarcely liked being coerced in this way, but I yielded; and we played the piece I had asked for, as well as several others, before I remembered my duties as hostess. Willy had forsaken Connie and the photograph-book, and had again left her and Henrietta to talk to each other, while he propped himself against the chimney-piece, and gazed moodily at Nugent and me.

I could not have believed that he would have left me in this dastardly way to bear the burden and heat of the entertainment, and I made a second effort to keep things going by begging Miss O’Neill to play. But this time I was unsuccessful; she would not be propitiated. A look passed between her and her sister, whose banjo I now had little doubt had been secreted in the hall; while I, in violation of all the laws of civility, had myself been monopolizing the piano. They both got up from their places.

“I should have been delighted,” said Henrietta, “but I am afraid it is getting rather late. My dear Nugent”—calling to her brother, who was carefully swaddling his violin preparatory to putting it away—“we really ought to be getting home. The carriage must have been waiting some time; and I am sure”—in a lower voice—“that Mr. Sarsfield has had quite enough of us.”

I looked at my uncle, who during the violin-playing had sunk into an armchair, and had shaded his eyes with his hand, as if listening attentively. He had not moved since we stopped, and looked almost as if he were asleep; but there was something in his attitude that conveyed the idea of deep dejection rather than of slumber.

The general stir of departure roused him. He rose slowly, and said good night with a little more than his usual sombreness.

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CHAPTER XIV.

IN SOCIETY.

Looking back to that time, it seems to resolve itself into one long tête-à-tête with Willy. Quiet rides with him through the damp brown woods, or now and then a day with the Moycullen hounds; drives to return the visits of such of the natives as had called upon me; walks across the turf bog to where the old graveyard hangs over the sea, to watch the sun drop below the horizon. “Bound for America,” says Willy. “I wonder if you’d like to be going back with him?” I had no doubts in my own mind on the subject, though I did not feel called upon to say so to him. I was now quite certain that, in spite of various drawbacks, I enjoyed my life at Durrus very much.

I have said that I had had callers. After the O’Neills, among the first to come and see me were Mrs. Jackson-Croly and her daughters, and the Burkes, whose acquaintance I had already made.

These ladies all made their appearance on the same afternoon; but before the Burkes arrived I had an undiluted quarter of an hour of the Jackson-Crolys, during which time the magnificence of Mrs. Croly’s manner was only equalled by the fashionable languor of her daughters’. I naturally tried to talk to them of such local subjects as I knew anything about, but found that the meanest topic on which they would consent to converse was Dublin Castle, and the affability displayed to them by the lord-lieutenant—“left’nant,” they pronounced it—during the past season. With these lofty themes I was quite unfitted to grapple, and had sunk into a subordinate place in the conversation when the Miss Burkes were announced.

They were both exceedingly cordial and friendly, and Miss Mimi began almost immediately to rally me with ponderous facetiousness on my exploits on the day of the hunt.

“Oh, Miss Sarsfield! what’s this we hear about you and Mr. O’Neill? Springing away through the country after the fox, and leaving poor Willy in the ditch! Oh, fie!”

I feel that it is hopeless to convey any adequate idea of Miss Mimi’s voice by any system of spelling; but the fact that in her vocabulary “fie,” was pronounced “foy,” may serve as some indication of her manner of speech.

At her ingenuous observation I became aware that the eyes of Mrs. Jackson-Croly and her two daughters were riveted upon me with undisguised interest, and I hastened to explain how it was that Willy had been left behind. But Miss Burke paid little heed; another and more exciting topic had suggested itself to her.

“Well, Mrs. Croly, is it true that you’re going to give us a dance at Mount Prospect?” she began. “Why, you’re a wonderful woman for dissipation! We’d all he dying down with dulness only for you.”

Mrs. Jackson-Croly, metaphorically speaking, descended with one leap from the pedestal on which she had hitherto posed for my benefit. Forgetful of the demeanour befitting one who moved in vice-regal circles, she dragged her chair, still seated upon it, across the floor, till she had placed herself knee to knee with Miss Burke, and they were soon deep in calculation as to the number of “dancing gentlemen” who could be relied on for the forthcoming ball.

A few days afterwards, Nugent O’Neill rode over to ask Willy and me to lunch at Clashmore on the following day. I had once or twice met him and Connie out hunting, and the latter and Henrietta had come over to call, after their dinner at Durrus. On these occasions my acquaintance with Connie had made rapid progress; she was a girl whom it was not difficult to know and to like; but with her brother I seemed to have come to a standstill. I must admit to having felt rather disappointed at this, as since the night of the dinner-party I had believed that, under favouring circumstances, he would be a person with whom I should find myself on many points in sympathy. On this occasion he certainly did not carry out my theory. After a great deal of profoundly uninteresting conversation with Willy, in which a self-respecting wish not to be out of it alone induced me to make a third, they both went round to the stables, and I watched him ride away with a return of my old resentment towards him.

Nevertheless, I had to allow to myself that he had not been more dull than was suitable to the subject on which Willy had chosen to harangue him—the question of how and where best to lay out and level a tennis-ground in the lawn at Durrus was not one which lent itself to a display of epigram, but I could not see why they should have talked about it the whole time.

I speculated with a good deal of interest on Nugent’s probable demeanour at luncheon the next day. I could not make up my mind if his unenthusiastic manner was the result of conceit or of an inborn distrust of “American young ladies.” It was certainly provoking that the one Irishman I had hitherto met who seemed to have a few ideas beyond horses and farming, was either too uninterested or too distrustful to expend them upon me.

“I suppose it is the arrogant timidity of these eldest sons,” I reflected, with a touch of republican scorn. “I wish I could tell him that he can talk to me without fear of ulterior designs on my part.”

The day of the Clashmore repast was bright and cold. Willy had put Alaska into the dog-cart to drive me there, and we all three started in very good spirits.

“Willy,” I said, as we spun along the hard road, “you have never told me anything about The O’Neill. I am rather nervous at the idea of meeting an Irish chieftain in his own lair. Ought I to kiss his hand? I am sure you ought to have driven over a couple of fat oxen and a he-goat as propitiatory offerings.”

“By the hokey! I’ll do nothing of the sort,” said Willy. “I can tell you, he is not the sort to refuse them if I did. But I’ve no objection to your kissing his hand, if you like.”

“How kind of you!”

“And he’ll have still less. Mind you, he’s a great old buck, and expects every girl who goes to Clashmore to make love to him.”

“Oh, Willy!” I cried, in real alarm, “for goodness’ sake don’t let him come near me. I never have anything to say to old men, and yet they invariably want to talk to me.”

“Then, my dear, you’d better look out. The madam will have it in her sleeve for you if he’s too civil; she doesn’t approve of his goings on.”

“Well, one comfort is, I shall probably be in his black books in five minutes, as you say it is one of the seven deadly sins to call him Mister O’Neill. I could no more call him ‘O’Neill’ than I could fly; I should feel as if I were talking to a coachman.”

“Oh, I dare say he’d put up with more than that from you! You’re just his sort. I know he’ll tell every one you are ‘a monstrous fine girl.’ You know, he likes them tall and dark and hand——”

“Do hold your tongue!” I interposed. “You are most offensive.”

“Well, never mind,” said Willy, consolingly. “Maybe he won’t look at you, after all. There’s that big English girl we saw in church with them last Sunday—Watson, I think Nugent said her name was—I dare say he devotes himself to her all the time. Though,” he added, “I don’t see why I shouldn’t go in for her myself”—with a glance at me to see how his shaft had sped.

“Oh, I hope you will!” I said; “it would interest me so much.”

I thought Willy looked a little crestfallen, and he said no more on the subject.

As I walked cautiously across the highly polished floor of the Clashmore hall, preceded by an eminently respectable young footman, I was amused to find that my mind was occupied in unfeigned admiration of the cleanliness of the house. This, then, was the result of six weeks’ residence at Durrus. I had become so inured to untidiness, and a generally lenient system of cleansing, that the most ordinary household virtues had acquired positive instead of merely negative value.

The big, bright drawing-room seemed full of strangers, who, as I came in, all stopped talking. I caught, however, my own name, spoken in a voice unmistakable, even in the undertone in which it said, “I declare, there’s Miss Sarsfield herself!” and I had the uncomfortable conviction that Miss Mimi Burke, in common with the rest of the room, had been discussing me.

I advanced with uncertain speed across the wide space of glowing carpet which separated me from Madam O’Neill, my last few steps being considerably accelerated by the sudden uprisal from under my feet of an abnormally lengthy dachshund, which had lain coiled unseen in my path.

“That detestable dog of Henrietta’s!” said Madam O’Neill, as she shook hands with me; “he is always getting in the way. How do you do, Miss Sarsfield? Robert dear, this is Miss Sarsfield.”

A stout, elderly gentleman, in a light suit of clothes, and with one of the reddest faces I have ever seen, stepped forward with a very polite bow and expansive smile, and shook hands with me. This was my host, but the warning I had received against encouraging his attentions had so alarmed me, that as soon as was decently possible I turned my back upon him and began to talk to Henrietta. I had been aware all the time of Willy’s observation, and now, as I turned and met his malevolent eye, I felt with dismay that my face was slowly turning a good fast colour, analogous to Turkey red. Deeply conscious of this, and of the unsparing glare of light from the large plate-glass windows, I spent some singularly uncomfortable moments, until the booming of the gong interrupted Miss O’Neill’s comments on the weather.

I suppose that every one has at some period of their life felt the absurdity of being led forth processionally to an entirely commonplace meal, to which one is quite capable of walking unassisted on one’s own legs. I was never more keenly alive to this than on the present occasion, when, thrusting my hand with some difficulty inside The O’Neill’s bulky arm, and feeling at least a head taller than he, we with all dignity led the way into the dining-room.

I looked round the luncheon-table to see how people had arranged themselves. My neighbour on the right was the Reverend Thomas Horan, Rector of Rathbarry, a dull-looking man, with a saffron complexion, and hair and beard of inky blackness, whose speech in private life was little less unintelligible than his pulpit utterances. Opposite to me sat Nugent O’Neill and Miss Watson. She was an ordinary type of smart English girl, tall, fair, square shouldered, and well dressed, and apparently rather fond of the sound of her own high, unmodulated voice. She, evidently, had no difficulty in talking to Nugent. I caught from time to time such fragments of their discourse as, “Saw your college get a bump,” “Up for commemoration week,” “Ladies’ eights”—by which latter phrase I wondered if he were referring to her size in gloves.

The view to my right was impeded by the portly form of Miss Mimi Burke, who was next Mr. Horan, she and that divine interchanging much lively badinage, in tones suggestive of a duet between two trombones. Beyond her I could just discern the feeble profile of a red-haired youth of nineteen or twenty, who was subsequently introduced to me as Mr. Barrett.

The O’Neill had been up to this too busy in dissecting two ducks of unusually athletic physique to speak to me; but he had from time to time—