"It is all very dreadful," said the countess.

"Oh, Lady Fitzgerald, dear Lady Fitzgerald!" sobbed forth Clara.

"Yes, indeed. Poor Lady Fitzgerald! Her fate is so dreadful that I know not how to think of it."

"But, mamma--" and as she spoke Clara pushed back from her forehead her hair with both her hands, showing, as she did so, the form of her forehead, and the firmness of purpose that was written there, legible to any eyes that could read. "But, mamma, you are wrong about my not marrying Herbert Fitzgerald. Why should I not marry him? Not now, as we, perhaps, might have done but for this; but at some future time when he may think himself able to support a wife. Mamma, I shall not break our engagement; certainly not."

This was said in a tone of voice so very decided that Lady Desmond had to acknowledge to herself that there would be difficulty in her task. But she still did not doubt that she would have her way, if not by concession on the part of her daughter, then by concession on the part of Herbert Fitzgerald. "I can understand your generosity of feeling, my dear," she said; "and at your age I should probably have felt the same. And therefore I do not ask you to take any steps towards breaking your engagement. The offer must come from Mr.

Fitzgerald, and I have no doubt that it will come. He, as a man of honour, will know that he cannot now offer to marry you; and he will also know, as a man of sense, that it would be ruin for him to think of--of such a marriage under his present circ.u.mstances."

"Why, mamma? Why should it be ruin to him?"

"Why, my dear? Do you think that a wife with a t.i.tled name can be of advantage to a young man who has not only got his bread to earn, but even to look out for a way in which he may earn it?"

"If there be nothing to hurt him but the t.i.tled name, that difficulty shall be easily conquered."

"Dearest Clara, you know what I mean. You must be aware that a girl of your rank, and brought up as you have been, cannot be a fitting wife for a man who will now have to struggle with the world at every turn."

Clara, as this was said to her, and as she prepared to answer, blushed deeply, for she felt herself obliged to speak on a matter which had never yet been subject of speech between her and her mother. "Mamma," she said, "I cannot agree with you there. I may have what the world calls rank; but nevertheless we have been poor, and I have not been brought up with costly habits. Why should I not live with my husband as--as--as poorly as I have lived with my mother? You are not rich, dear mamma, and why should I be?"

Lady Desmond did not answer her daughter at once; but she was not silent because an answer failed her. Her answer would have been ready enough had she dared to speak it out. "Yes, it is true; we have been poor. I, your mother, did by my imprudence bring down upon my head and on yours absolute, unrelenting, pitiless poverty. And because I did so, I have never known one happy hour. I have spent my days in bitter remorse--in regretting the want of those things which it has been the more terrible to want as they are the customary attributes of people of my rank. I have been driven to hate those around me who have been rich, because I have been poor. I have been utterly friendless because I have been poor. I have been able to do none of those sweet, soft, lovely things, by doing which other women win the smiles of the world, because I have been poor. Poverty and rank together have made me wretched--have left me without employment, without society, and without love. And now would you tell me that because I have been poor you would choose to be poor also?" It would have been thus that she would have answered, had she been accustomed to speak out her thoughts. But she had ever been accustomed to conceal them.

"I was thinking quite as much of him as of you," at last she said.

"Such an engagement to you would be fraught with much misery, but to him it would be ruinous."

"I do not think it, mamma."

"But it is not necessary, Clara, that you should do anything. You will wait, of course, and see what Herbert may say himself."

"Herbert--"

"Wait half a moment, my love. I shall be very much surprised if we do not find that Mr. Fitzgerald himself will tell you that the match must be abandoned."

"But that will make no difference, mamma."

"No difference, my dear! You cannot marry him against his will. You do not mean to say that you would wish to bind him to his engagement, if he himself thought it would be to his disadvantage?"

"Yes; I will bind him to it."

"Clara!"

"I will make him know that it is not for his disadvantage. I will make him understand that a friend and companion who loves him as I love him--as no one else will ever love him now--for I love him because he was so high-fortuned when he came to me, and because he is now so low-fortuned--that such a wife as I will be, cannot be a burden to him. I will cling to him whether he throws me off or no. A word from him might have broken our engagement before, but a thousand words cannot do it now."

Lady Desmond stared at her daughter, for Clara, in her excitement, was walking up and down the room. The countess had certainly not expected all this, and she was beginning to think that the subject for the present might as well be left alone. But Clara had not done as yet.

"Mamma," she said, "I will not do anything without telling you; but I cannot leave Herbert in all his misery to think that I have no sympathy with him. I shall write to him."

"Not before he writes to you, Clara! You would not wish to be indelicate?"

"I know but little about delicacy--what people call delicacy; but I will not be ungenerous or unkind. Mamma, you brought us two together.

Was it not so? Did you not do so, fearing that I might--might still care for Herbert's cousin? You did it; and half wishing to obey you, half attracted by all his goodness, I did learn to love Herbert Fitzgerald; and I did learn to forget--no; but I learned to cease to love his cousin. You did this and rejoiced at it; and now what you did must remain done."

"But, dearest Clara, it will not be for his good."

"It shall be for his good. Mamma, I would not desert him now for all that the world could give me. Neither for mother nor brother could I do that. Without your leave I would not have given him the right to regard me as his own; but now I cannot take that right back again, even at your wish. I must write to him at once, mamma, and tell him this."

"Clara, at any rate you must not do that; that at least I must forbid."

"Mother, you cannot forbid it now," the daughter said, after walking twice the length of the room in silence. "If I be not allowed to send a letter, I shall leave the house and go to him."

This was all very dreadful. Lady Desmond was astounded at the manner in which her daughter carried herself, and the voice with which she spoke. The form of her face was altered, and the very step with which she trod was unlike her usual gait. What would Lady Desmond do? She was not prepared to confine her daughter as a prisoner, nor could she publicly forbid the people about the place to go upon her message.

"I did not expect that you would have been so undutiful," she said.

"I hope I am not so," Clara answered. "But now my first duty is to him. Did you not sanction our loving each other? People cannot call back their hearts and their pledges."

"You will at any rate wait till to-morrow, Clara."

"It is dark now," said Clara, despondingly, looking out through the window upon the falling night; "I suppose I cannot send to-night."

"And you will show me what you write, dearest?"

"No, mamma. If I wrote it for your eyes it could not be the same as if I wrote it only for his."

Very gloomy, sombre, and silent, was the Countess of Desmond all that night. Nothing further was said about the Fitzgeralds between her and her daughter, before they went to bed; and then Lady Desmond did speak a few futile words.

"Clara," she said. "You had better think over what we have been saying, in bed to-night. You will be more collected to-morrow morning."

"I shall think of it of course," said Clara; "but thinking can make no difference," and then just touching her mother's forehead with her lips she went off slowly to her room.

What sort of a letter she wrote when she got there, we have already seen; and have seen also that she took effective steps to have her letter carried to Castle Richmond at an hour sufficiently early in the morning. There was no danger that the countess would stop the message, for the letter had been read twenty times by Emmeline and Mary, and had been carried by Herbert to his mother's room, before Lady Desmond had left her bed. "Do not set your heart on it too warmly," said Herbert's mother to him.

"But is she not excellent?" said Herbert. "It is because she speaks of you in such a way--"

"You would not wish to bring her into misery, because of her excellence."

"But, mother, I am still a man," said Herbert. This was too much for the suffering woman, the one fault of whose life had brought her son to such a pa.s.s, and throwing her arm round his neck she wept upon his shoulders.

There were other messengers went and came that day between Desmond Court and Castle Richmond. Clara and her mother saw nothing of each other early in the morning; they did not breakfast together, nor was there a word said between them on the subject of the Fitzgeralds.

But Lady Desmond early in the morning--early for her that is--sent her note also to Castle Richmond. It was addressed to Aunt Letty, Miss Let.i.tia Fitzgerald, and went to say that Lady Desmond was very anxious to see Miss Letty. Under the present circ.u.mstances of the family, as described to Lady Desmond by Mr. Herbert Fitzgerald, she felt that she could not ask to see "his mother;"--it was thus that she overcame the difficulty which presented itself to her as to the proper t.i.tle now to be given to Lady Fitzgerald;--but perhaps Miss Letty would be good enough to see her, if she called at such and such an hour. Aunt Letty, much perplexed, had nothing for it, but to say that she would see her. The countess must now be looked on as closely connected with the family--at any rate until that match were broken off; and therefore Aunt Letty had no alternative. And so, precisely at the hour named, the countess and Aunt Letty were seated together in the little breakfast-room of which mention has before been made.

No two women were ever closeted together who were more unlike each other,--except that they had one common strong love for family rank.

But in Aunt Letty it must be acknowledged that this pa.s.sion was not unwholesome or malevolent in its course of action. She delighted in being a Fitzgerald, and in knowing that her branch of the Fitzgeralds had been considerable people ever since her Norman ancestor had come over to Ireland with Strongbow. But then she had a useful idea that considerable people should do a considerable deal of good. Her family pride operated more inwardly than outwardly,--inwardly as regarded her own family, and not outwardly as regarded the world. Her brother, and her nephew, and her sister-in-law, and nieces, were, she thought, among the highest commoners in Ireland; they were gentlefolks of the first water, and walked openly before the world accordingly, proving their claim to gentle blood by gentle deeds and honest conduct.

Perhaps she did think too much of the Fitzgeralds of Castle Richmond; but the sin was one of which no recording angel could have made much in his entry. That she was a stupid old woman, prejudiced in the highest degree, and horribly ignorant of all the world beyond her own very narrow circle,--even of that, I do not think that the recording angel could, under the circ.u.mstances, have made a great deal.

And now how was her family pride affected by this horrible catastrophe that had been made known to her? Herbert the heir, whom as heir she had almost idolized, was n.o.body. Her sister-in-law, whom she had learned to love with the whole of her big heart, was no sister-in-law. Her brother was one, who, in lieu of adding glory to the family, would always be regarded as the most unfortunate of the Fitzgerald baronets. But with her, human nature was stronger than family pride, and she loved them all, not better, but more tenderly than ever.

The two ladies were closeted together for about two hours; and then, when the door was opened, Aunt Letty might have been seen with her bonnet much on one side, and her poor old eyes and cheeks red with weeping. The countess, too, held her handkerchief to her eyes as she got back into her pony carriage. She saw no one else there but Aunt Letty; and from her mood when she returned to Desmond Court it might be surmised that from Aunt Letty she had learned little to comfort her.