'You had a very sorry dinner, Miss Betty, but I can promise you an honest gla.s.s of wine,' said Kearney, filling her gla.s.s.

'It's very nice,' said she, sipping it, 'though, maybe, like myself, it's just a trifle too old.'

'A good fault, Miss Betty, a good fault.'

'For the wine, perhaps,' said she dryly, 'but maybe it would taste better if I had not bought it so dearly.'

'I don't think I understand you.'

'I was about to say that I have forfeited that young lady's esteem by the way I obtained it. She'll never forgive me, instead of retiring for my coffee, sitting here like a man--and a man of that old hard-drinking school, Mathew, that has brought all the ruin on Ireland.'

'Here's to their memory, anyway,' said Kearney, drinking off his gla.s.s.

'I'll drink no toasts nor sentiments, Mathew Kearney, and there's no artifice or roguery will make me forget I'm a woman and an O'Shea.'

'Faix, you'll not catch me forgetting either,' said Mathew, with a droll twinkle of his eye, which it was just as fortunate escaped her notice.

'I doubted for a long time, Mathew Kearney, whether I'd come over myself, or whether I 'd write you a letter; not that I'm good at writing, but, somehow, one can put their ideas more clear, and say things in a way that will fix them more in the mind; but at last I determined I'd come, though it's more than likely it's the last time Kilgobbin will see me here.'

'I sincerely trust you are mistaken, so far.'

'Well, Mathew, I'm not often mistaken! The woman that has managed an estate for more than forty years, been her own land-steward and her own law-agent, doesn't make a great many blunders; and, as I said before, if Mathew has no friend to tell him the truth among the men of his acquaintance, it's well that there is a woman to the fore, who has courage and good sense to go up and do it.'

She looked fixedly at him, as though expecting some concurrence in the remark, if not some intimation to proceed; but neither came, and she continued.

'I suppose you don't read the Dublin newspapers?' said she civilly.

'I do, and every day the post brings them.'

'You see, therefore, without my telling you, what the world is saying about you. You see how they treat "the search for arms," as they head it, and "the Maid of Saragossa!" O Mathew Kearney! Mathew Kearney! whatever happened the old stock of the land, they never made themselves ridiculous.'

'Have you done, Miss Betty?' asked he, with a.s.sumed calm.

'Done! Why, it's only beginning I am,' cried she. 'Not but I'd bear a deal of blackguarding from the press--as the old woman said when the soldier threatened to run his bayonet through her: "Devil thank you, it's only your trade." But when we come to see the head of an old family making ducks and drakes of his family property, threatening the old tenants that have been on the land as long as his own people, raising the rent here, evicting there, distressing the people's minds when they've just as much as they can to bear up with--then it's time for an old friend and neighbour to give a timely warning, and cry "Stop.'"

'Have you done, Miss Betty?' And now his voice was more stern than before.

'I have not, nor near done, Mathew Kearney. I've said nothing of the way you're bringing up your family--that son, in particular--to make him think himself a young man of fortune, when you know, in your heart, you'll leave him little more than the mortgages on the estate. I have not told you that it's one of the jokes of the capital to call him the Honourable d.i.c.k Kearney, and to ask him after his father the viscount.'

'You haven't done yet, Miss O'Shea?' said he, now with a thickened voice.

'No, not yet,' replied she calmly--'not yet; for I'd like to remind you of the way you're behaving to the best of the whole of you--the only one, indeed, that's worth much in the family--your daughter Kate.'

'Well, what have I done to wrong _her_?' said he, carried beyond his prudence by so astounding a charge.

'The very worst you could do, Mathew Kearney; the only mischief it was in your power, maybe. Look at the companion you have given her! Look at the respectable young lady you've brought home to live with your decent child!'

'You'll not stop?' cried he, almost choking with pa.s.sion.

'Not till I've told you why I came here, Mathew Kearney; for I'd beg you to understand it was no interest about yourself or your doings brought me.

I came to tell you that I mean to be free about an old contract we once made--that I revoke it all. I was fool enough to believe that an alliance between our families would have made me entirely happy, and my nephew Gorman O'Shea was brought up to think the same. I have lived to know better, Mathew Kearney: I have lived to see that we don't suit each other at all, and I have come here to declare to you formally that it's all off.

No nephew of mine shall come here for a wife. The heir to Shea's Barn shan't bring the mistress of it out of Kilgobbin Castle.'

'Trust _me_ for that, old lady,' cried he, forgetting all his good manners in his violent pa.s.sion.

'You'll be all the freer to catch a young aide-de-camp from the Castle,'

said she sneeringly; 'or maybe, indeed, a young lord--a rank equal to your own.'

'Haven't you said enough?' screamed he, wild with rage.

'No, nor half, or you wouldn't be standing there, wringing your hands with pa.s.sion and your hair bristling like a porcupine. You'd be at my feet, Mathew Kearney--ay, at my feet.'

'So I would, Miss Betty,' chimed he in, with a malicious grin, 'if I was only sure you'd be as cruel as the last time I knelt there. Oh dear! oh dear! and to think that I once wanted to marry that woman!'

'That you did! You'd have put your hand in the fire to win her.'

'By my conscience, I'd have put myself altogether there, if I had won her.'

'You understand now, sir,' said she haughtily, 'that there's no more between us.'

'Thank G.o.d for the same!' e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed he fervently.

'And that no nephew of mine comes courting a daughter of yours?'

'For his own sake, he'd better not.'

'It's for his own sake I intend it, Mathew Kearney. It's of himself I'm thinking. And now, thanking you for the pleasant evening I've pa.s.sed, and your charming society, I'll take my leave.'

'I hope you'll not rob us of your company till you take a dish of tea,'

said he, with well-feigned politeness.

'It's hard to tear one's self away, Mr. Kearney; but it's late already.'

'Couldn't we induce you to stop the night, Miss Betty?' asked he, in a tone of insinuation. 'Well, at least you'll let me ring to order your horse?'

'You may do that if it amuses you, Mathew Kearney; but, meanwhile, I'll just do what I've always done in the same place--I'll just go look for my own beast and see her saddled myself; and as Peter Gill is leaving you to-morrow, I'll take him back with me to-night.'

'Is he going to you?' cried he pa.s.sionately.

'He's going to _me_, Mr. Kearney, with your leave, or without it, I don't know which I like best.' And with this she swept out of the room, while Kearney closed his eyes and lay back in his chair, stunned and almost stupefied.

CHAPTER XXII

A CONFIDENTIAL TALK