"But," replied his mother, "those, surely, are two good qualities in any woman, especially in her whom you expect to become your wife."

"Perhaps so," said he;'"but she is not my wife yet, my dear mother."

"I wish she was, Harry," observed his brother, "for by all accounts she is an excellent girl, and remarkable for her charity and humanity to the poor."

His mother and Harry then left the room, and both went to her own apartment, where the following conversation took place between them:

"Harry," said she, "I hope you are not angry at the determination I expressed to leave my property to Charles should he recover?"

"Why should I, my dear mother?" he replied; "your property is your own, and of course you may leave it to whomsoever you wish. At all events, it will remain in your own family, and won't go to strangers, like that of my scoundrel old uncle."

"Don't speak so, Harry, of my brother; silly, besotted, and overreached he was when he acted as he did; but he never was a scoundrel, Harry."

"Well, well, let that pa.s.s," replied her son; "but the question now is, What am I to do? What step should I first take?"

"I don't understand you."

"Why, I mean whether should I start directly for Ballyspellan and put this puling girl out of pain, or go in a day or two and put the question at once to Miss Riddle, against whom, somehow, I feel a strong antipathy."

"Ah, Harry, that's your grandfather all over; but, indeed, our family were full of strong antipathies and bitter resentments. Why do you feel an antipathy against the girl?"

"Who can account for antipathies, mother? I cannot account for this."

"And perhaps on her part the poor girl is attached to you."

"Well, but you have not answered my question. How am I to act? Which step should I take first--the quietus, of 'curds-and-whey,' or the courtship? The sooner matters come to a conclusion the better. I wish, if possible, to know what is before me: I cannot bear uncertainty in this or anything else."

"I scarcely know how to advise you," she replied; "both steps are of the deepest importance, but certainly which to take first is a necessary consideration. I am of opinion that our best plan is simply to take a day or two to think it over, after which we will compare notes and come to a conclusion." And so it was determined.

We need scarcely a.s.sure our readers that honest and affectionate Barney Casey felt a deep interest in the recovery of the generous and kind-hearted Charles Lindsay, nor that he allowed a single day to pa.s.s without going, at least two or three times, to ascertain whether there was any appearance of his convalescence. On the day following that on which Mrs. Lindsay had declared the future disposition of her property he went to see Charles as usual, when the latter, after having stated to him that he felt much better, and the fever abating, he said,--

"Casey, I have rather strange news for you."

"Be it good, bad, or indifferent, sir," replied Barney, "you could tell me no news that would plaise me half so much as that there is a certainty of your gettin' well again."

"Well, I think there is, Barney. I feel much better to-day than I have done for a long while--but the news, are you not anxious to hear it?"

"Why, I hope I'll hear it soon, Masther Charles, especially if it's good; but if it's not good I'm jack-indifferent about it."

"It is good, Barney, to me at least, but not so to my brother Woodward."

Barney's ears, if possible, opened and expanded themselves on hearing this. To him it was a double gratification: first, because it was favorable to the invalid, to whom he was so sincerely attached; and secondly, because it was not so to Woodward, whom he detested.

"My mother yesterday told me that she has made up her mind to leave me all her property if I recover, instead of to Harry, for whom she had originally intended it."

Barney, on hearing this intelligence, was commencing to dance an Irish jig to his own music, and would have done so were it not that the delicate state of the patient prevented him.

"Blood alive, Masther Charles!" he exclaimed, snapping his fingers in a kind of wild triumph, "what are you lying there for? Bounce to your feet like a two-year ould. O, holy Moses, and Melchisedek the divine, ay, and Solomon, the son of St. Pettier, in all his glory, but that is news!"

"She told my brother Woodward, face to face, that such was her fixed determination."

"Good again; and what did he say?"

"Nothing particular, but that he was glad it was to stay in the family, and not go to strangers, like our uncle's--alluding, of course, to his will in favor of dear Alice Goodwin."

"Ay, but how did he look?" asked Barney.

"I didn't observe, I was rather in pain at the time; but, from a pa.s.sing glimpse I got, I thought his countenance darkened a little; but I may be mistaken."

"Well, I hope so," said Barney. "I hope so--but--well, I am glad to find you are betther, Masther Charles, and to hear the good piece of fortune you have mentioned. I trust in G.o.d your mother will keep her word--that's all."

"As for myself," said Charles, "I am indifferent about the property; all that presses upon my heart is my anxiety for Miss Goodwin's recovery."

"Don't be alarmed on that account," said Casey! "they say the waters of Ballyspellan would bring the dead to life. Now, good-by, Masther Charles; don't be cast down--keep up your spirits, for something tells me that's there's luck before you, and good luck, too."

After leaving him Barney began to ruminate. He had remarked an extraordinary change in the countenance and deportment of Harry Woodward during the evening before and the earlier part of that day. The plausible serenity of his manner was replaced by unusual gloom, and that abstraction which is produced by deep and absorbing thought. He seemed so completely wrapped up in constant meditation upon some particular subject, that he absolutely forgot to guard himself against observation or remark, by his usual artifice of manner. He walked alone in the garden, a thing he was not accustomed to do; and during these walks he would stop and pause, then go on slowly and musingly, and stop and pause again. Barney, as we have said before, was a keen observer, and having watched him from a remote corner of the garden in which he was temporarily engaged among some flowers, he came at once to the conclusion that Woodward's mind was burdened with something which heavily depressed his spirits, and occupied his whole attention.

"Ah," exclaimed Barney, "the villain is brewing mischief for some one, but I will watch his motions if I should pa.s.s sleepless nights for it.

He requires a sharp eye after him, and it will go hard with me or I shall know what his midnight wanderings mean; but in the meantime I must keep calm and quiet, and not seem to watch him."

Whilst Barney, who was unseen by Woodward, having been separated from him by a fruit hedge over which he occasionally peeped, indulged in this soliloquy, the latter, in the same deep and moody meditation, extended his walk, his brows contracted, and dark as midnight.

"The d.a.m.ned hag," said he, speaking unconsciously aloud, "is this the affection which she professed to bear me? Is this the proof she gives of the preference which she often expressed for her favorite son? To leave her property to that miserable milksop, my half-brother! What devil could have tempted her to this? Not Lindsay, certainly, for I know he would scorn to exercise any control over her in the disposition of her property, and as for Maria, I know she would not. It must then have been the milksop himself in some puling fit of pain or illness; and ably must the beggarly knave have managed it when he succeeded in changing the stern and flinty heart of such a she-devil. Yes, unquestionably that must be the true meaning of it; but, be it so for the present; the future is a different question. My plans are laid, and I will put them into operation according as circ.u.mstances may guide me."

Whatever those plans were, he seemed to have completed them in his own mind. The darkness departed from his brow; his face a.s.sumed its usual expression; and, having satisfied himself by the contemplation of his future course of action, he walked at his usual pace out of the garden.

"Egad," thought Barney, "I'm half a prophet, but I can say no more than I've said. There's mischief in the wind; but whether against Masther Charles or his mother, is a puzzle to me. What a dutiful son, too! A she-devil! Well, upon my sowl, if he weren't her son I could forgive him for that, because it hits her off to a hair--but from the lips of a son!

O, the blasted scoundrel! Well, no matther, there's a sharp pair of eyes upon him; and that's all I can say at present."

When the medical attendant called that day to see his patient he found, on examining Charles, and feeling his pulse, that he was decidedly and rapidly on the recovery. On his way down stairs he was met by Woodward, who said,

"Well, doctor, is there any chance of my dear brother's recovery?"

"It is beyond a chance now, Mr. Wood-ward; he is out of danger; and although his convalescence will be slow, it will be sure."

"Thank G.o.d," said the cold-blooded hypocrite; "I have never heard intelligence more gratifying. My mother is in the withdrawing-room, and desired me to say that she wishes to speak with you. Of course it is about my brother; and I am glad that you can make so favorable a report of him."

On going down he found Mrs. Lindsay alone, and having taken a seat and made his daily report, she addressed him as follows:

"Doctor, you have taken a great weight off my mind by your account of my son's certain recovery."

"I can say with confidence, as I have already said to his anxious brother, madam, that it is certain, although it will be slow. He is out of danger at last. The wound is beginning to cicatrize, and generates laudable pus. His fever, too, is gone; but he is very weak still,--quite emaciated,--and it will require time to place him once more on his legs.

Still, the great fact is, that his recovery is certain. Nothing unless agitation of mind can r.e.t.a.r.d it; and I do not see anything which can occasion that."

"Nothing, indeed, doctor; but, doctor, I wish to speak to you on another subject. You have been attending Miss Goodwin during her very strange and severe illness. You have visited her, too, at Ballyspellan."

"I have, madam. She went there by my directions."