"Oh, of course. And now doesn't she love a convert and hate a Puseyite?"

"All Irish clergyman's daughters do that."

"Well, f.a.n.n.y, you can't say but that it was a good portrait; and after that, will you pretend to say you call Miss O'Joscelyn your friend?"

"Not my very friend of friends; but, as friends go, she's as good as most others."

"And who is the friend of friends, f.a.n.n.y?"

"Come, you're not my father confessor. I'm not to tell you all. If I told you that, you'd make another portrait."

"I'm sure I couldn't draw a disparaging picture of anybody you would really call your friend. But indeed I pity you, living among so many such people. There can be n.o.body here who understands you."

"Oh, I'm not very unintelligible."

"Much more so than Miss O'Joscelyn. I shouldn't wish to have to draw your portrait."

"Pray don't; if it were frightful I should think you uncivil; and if you made it handsome, I should know you were flattering. Besides, you don't know enough of me to tell me my character."

"I think I do; but I'll study it a little more before I put it on the canva.s.s. Some likenesses are very hard to catch."

f.a.n.n.y felt, when she went to bed, that she had spent a pleasanter evening than she usually did, and that it was a much less nuisance to talk to her cousin Adolphus than to either his father, mother, or sister; and as she sat before her fire, while her maid was brushing her hair, she began to think that she had mistaken his character, and that he couldn't be the hard, sensual, selfish man for which she had taken him. Her ideas naturally fell back to Frank and her love, her difficulties and sorrows; and, before she went to sleep, she had almost taught herself to think that she might make Lord Kilcullen the means of bringing Lord Ballindine back to Grey Abbey.

She had, to be sure, been told that her cousin had spoken ill of Frank; that it was he who had been foremost in decrying Lord Ballindine's folly and extravagance; but she had never heard him do so; she had only heard of it through Lord Cashel; and she quite ceased to believe anything her guardian might say respecting her discarded lover. At any rate she would try. Some step she was determined to take about Lord Ballindine; and, if her cousin refused to act like a cousin and a friend, she would only be exactly where she was before.

x.x.xI. THE TWO FRIENDS

The next three days pa.s.sed slowly and tediously for most of the guests a.s.sembled at Grey Abbey. Captain c.o.kely, and a Mr Battersby, came over from Newbridge barracks, but they did not add much to the general enjoyment of the party, though their arrival was hailed with delight by some of the young ladies. At any rate they made the rooms look less forlorn in the evenings, and made it worth the girls' while to put on their best bibs and tuckers.

"But what's the use of it at all?" said Matilda Fitzgerald to little Letty O'Joscelyn, when she had spent three-quarters of an hour in adjusting her curls, and setting her flounces properly, on the evening before the arrival of the two cavalry officers; "not a soul to look at us but a crusty old colonel, a musty old bishop, and a fusty old beau!"

"Who's the old beau?" said Letty.

"Why, that Mr Tierney. I can't conceive how Lady Cashel can have asked us to meet such a set," and Matilda descended, pouting, and out of humour.

But on the next day she went through her work much more willingly, if not more carefully.

"That Captain c.o.kely's a very nice fellow," said Matilda; "the best of that Newbridge set, out and out."

"Well now, I really think he's not so nice as Mr Battersby," said Letty. "I'm sure he's not so good-looking."

"Oh, Battersby's only a boy. After all, Letty, I don't know whether I like officers so much better than other men,"--and she twisted her neck round to get a look at her back in the pier-gla.s.s, and gave her dress a little pull just above her bustle.

"I'm sure I do," said Letty; "they've so much more to say for themselves, and they're so much smarter."

"Why, yes, they are smarter," said Matilda; "and there's nothing on earth so dowdy as an old black coat, But, then, officers are always going away: you no sooner get to know one or two of a set, and to feel that one of them is really a darling fellow, but there, they are off--to Jamaica, China, Hounslow barracks, or somewhere; and then it's all to do over again."

"Well, I do wish they wouldn't move them about quite so much."

"But let's go down. I think I'll do now, won't I?" and they descended, to begin the evening campaign.

"Wasn't Miss Wyndham engaged to some one?" said old Mrs Ellison to Mrs Moore. "I'm sure some one told me so."

"Oh, yes, she was," said Mrs Moore; "the affair was settled, and everything arranged; but the man was very poor, and a gambler,--Lord Ballindine: he has the name of a property down in Mayo somewhere; but when she got all her brother's money, Lord Cashel thought it a pity to sacrifice it,--so he got her out of the sc.r.a.pe. A very good thing for the poor girl, for they say he's a desperate scamp."

"Well, I declare I think," said Mrs Ellison, "she'll not have far to look for another."

"What, you think there's something between her and Lord Kilcullen?"

said Mrs Moore.

"It looks like it, at any rate, don't it?" said Mrs Ellison.

"Well, I really think it does," said Mrs Moore; "I'm sure I'd be very glad of it. I know he wants money desperately, and it would be such a capital thing for the earl."

"At any rate, the lady does not look a bit unwilling," said Mrs Ellison. "I suppose she's fond of rakish young men. You say Lord Ballindine was of that set; and I'm sure Lord Kilcullen's the same,--he has the reputation, at any rate. They say he and his father never speak, except just in public, to avoid the show of the thing."

And the two old ladies set to work to a good dish of scandal.

"Miss Wyndham's an exceedingly fine girl," said Captain c.o.kely to Mat Tierney, as they were playing a game of piquet in the little drawing-room.

"Yes," said Mat; "and she's a hundred thousand exceedingly fine charms too, independently of her fine face."

"So I hear," said c.o.kely; "but I only believe half of what I hear about those things."

"She has more than that; I know it."

"Has she though? Faith, do you know I think Kilcullen has a mind to keep it in the family. He's very soft on her, and she's just as sweet to him. I shouldn't be surprised if he were to marry now, and turn steady."

"Not at all; there are two reasons against it. In the first place, he's too much dipped for even f.a.n.n.y's fortune to be any good to him; and secondly, she's engaged."

"What, to Ballindine?" said c.o.kely.

"Exactly so," said Mat.

"Ah, my dear fellow, that's all off long since. I heard Kilcullen say so myself. I'll back Kilcullen to marry her against Ballindine for a hundred pounds."

"Done," said Mat; and the bet was booked.

The same evening, Tierney wrote to Dot Blake, and said in a postscript, "I know you care for Ballindine; so do I, but I don't write to him.

If he really wants to secure his turtle-dove, he should see that she doesn't get bagged in his absence. Kilcullen is here, and I tell you he's a keen sportsman. They say it's quite up with him in London, and I should be sorry she were sacrificed: she seems a nice girl."

Lord Kilcullen had ample opportunities of forwarding his intimacy with f.a.n.n.y, and he did not neglect them. To give him his due, he played his cards as well as his father could wish him. He first of all overcame the dislike with which she was prepared to regard him; he then interested her about himself; and, before he had been a week at Grey Abbey, she felt that she had a sort of cousinly affection for him. He got her to talk with a degree of interest about himself; and when he could do that, there was no wonder that Tierney should have fears for his friend's interests. Not that there was any real occasion for them.

f.a.n.n.y Wyndham was not the girl to be talked out of, or into, a real pa.s.sion, by anyone.

"Now, tell me the truth, f.a.n.n.y," said Kilcullen, as they were sitting over the fire together in the library, one dark afternoon, before they went to dress for dinner; "hadn't you been taught to look on me as a kind of ogre--a monster of iniquity, who spoke nothing but oaths, and did nothing but sin?"