"I did tell my brother I was engaged, Father John; what would you have?"

"I'll tell you what I'd have. I'd have Captain Ussher ask your father or brother's consent: there's no doubt, we all know, but he'd get it; but it's customary, and, in my mind, it would only be decent."

"So he will, I dare say; but mayn't there be rasons why he don't wish to have it talked about yet?"

"Then, Feemy, in your situation, do you think a long clandestine engagement is quite the thing for you; is quite prudent?"

"And how can it be clandestine, Father John, when you and Thady, and every one else almost, knows all about it?"

Feemy's sharpness was too much for Father John, so he had to put it on another tack.

"Well, Feemy, now just look at the matter this way, one moment: supposing now--only just for supposition--this lover of yours was not the sort of man we all take him to be, and that he was to turn out false, or inconstant; suppose now it turned out he had another wife somewhere else--"

"Oh, that's nonsense, you know, Father John."

"Yes, but just supposing it,--or that he took some vagary into his head, and changed his mind! You must have heard of men doing such things, and why shouldn't your lover as well as another girl's? We're all likely to be deceived in people, and why mayn't we be as well deceived in Captain Ussher, as others have been in those they loved as well? We'll all hope, and think, and believe it's not so; but isn't it as well to be on the safe side, particularly in so important a thing as your happiness, Feemy? You wouldn't like it to be said through the country that you'd been jilted by the handsome captain, and that you'd been thrown off by your lover as soon as he was tired of you?"

"And that's thrue for you, Father John; but Myles isn't tired of me, else why should he be coming up here to see me oftener than ever?"

"But it's that he never may be tired of you, Feemy; take my word for it, he'll respect you a great deal more if you'll show more respect to yourself."

"Well, Father John, and what is it you'd have me be doing?"

"Why, then, I'd just ask him to speak a word to Thady--just to propose himself in the regular way."

"But Thady hates him so."

"No; Thady don't hate him: he's only jealous lest Captain Ussher isn't treating you quite as he ought to do."

"But Thady is so queer in his manners; and I know Myles wouldn't like to be asking leave and permission to be courting me."

"But, Feemy, he must like it; and you shouldn't like your lover the more for thinking so little of your brother, or, for the matter of that, of yourself either."

"You know, Father John, I can't help what he thinks of Thady. As to his thinking of me, I'm quite satisfied with that, and I suppose that's enough."

Father John was beginning to wax wroth, partly because he was displeased with Feemy himself, and partly because Feemy answered him too knowingly.

"Well, then, Feemy, it'll be one of the two: either Captain Ussher will have to speak to Thady, and settle something about the marriage in a proper and decent way; or else Thady will be speaking to him.

And now, which do you think will be the best?"

"It's not like you, Father John, to be making Thady quarrel with Captain Ussher. You know it'd come to a quarrel if Thady was to be spaking to Myles that way; and he would never think of doing so av you didn't be putting him up to it."

"And that's little like you, Feemy, to be saying that to your priest; telling me I put the young men up to be quarrelling: it's to save you many a heart-ache, and many a sting of sorrow and remorse; it's to prevent all the evil of unlawful love--bad blood, and false looks--that I've come here on a most disagreeable and thankless errand; and now you tell me I'd be putting the young men up to fight!"

Feemy had, by this time, become sullen, but she didn't dare go farther with her priest.

"I didn't say you'd be making them fight, Father John. I only said, if you told Thady not to be meddling with Myles, why, in course, they wouldn't be quarrelling."

"And how could I tell a brother not to meddle with his sister's honour, and reputation, and happiness? But now, Feemy, I'll propose another plan to you. If you don't think my advice on such a subject likely to be good--and very likely it isn't, for you see I never had a lover of my own--what do you say to your speaking to your friend, Mrs. McKeon, about it? Or, if you like, I'll speak to her; and then, perhaps, you won't be against taking her advice on the subject.

Supposing, now, she was to speak to Captain Ussher--from herself, you know, as your friend--do you think he'd love the girl that's to be his wife worse for having a friend that was willing to stand in the place of a mother to her, when she'd none of her own?"

"Why, I do think it would look odd, Mrs. McKeon meddling with it."

"Well, then, Feemy, what in the blessed name do you mean to do, if you won't let any of your friends act for you? I think you must be very much afraid of this lover of yours, when you won't allow any one speak to him about you. Are you afraid of him, Feemy?"

"Afraid of him?--no, of course I'm not afraid of him; but men don't like to be bothered about such things."

"That's very true; men, when they're false, and try to deceive young girls, and are playing their own wicked game with them, do not like to be bothered about such things. But I never heard of an honest man, who really wanted to marry a young woman, being bothered by getting her friends' consent. And you think, then, things should go on just as they are?"

"Now, Father John, only you've been scolding me so much, I'd have told you before. I mane to spake to Myles myself to-night, just to arrange things; and then I won't have Mrs. McKeon c.o.c.king over me that she made up the match."

"There's little danger of that kind, I fear, Feemy, nor would she be doing so; but if you are actually going to speak to Captain Ussher yourself to-night, I'll say no more about it now; but I hope you'll tell Thady to-morrow what pa.s.ses."

"Oh, Father John, I won't promise that."

"Will you tell me, then, or Mrs. McKeon?"

"Oh, perhaps I'll be telling you, you know, when I come down to confession at Christmas; but indeed I shan't be telling Mrs. McKeon anything about it, to go talking over the counthry."

"Then, Feemy, I may as well tell you at once--if you will not trust to me, to your brother, or any friend who may be able to protect you from insult--nor prevail on your lover to come forward in a decent and respectable way, and avow his purpose--it will become your brother's duty to tell him that his visits can no longer be allowed at Ballycloran."

"Ballycloran doesn't belong to Thady, and he can't tell him not to come."

"That's not well said of you, Feemy; for you know your father is not capable of interfering in this business; but if, as under those circ.u.mstances he will do, Thady quietly and firmly desires Captain Ussher to stay away from Ballycloran, I think he'll not venture to come here. If he does, there are those who will still interfere to prevent him."

"And if among you all, that are so set up against him because he's not one of your own set, you dhrive him out of Ballycloran, I can tell you, I'll not remain in it!"

"Then your sins and your sorrows must be on your own head!"

And without saying anything further, Father John took his hat, and walked off. Feemy s.n.a.t.c.hed her novel into her lap, to show how little what was said impressed her, and resumed her att.i.tude over the fire.

But she didn't read; her spirit was stubborn and wouldn't bend, but her reason and her conscience were touched by what the priest had said to her, and the bitter thought for the first time came over her, that her lover, perhaps, was not so true to her, as she to him.

There she sat, sorrowfully musing; and though she did not repent of what she thought her own firmness, she was bitterly tormented by the doubts with which her brother, Mary Brady, and the priest, had gradually disturbed her happiness.

She loved Ussher as well as ever--yes, almost more than ever, as the idea that she might perhaps lose him came across her--but she began to be discontented with herself, and to think that she had not played her part as well as she might. In fact, she felt herself to be miserable, and, for the time, hated her brother and Father John for having made her so.

Father John walked sorrowfully back to his cottage, thinking Miss Feemy Macdermot the most stiff-necked young lady it had ever been his hard lot to meet.

CHAPTER IX.

MOHILL.

We must now request our reader to accompany us to the little town of Mohill; not that there is anything attractive in the place to repay him for the trouble of going there.

Mohill is a small country town, standing on no high road, nor on any thoroughfare from the metropolis; and therefore it owes to itself whatever importance it may possess--and, in truth, that is not much. It is, or, at any rate, was, at the time of which we are writing, the picture of an impoverished town--the property of a non-resident landlord--dest.i.tute of anything to give it interest or prosperity--without business, without trade, and without society.