Only an Irish Girl. Duchess
are we not to speak, Power? Have we not as much right to our opinion as other people? There never yet was a Blake who was a rebel or a coward!"
"There is a time to speak and a time to keep silent," he answers, taking her face between his hands, and looking down, his dark eyes softening, at the pretty flushed cheeks and lips just curved into a pout. "My own love, trust me! I would not have you or yours bring a stain upon the old name – but silence can hurt no one."
From where they stand they can hear the sounds of voices and men's laughter and the chink of glass, which come through the open windows of the dining-room.
"Those windows ought to be securely fastened before the dusk falls,
Honor. Your father is really too – too confident."
"What a prophet of evil you are, Power!" the girl answers lightly; but, all the same, her heart is filled with the vague fear that has been troubling her for weeks past, ever since her brother Launce got into a dispute with some farmers at Boyne Fair, and was threatened by them. "It's enough to make the old abbot walk again," she added, half smiling, half scornfully, "to hear you talk of danger threatening Donaghmore! Didn't he frighten the rebels away in '98, so that ours was the only safe house, lonely as it is?"
"The rebels of to-day are not to be so easily frightened or kept at bay," he answers meaningly. "Good-night, my darling, and remember my words!"
"Good-night," she says softly; and presently the great doors close behind her, and he is alone.
"Come in here, my girl, and give an account of yourself," her father's voice calls to her, as she is slipping past the open dining-room door. "Launce here thought we had lost you, but I knew there was no such luck."
The next moment she is standing in the brilliantly-lighted room, before the little knot of gentlemen – her father, her brothers, and their guest – gathered about one end of the long table.
"This is my little girl, Beresford; and, if she had been a boy, Heaven bless her, your uncle would have adopted her, and left her all the money he had hoarded! But it wasn't to be, I suppose."
The man he calls Beresford smiles slightly at this speech, and Honor sees the smile and resents it. Her gray eyes darken, her face turns suddenly pale and cold as she moves slowly forward to her father's side.
"By Jove, what a grand air!" Brian Beresford says to himself, eyeing her critically. "Where on earth did she learn to carry herself in that fashion?'
"You did not expect to find your cousin safe at home before you, Honor?"
"Yes, papa; I met Power, and he told me. He was saying too" – with a
faint smile at Launce – "that he was afraid Mr. Beresford would find
Donaghmore dull. He thought he would have felt more at home at Aunt
Julia's."
The new-comer does not in the least understand the point of this speech, but he is perfectly conscious that there is a cut in it somewhere; and this consciousness is not lessened by the way it is received. Her father turns red in the face and says, "Tut tut! How absurd!" Horace smiles, and Launce breaks into open laughter.
"I am sorry if I am intruding," Mr. Beresford says stiffly. "I accepted your father's invitation as frankly as it was offered; but – "
"There, my boy, not another word," his host interrupts him, still red in the face, still frowning at Honor in a covert way. "I should have been cut to the heart if your father's son had refused or misunderstood me. But these younger people are full of their chaff; you'll understand each other in a day or so."
"I understand him perfectly as it is," Honor says to herself, as she walks out for the room, very erect and stately, and altogether on her dignity; "and I don't like him a bit. Power was wrong there – we shall never get on together."
As she is crossing the hall she sees that the front door stands open. She turns a little out of her way to close it, and as she does so she sees the shadows of two figures sharply outlined on the smooth gravel.
One man is bare-headed – he has just stepped out the house evidently – the other wears a low hat pulled down over his brows.
It is nothing out of the common for a servant to step out of the house to speak to a friend – domestic rule is not very strict at Donaghmore – yet a strange fear assails Honor. The window by the side of the door is open, and by standing close to it she can hear every word they say; but their words are meaningless – they are talking Irish.
Suddenly one of the men – it is their new groom, whom Launce hired at
Boyne – says distinctly in English:
"He's no more from the Castle than you are. How soft ye are, to be sure! He's the masther's nephew from London. And sure, if the worst comes to the worst, he'd not count at all, at all; he's little better than a fine young woman in breeches. Faix, and I'd take half a dozen of his make as my own share of a good night's work; but be aisy – he'll be gone before even ye need raise a finger!"
While their hands are meeting and they are bending toward each other as if for a parting whisper, the girl flies swiftly up-stairs and into her own room.
Her heart is beating painfully, her cheeks are pale with fear and anger, and yet she cannot help laughing aloud as the man's words come back to her – "He's little better than a fine young woman in breeches!"
"Could anything be funnier or truer?" she says to herself with malicious satisfaction. "Oh, how I wish he could have heard them! It would take a bit of his starch out, I fancy, and teach him how little mashers are thought of at Donaghmore."
CHAPTER II
"I cannot see what fault you can find in him, Honor."
"Sure if he's faultless, isn't that fault enough, my dear?"
"But you are almost rude to him," Belle Delorme says plaintively; "and
I'm sure I can't see why, for he is just a delightful man."
"Of course – you've fallen in love with him, Belle!" Honor retorts coolly. "You fall in love with every good-looking man you meet. The only marvel to me is how easily you contrive to fall out again."
"Sure it's as aisy as lapping crame," the girl says with a little affected brogue and a smile that shows all her dimples. "It would never do if we were all marble goddesses, you know. Life would be mighty dull if one couldn't flirt a trifle."
"Certainly your life should not be dull, if flirting can brighten it, my dear."
"No, it is not altogether dull," the other girl says demurely; "but it would be nicer if one could live in Dublin or London – wouldn't it now?"
She looks very pretty as she lies there, her slim lissom form stretched out in the full glare of the sunshine.
"What an artfully artless little creature you are, Belle! You mean to imply that, if Brian asks you to be Mrs. Beresford, you will say 'Yes,' for the pleasure of living in London?"
"And why not? Sure London is better than Donaghmore."
"And what is to become of poor Launce then?"
"Oh, Launce!" Belle says, turning pale. "You know quite well that he has eyes for no one but Mrs. Dundas."
"My dear, Launce was not born yesterday," Launce's sister assures her companion equably.
"Neither was Mrs. Dundas – nor the day before that," Belle bursts out angrily. "I vow she looks as old as my mother when you get a fair view of her in the daylight. But what does that matter? She has fascinated him!"
"'How sweet the ways of women are,
How honeyed is their speech!'"
a man's voice says mockingly.
Honor turns lazily in her hammock, but Belle – poor blushing, mortified
Belle – springs to her feet with a cry.
"I knew I should find you here eating all those strawberries!" the newcomer goes on placidly. "Girls do not expose