‘I sincerely hope not,’ said Kate gravely. ‘At any rate, you give me another reason for wishing to have Miss O’Shea here.’
‘I will not have her—no, not for worlds, Kate, that odious old woman, with her stiff and antiquated propriety. Cecil would quiz her.’
‘I am very certain he would not; at least, if he be such a perfect gentleman as you tell me.’
‘Ah, but you’d never know he did it. The fine tact of these consummate men of the world derives a humoristic enjoyment in eccentricity of character, which never shows itself in any outward sign beyond the heightened pleasure they feel in what other folks might call dulness or mere oddity.’
‘I would not suffer an old friend to be made the subject of even such latent amusement.’
‘Nor her nephew, either, perhaps?’
‘The nephew could take care of himself, Nina; but I am not aware that he will be called on to do so. He is not in Ireland, I believe.’
‘He was to arrive this week. You told me so.’
‘Perhaps he did; I had forgotten it!’ and Kate flushed as she spoke, though whether from shame or anger it was not easy to say. As though impatient with herself at any display of temper, she added hurriedly, ‘Was it not a piece of good fortune, Nina? Papa has left us the key of the cellar, a thing he never did before, and only now because you were here!’
‘What an honoured guest I am!’ said the other, smiling.
‘That you are! I don’t believe papa has gone once to the club since you came here.’
‘Now, if I were to own that I was vain of this, you’d rebuke me, would not you?’
‘Our love could scarcely prompt to vanity.’
‘How shall I ever learn to be humble enough in a family of such humility?’ said Nina pettishly. Then quickly correcting herself, she said, ‘I’ll go and despatch my note, and then I’ll come back and ask your pardon for all my wilfulness, and tell you how much I thank you for all your goodness to me.’
And as she spoke she bent down and kissed Kate’s hand twice or thrice fervently.
‘Oh, dearest Nina, not this—not this!’ said Kate, trying to clasp her in her arms; but the other had slipped from her grasp, and was gone.
‘Strange girl,’ muttered Kate, looking after her. ‘I wonder shall I ever understand you, or shall we ever understand each other?’
CHAPTER VIII
SHOWING HOW FRIENDS MAY DIFFER
The morning broke drearily for our friends, the two pedestrians, at the ‘Blue Goat.’ A day of dull aspect and soft rain in midsummer has the added depression that it seems an anachronism. One is in a measure prepared for being weather-bound in winter. You accept imprisonment as the natural fortune of the season, or you brave the elements prepared to let them do their worst, while, if confined to house, you have that solace of snugness, that comfortable chimney-corner which somehow realises an immense amount of the joys we concentrate in the word ‘Home.’ It is in the want of this rallying-point, this little domestic altar, where all gather together in a common worship, that lies the dreary discomfort of being weather-bound in summer, and when the prison is some small village inn, noisy, disorderly, and dirty, the misery is complete.
‘Grand old pig that!’ said Lockwood, as he gazed out upon the filthy yard, where a fat old sow contemplated the weather from the threshold of her dwelling.
‘I wish she’d come out. I want to make a sketch of her,’ said the other.
‘Even one’s tobacco grows too damp to smoke in this blessed climate,’ said Lockwood, as he pitched his cigar away. ‘Heigh-ho! We ‘re too late for the train to town, I see.’
‘You’d not go back, would you?’
‘I should think I would! That old den in the upper castle-yard is not very cheery or very nice, but there is a chair to sit on, and a review and a newspaper to read. A tour in a country and with a climate like this is a mistake.’
‘I suspect it is,’ said Walpole drearily.
‘There is nothing to see, no one to talk to, nowhere to stop at!’
‘All true,’ muttered the other. ‘By the way, haven’t we some plan or project for to-day—something about an old castle or an abbey to see?’
‘Yes, and the waiter brought me a letter. I think it was addressed to you, and I left it on my dressing-table. I had forgotten all about it. I’ll go and fetch it.’
Short as his absence was, it gave Walpole time enough to recur to his late judgment on his tour, and once more call it a ‘mistake, a complete mistake.’ The Ireland of wits, dramatists, and romance-writers was a conventional thing, and bore no resemblance whatsoever to the rain-soaked, dreary-looking, depressed reality. ‘These Irish, they are odd without being droll, just as they are poor without being picturesque; but of all the delusions we nourish about them, there is not one so thoroughly absurd as to call them dangerous.’
He had just arrived at this mature opinion, when his friend re-entered and handed him the note.
‘Here is a piece of luck. Per Bacco!’ cried Walpole, as he ran over the lines. ‘This beats all I could have hoped for. Listen to this—“Dear Mr. Walpole—I cannot tell you the delight I feel in the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, which is it? “ ’
‘Who writes this?’
‘A certain Mademoiselle Kostalergi, whom I knew at Rome; one of the prettiest, cleverest, and nicest girls I ever met in my life.’
‘Not the daughter of that precious Count Kostalergi you have told me such stories of?’
‘The same, but most unlike him in every way. She is here, apparently with an uncle, who is now from home, and she and her cousin invite us to luncheon to-day.’
‘What a lark!’ said the other dryly.
‘We’ll go, of course?’
‘In weather like this?’
‘Why not? Shall we be better off staying here? I now begin to remember how the name of this place was so familiar to me. She was always asking me if I knew or heard of her mother’s brother, the Lord Kilgobbin, and, to tell truth, I fancied some one had been hoaxing her with the name, and never believed that there was even a place with such a designation.’
‘Kilgobbin does not sound like a lordly title. How about Mademoiselle—what is the name?’
‘Kostalergi; they call themselves princes.’
‘With all my heart. I was only going to say, as you’ve got a sort of knack of entanglement—is there, or has there been, anything of that sort here?’
‘Flirtation—a little of what is called “spooning”—but no more. But why do you ask?’
‘First of all, you are an engaged man.’
‘All true, and I mean to keep my engagement. I can’t marry, however, till I get a mission, or something at home as good as a mission. Lady Maude knows that; her friends know it, but none of us imagine that we are to be miserable in the meantime.’
‘I’m