Lord Kilgobbin

'Do you not fancy, Kate, that in your father's house, surrounded with your father's servants, you are sufficiently the mistress to do without a chaperon? Only preserve that grand austere look you have listened to me with these last ten minutes, and I should like to see the youthful audacity that could brave it. There, I shall go and write my note. You shall see how discreetly and properly I shall word it.'

Kate walked thoughtfully towards a window and looked out, while Nina skipped gaily down the room, and opened her writing-desk, humming an opera air as she wrote:--

'KILGOBBIN CASTLE.

'DEAR MR. WALPOLE,--I can scarcely tell you the pleasure I feel at the prospect of seeing a dear friend, or a friend from dear Italy, whichever be the most proper to say. My uncle is from home, and will not return till the day after to-morrow at dinner; but my cousin, Miss Kearney, charges me to say how happy she will be to receive you and your fellow-traveller at luncheon to-morrow. Pray not to trouble yourself with an answer, but believe me very sincerely yours, 'NINA KOSTALERGI.'

'I was right in saying luncheon, Kate, and not dinner--was I not? It is less formal.'

'I suppose so; that is, if it was right to invite them at all, of which I have very great misgivings.'

'I wonder what brought Cecil Walpole down here?' said Nina, glad to turn the discussion into another channel. 'Could he have heard that I was here?

Probably not. It was a mere chance, I suppose. Strange things these same chances are, that do so much more in our lives than all our plottings!'

'Tell me something of your friend, perhaps I ought to say your admirer, Nina!'

'Yes, very much my admirer; not seriously, you know, but in that charming sort of adoration we cultivate abroad, that means anything or nothing. He was not t.i.tled, and I am afraid he was not rich, and this last misfortune used to make his attention to me somewhat painful--to _him_ I mean, not to _me_; for, of course, as to anything serious, I looked much higher than a poor Secretary of Legation.'

'Did you?' asked Kate, with an air of quiet simplicity.

'I should hope I did,' said she haughtily; and she threw a glance at herself in a large mirror, and smiled proudly at the bright image that confronted her. 'Yes, darling, say it out,' cried she, turning to Kate.

'Your eyes have uttered the words already.'

'What words?'

'Something about insufferable vanity and conceit, and I own to both! Oh, why is it that my high spirits have so run away with me this morning that I have forgotten all reserve and all shame? But the truth is, I feel half wild with joy, and joy in _my_ nature is another name for recklessness.'

'I sincerely hope not,' said Kate gravely. 'At any rate, you give me another reason for wis.h.i.+ng 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,

'I would not suffer an old friend to be made the subject of even such latent amus.e.m.e.nt.'

'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 wors.h.i.+p, 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?'