Paddy-The-Next-Best-Thing

by Gertrude Page

Contents

CHAPTER I
Concerning Paddy’s Blouse.

Paddy Adair, the “next-best-thing,” as she was fond of calling herself, and the reason for which will appear hereafter, sat at the table, and spread all around her were little square books of “patterns for blouses,” from which she was vainly endeavouring to make a selection. Meanwhile she kept up a running conversation with the only other occupant of the room, a girl with dreamy eyes of true Irish blue, who sat in the window, motionless, gazing across the Loch at the distant mountains. She heard no word of all her sister was saying, but that did not appear to trouble Paddy in the least, so doubtless it was not an unusual state of affairs.

“This one with green spots and pink roses would look the best with my blue skirt,” Paddy said, holding one pattern at arm’s length and surveying it critically, “but the blue one with the white border would look better with my grey. I wonder which you would choose, Eily? I wonder which would be the most becoming to my peculiar style of beauty, or,” with a twinkle in her eyes, “I should say the most concealing to my unique lack of it. I think I’ll risk the green spots and pink roses, because it doesn’t really look half bad with the grey.

“Oh, but my hat!” with a comical exclamation of dismay, “there’s my silly old hat has got pansies in it, and they’d look just awful with the green and pink, Eileen! What am I to do, with all my things different colours, that don’t seem any of them to go together? I wonder if I’d better bring out my whole wardrobe and go through the hundred and one patterns again? Or shall I have a white-bordered thing, that is not particular and will go with just all of them? Only I’d have to start at the beginning to find it, and I’m so sick of the very sight of them. Here have I had these patterns three days, and I’ve already spent about five pounds’ worth of brain-power upon a blouse that will cost five shillings. If only you’d help, Eileen!” looking up toward the figure in the window, “instead of staring at those silly old mountains like a stuffed goose!

“Eileen!”—as the dreamer took no notice—“Eileen! do you hear that I’m floundering in a sea of patterns! Your one and only sister, and you sit there like an Egyptian mummy stuffed with dried peas!

“I’ll make you help—so there,”—and with a sudden movement she swept all the books of patterns into her arms and deposited them, helter-skelter, upon her sister’s head, laughing gayly at the picture of solemn-faced Eileen with the little square books scattered all around and upon her.

“Now, Miss Sphinx,” she said, “do you think you could come down from the clouds for five minutes and discuss anything so distressingly earthy as clothes?”

Eileen’s face broke into a very sweet smile. She had not in the least intended to be indifferent, but long before Paddy commenced consulting her she had been in the middle of composing a lovely poem about mountains and streams and birds and things, and she had not really heard any of her remarks at all.

“What’s the matter, Paddy?” she asked, eyeing the scattered patterns with amusement.

“Matter!” cried Paddy, “everything’s the matter! How on earth am I to select a blouse that will go with a blue dress, a green dress, a grey dress, a hat with pansies in, and a scarlet tam-o’-shanter! I’ve been worrying with those stupid patterns for days, and instead of getting any nearer a decision, I keep on thinking of something fresh that nothing seems to go with. Now it’s your turn to worry; you ought to, you know, because Charity begins at home.”

“Why not have something in cream?” suggested Eileen; “it saves a lot of bother.”

“Yes, and what do I look like in cream, with my sallow skin? It’s all very well for you with your ivory and roses, you look well in anything. I don’t think it was at all fair for you to have everything nice while I am burdened for life with a sallow skin and a snub nose. Cream flannel would be nearly as bad as brown holland for me, and when I wear brown holland you can’t tell where the dress ends and I begin,” and the corners of Paddy’s mischievous mouth were momentarily drawn down in great disgust.

“You could wear bright-coloured ties,” suggested Eileen, “and have one of every colour you wanted.”

“Why so I could,” brightening up, “and provided I don’t always lose the colour I want at the moment of requiring it, it will save a lot of bother.”

“But you always will, you know,” said a gay masculine voice; “you’ll keep every one waiting five minutes longer than usual hunting for the required colour, and then turn up in a red tie with a green hat,” and before either of them could speak, Jack O’Hara, from the Parsonage, was coming through the window, head first, trailing his long legs after him. “I’ve just had a little practice at this sort of thing,” he ran on. “I came from Newry, with the Burtons, a whole carriage full of them, and we had a great time. The train was just going to start when I arrived, and the station master had locked their compartment, and when I asked him to let me in, he tried to put me into a smoker next door. I said, ‘No, thanks, not for Jack this journey.’ He murmured something about the Burton’s carriage being full up, and I couldn’t go in it, so I said, ‘You see if I can’t,’ and took a header through the window, right on to their laps.”

“But you don’t know them!” exclaimed Paddy, whose face at the same time expressed the greatest relish at the episode.

“I’ve been introduced,” was the calm reply. “Fletcher introduced me in Hill Street a week ago.”

“Whatever did they think of you?” asked Eileen, unable to resist smiling.

“Oh, we had a ripping time. They’re awfully jolly girls, and they had that little imp Basil with them. He amused himself trying to throw everything he could get at out of the window as we went along. But touching this blouse,” with a sudden change of voice, “why don’t you ask my advice? You haven’t either of you a grain of taste compared to mine.”

“Yours!” exclaimed Paddy scornfully, “and there you sit with emerald green in your stockings, a yellow waistcoat, and a terra cotta tie.”

“What’s the matter with my stockings?” surveying his fine pair of legs with an air of pride. “That’s the O’Hara tartan; I’m very proud of it. You’re not supposed to look at me all at once. You should enjoy the stockings first, and then gradually work up to the waistcoat, and afterward to the tie.”

“Get thoroughly seasoned and strengthened before reaching the face, I suppose you mean!” said Paddy, for which a well-aimed cushion brought her rippling red-brown hair half-way down her back.

Not that Jack had any occasion to feel insulted, because after twenty-four years’ acquaintance with a looking glass, it was hardly likely he could be totally oblivious to the fact that Nature had been almost prodigal to him in her good gifts. One might go far to find a more sunny pair of blue eyes, a brighter smile, or a more handsome specimen of manhood generally. And to this was added a rare fineness of disposition, so full of sincerity and sweetness, that there was no room for anything small at all, not even the personal vanity that one would have felt obliged to forgive him. But, then, as a matter of fact, every one forgave Jack anything, and there was scarcely a house within a radius of twelve miles where he did not come in and out just as he pleased, finding an unfailing welcome when he entered, and leaving the same regret when he left. Yet he did things that would not have been suffered, by one in a thousand, in anyone else. He shot over every one’s moors and covers uninvited, he fished every one’s stream, he sailed every one’s yacht, and rode most people’s horses. He was, in fact, an arrant poacher, and yet neither gamekeeper nor owner could withstand his witty sallies, nor the laughter in his blue eyes when he was caught, and the young sinner himself used to say that though he was a poor clergyman’s son with scarcely a penny to his name, he had some of the finest shooting and fishing in Ireland, and lived a life a prince might envy. Of course he ought to have been worrying about his future, and what would eventually become of him, but he was far too thoroughly Irish to do anything so foolish. “What’s the use of worrying yet!” he would say. “Can’t a fellow have a good time in peace, while he has the chance! I’ll start worrying presently—if I don’t forget”; then he would probably give his last sixpence to a beggar, and immediately afterward go into a shop to buy something for Aunt Jane that he thought would please her; and when he discovered, with surprise, that he was unable to pay for it, he would get the shopkeeper to put it down to his father and promise to call in another day with the money. But that would generally be the very last he would remember of it, and two or three months later the Rev. Patrick O’Hara would wonder when and why he had bought that copy of “The Eternal City,” or that work-basket with red lining. It was no use asking Jack, because he had always forgotten; and though he would immediately empty his pockets into his father’s lap, so to speak, there was never enough in them to make it worth while. It was quite the exception for Jack ever to remember anything. If he rowed across to Warrenpoint to buy the sausages for Sunday’s breakfast, he would be quite as likely as not to return without them; and if he took a note, it was a hundred to one it came back in his pocket unopened, and remained there several days.

“Now I wonder what I came across for, Pat!” was a usual remark to the old boatman, when on the point of rowing himself back again.

“Faith! Ye’ve a head like a sieve, Mr Jack,” Pat would reply. “Was it they sausages agen? or maybe something at the grocers? or some shoe laces for ’is riverence?”

“I don’t know, I’m sure, Pat, but I’ll just have to go and ask what I’ve forgotten. Begorra! if I’d no head at all to put these things into, they couldn’t slip out again, could they! and then I shouldn’t vex Aunt Jane’s soul with my forgetfulness. If it was sausages, Pat, I’ll fire my gun three times off the landing-stage, and you must just go up to the butcher yourself and bring them across;” with which he would whistle a merry tune and row leisurely back across the Loch. But long before he reached the other side, he would again have forgotten, and instead of going at once to the Parsonage, he would stroll into the garden of The Ghan House, which adjoined, to see if Paddy were available for the afternoon, or if by chance Eileen wandered dreamily under the trees gazing at the mountains.

One of the great problems of Jack’s existence at that time, indeed, the only one that he ever took seriously, was whether he liked Paddy or Eileen the best. Ever since he was two years old, the Adairs had lived in The Ghan House, next door to the Parsonage, and he always declared he had distinct recollections of a long white bolster-like apparition in a nurse’s arms, from the first day it appeared in the garden. He could just get about sufficiently well alone, then, to be always in mischief, and at his first opportunity, when the two nurses were deeply engaged in conversation, he got hold of the long clothes and tugged with all his might and main, to pull the baby on to the ground, a feat which he very nearly achieved. That was Eileen, and just as she had looked at him with big, calm, thoughtful eyes, then, not in the least disturbed by his vigorous attempts to unseat her, so she looked at him now in the first bloom of her beauty, quelling his over-exuberance of spirit, calming his boyish audacity, and making him sometimes feel as if he wanted to lie down and let her walk over him. But then on the other hand Paddy was such good fun! When the second bolster-like apparition appeared, he was four, and being somewhat weary of the solemn two-year-old Eileen he took rapidly to the ugly little brown-faced baby, whose eyes already began to dance with a suggestion of the mischievous tendency which only developed steadily year by year and claimed them kindred spirits from their earliest infancy. What the nurses at The Ghan House and the Parsonage suffered over those two imps of wickedness would fill a whole book; and why they were not drowned over and over again, or killed falling from trees, or run over on the railway that skirted the grounds, or suffocated in mountain bogs, remains forever one of the mysteries of their existence. And things were much the same still, though the nurses were no more and they had reached the mature ages of twenty-four and twenty, respectively. Where Jack went Paddy went, or very usually followed; and there was scarcely an act of daring even their busy brains could conceive, that they two had not achieved together—much to General Adair’s delight and Mrs Adair’s disquiet, for she felt that if her scapegrace daughter were ever to grow up at all she really ought to begin at once; and yet was quite at a loss by what procedure the change should commence. Boarding school had been tried, but there the girl had drooped and pined to such an extent that when the General went one day to see her, he had been so shocked and upset that he had had her trunk packed at once, and taken her straight back to Ireland without telling her mother anything about it, until they walked into the hall of The Ghan House.

“I can’t help it,” was all he had said, in reply to maternal remonstrances. “She wasn’t meant for boarding school life. I expect when the Lord made her, He fashioned her for running wild by the mountains and Loch, and well just have to let her grow up in her own way.” And an hour later he laughed till he nearly made himself ill over the spectacle of a small boat upside down in the bay, with Paddy clinging to it, while a coal barge waited alongside to pick her up and presently landed her close by the General’s landing-stage, a mass of mud and water and coal dust.

“Better not let your mother see you,” he managed to gasp. “Faith! I’ve wanted a boy all my life, but there’s no doubt I’ve got the very next best thing.” Then he went off to the Parsonage to tell Miss Jane and Miss Mary O’Hara, while Paddy slipped in the back way and was smuggled up to the bathroom by a faithful old housekeeper who worshipped any flesh and blood related to the General, whom she had known ever since he joined the Dublin Fusiliers, and embarked on the career that made his old regiment as proud and as fond of him, as he, to his last gasp, was of them.

But to return to the vexed question of the blouse, the three young people, having settled the difficulty concerning each other’s taste to their satisfaction, though in a somewhat unflattering fashion, Jack and Paddy sat on the table swinging their feet and discussed the delicate question of what would best suit the latter’s complexion.

Then suddenly Jack looked up with an innocent expression. “What’s the good of wasting all this time about a body’s complexion when they haven’t got one!” he said.

“How dare you! I’ve a beautiful olive tinge!”

“Olive!” teasingly; “why you look as if you’d washed your face with my brown boot polish! It must be rather awful to be so ugly that you look much the same in anything,” he finished.

“Oh, you scoundrel!—you long-legged kangaroo!—you big-footed elephant!—you—you—” and failing words altogether to express her feelings, Paddy commenced belabouring him over the head with a small sofa bolster, calling out to Eileen to “be a man and come and help her.”

“No, no,” gasped Jack, struggling to protect himself, “remain a woman, Eileen, and be ready to bandage my wounds when this vixen has worn herself out. Who would have dreamt I was letting myself in for this! Why I thought she knew she was ugly, it didn’t seem possible she could help knowing it!—I—I—” but just then the door opened and in the midst of the racket Miss Jane and Miss Mary O’Hara stepped daintily into the room.

CHAPTER II
The Misses O’Hara.

In all the neighbourhood of the Mourne Mountains there was probably neither priest, nor peasant, nor layman so generally known and respected as the Rev. Patrick O’Hara’s two maiden sisters. Miss Jane and Miss Mary they were known as generally, but among the young men and girls whom they loved, they were Aunt Jane and Aunt Mary always, and they were familiar figures at every gathering and every party for miles round! If anyone was in trouble, they went over to the Parsonage at Omeath as soon as they could; and if they could not manage this, it was practically a certainty that the two little ladies would very shortly look in upon them. The oldest inhabitants remembered them as two little girls, when their father was at the Parsonage before their brother; and later, as two very pretty, very charming young women, but why they were still at the Parsonage, and still the Misses O’Hara, was the one thing nobody did know. Certainly, they had been very much admired, and there had been some talk about Miss Mary and young Captain Quinn, of Omeath Park, but nothing had apparently come of it, for the Captain went away on active service, and came no more to Omeath. Several months after he left, both the sisters had gone abroad, and been away a year, but no one knew where they went to, and they never offered any enlightenment on the point. When they came back, however, they were very changed in many ways. Gaiety, which had been spontaneous before, seemed to have become an effort to both of them, and for some little time neither appeared to care to accept the invitations showered upon them as usual. Later on something of their old brightness came back, and they were once more the familiar figures everywhere that they had previously been. But though their joyousness came back, there was still an indefinable change and the suggestion of something hidden which none could solve, and to every one’s surprise each “would-be” suitor was sent resolutely away. Finally, it became evident that the Misses O’Hara meant to remain the Misses O’Hara to their dying day, and live at the Parsonage as long as it was possible—the dearest little pair of old maids that ever gave their fellow-creatures cause to bless the Guiding Hand, that gave some women to one home and one family, and reserved others to belong to every one about them.

“My dear,” they said to any of the myriad nieces who plied them with wondering questions why they had never married, and whether it was that they did not believe in matrimonial happiness, “there is no happiness in the world quite like that of a happy wife and mother, but it is not given to everyone to know it, and many come to a crossway in life, where they know they must mould their future without any hope of it. But for such, the Good Father has another happiness waiting, if they will take it and trust Him, and not repine because they might not choose. It is the happiness of a life filled with serving, and rich in the love of one’s fellow-creatures of every sex and age and station. Our lives are filled to overflowing with, this happiness, and we are content to believe that what is lost to a woman in this life will be made up to her an hundredfold in some other life beyond.”

“And then there is Jack!” one of them would add softly, and the other would reply with like softness, “Yes, sister, there is Jack.”

By which one can easily gather, how, when the poor little baby at the Parsonage was left motherless at ten months old, he at once became the fortunate possessor of two new mothers, who would have gone through fire and water rather than let a hair of his sunny curls be hurt.

“We must not spoil him, sister,” Jane, the elder, had said once, as they stood gazing rapturously at their new treasure.

“No, sister,” Mary had replied, “it is only unkind mothers who spoil children, and so unfit them for the rough usage of the world and rob them of many a good friend they might afterward have won.”

“That is exactly my view, sister; we will endeavour to act up to it, and yet make him as happy as the day is long.”

Nevertheless, a more spoilt boy than little Jack O’Hara it would have been difficult to find, and, if Nature had not blessed him particularly with a nature proof against spoiling, he would probably have grown up the reverse of the adored young scamp he was. But then, possibly, it was just this that caused his aunts to swerve so widely from their fixed principle, for it would have required a heart of cast-iron to withstand such a boy as he. All his naughtiness was pure love of mischief, and he was always so genuinely sorry and penitent afterward, and so forlornly unhappy when he was in disgrace, that he made every one else in the house feel miserable until he was forgiven. No sooner was he undergoing a term of punishment than Aunt Mary would ask Aunt Jane to forgive him this once, or the cook would “make so bold” as to plead with Miss Jane, or the gardener would “mention it respectfully to ’is riverence.”

“I think, perhaps, we might let him off just this time,” one of the aunts would say, anxiously looking at her sister, and the other would reply gravely, “Yes, just this time, perhaps, but we must not do it again.”

And if there happened to be anything he particularly wanted, much the same proceeding ensued.

“I’m afraid we mustn’t let him have it sister!” Miss Mary would say wistfully. “We mustn’t spoil him, must we?”

“No, sister, we mustn’t spoil him,” would be the reply with like wistfulness.

“Or, do you think, perhaps, just this once, sister?” half timidly.

“Well, perhaps, just this once,” with a show of reluctance, “only it mustn’t happen again, must it?”

“No, certainly not, sister, another time we will be firm for his good.”

And so it went on for twenty-four years, and always “another time” was reserved for firmness on Jack’s account, until “life” took the matter into her own hands, and threw an obstacle across his easy, flower-strewn path, that even his devoted aunts could not smooth away for him, and over which he must needs prove himself a man and fight his own battle. But of that anon.

“My dears, we have had some news!” began Miss Jane, “and we think you will be pleased, so we came across at once to tell you.”

“Yes,” murmured Miss Mary, nodding her small head gravely while her sister spoke, to show that the sentiment was equally hers, “we thought you would be pleased.”

By this time, Jack and Paddy were again seated on the table, swinging their feet, in front of the two little ladies who sat side by side on the sofa looking rather like two little Dutch dolls. Eileen had returned to her window seat, where she could keep one eye and one half of her mind on the mountains, and the other eye and the other half for more mundane reflections.

“News!” exclaimed Paddy, clasping her hands ecstatically. “Oh! scrumptious; I just love news!” while Eileen and Jack looked up expectantly.

“We have heard from Mrs Blake this morning, and they are coming back to Mourne Lodge,” continued Miss Jane, while Miss Mary, looking very pleased, murmured “Yes, coming back.”

“Hurray!” cried Paddy, “Hurray! Hurray! Just think of the dances and picnics and things. Why don’t you say you’re glad, Jack—or do something to show it?”—and before he quite realised it, she had caught him by his coat and pulled him half round the room. Roused instantly, Jack proceeded to pick her up and deposit her in the corner behind the sofa, amid frantic struggles on his victim’s part and a general flutter of the two little ladies to protect anything breakable in their vicinity. This, indeed, they did, partly from force of habit, for it was a standing joke in their circle that whenever Paddy and Jack were in the room together, Miss Jane kept her eye on one half of the room and Miss Mary on the other, and at the first symptoms of one of their customary “rough and tumbles,” one little lady fluttered off collecting breakables from one side and standing guard over them, while the other little lady did likewise on the other side.

“It’s all right!” said Jack, seeing their alert attitude, “I was only teaching her not to take liberties with my coat. Did you ever see such a scarecrow?” looking with delighted relish at Paddy’s generally dishevelled appearance as she emerged from her corner. “You’d think she ought to make a fortune with a face like that as an artist’s model for a comic paper, wouldn’t you?”

“My dear, he’s very rude,” said little Miss Mary, patting the dishevelled one’s hand.

“Yes, aunt, but he can’t help it, and we have to be kind to people’s failings, haven’t we? It is something to be thankful for that you have been able to keep him out of an asylum so long, isn’t it?” and then she ducked hastily to escape a shower of missiles, and the two little ladies flew off once more to the breakables.

Order being again restored, however, the news was further discussed, and the three young people learnt with varying degrees of eagerness that Mrs Blake intended both her girls to “come out” the next winter, and that Lawrence Blake, the only son, was going to remain at home for a time. This last piece of information contained in a measure the gist of the whole for the young people, but they each received it differently. Eileen turned her head, and with a slight flush in her cheeks gazed steadily across the Loch. Jack looked as near being annoyed as he felt at all warrantable, or as his insistently sunny face would permit, and Paddy, screwing an imaginary eyeglass into her eye, remarked in a drawl, “Remarkable! really remarkable! You are a credit to your charming sex.”

“In whatever capacity was that?” asked Jack, as if he marvelled.

“Never mind,” retorted Paddy; “because you have not the discernment to know a good thing when you see it, you need not suppose every one else is similarly afflicted. How delightful it will be to have a man among us again. One gets so tired of boys!”

“You don’t mean to say you’re going to uphold Lawrence Blake!” he exclaimed, apparently too disgusted to parry her thrust.

“Why not?” stoutly. “I’m sure he’s a most superior young man.”

“A pity he’s such a conceited ass, then,” muttered Jack, at which the two little ladies looked pained, and while one said gently, “My dear Jack, you must remember he is always extremely nice to us,” the other echoed with like gentleness, “Yes, Jack, dear, remember he is always nice to us.”

“Then I’ll say he’s a thundering good chap,” was the ready response; “though that man or woman living could be other than nice to you passes my comprehension.”

“Of course they couldn’t,” put in Paddy; “why I want to hug both of you every ten minutes whenever I am with you.

“Fancy if every one else did!” she ran on, “and our feelings got the better of us! How should you like it, aunties, if every one wanted to keep hugging you every time they saw you, and couldn’t help themselves! You would never dare to wear your best bonnets at all, should you?—and I expect your caps would be everywhere but on your heads, or else would have a perpetually rakish tilt.”

The two little ladies smiled without the least resentment, for they had long known that the varying angle of their caps was a source of great amusement to their large army of nephews and nieces, who stoutly maintained that when Aunt Jane’s cap slipped awry, Aunt Mary’s quickly did the same of its own accord, and vice versa, and therefore, it was more often the cap’s fault than the owner’s.

Jack, however, stood up promptly, and pulling himself to his full height, said, with a whimsical recollection of childhood, “Shall I be a man, aunties, and spank her?” This highly amused both little ladies, as it reminded them of a little mischievous girl who had pushed over her sister on purpose, and a sturdy, blue-eyed boy, who had promptly asked with a fiery resoluteness of purpose, “Shall I be a man, aunties, and spank her?” It was memorable also how disappointed he had been when told that “being a man” never meant spanking little girls at all, even when they were mischievous.

He would, doubtless, not have waited for any verdict on the present occasion, only just then the hearty old General entered the room, and Paddy, the father’s darling, flew to him for protection. A general chattering and laughing ensued, and, presently seeing her opportunity, Eileen rose from her seat in the window, and with a curious subdued glow in her wonderful eyes glided silently from the room.

A few minutes later she was pulsing up the mountain with a free, eager step that not only proclaimed her an experienced climber, but bespoke a deep delight in thus climbing to the upland solitudes alone.

“I say, daddy,” Paddy was saying, “isn’t it ripping, we’re going to have a man-about-town here! The real, genuine thing, you know, eyeglass and all, and as blasé as they’re made. Won’t Jack look like a countrified Irish lout with bats in his belfry!”

The General said afterward, it was nearly as good as a bit of Tipperary’s extra-special, best Orangemen night.

CHAPTER III
Eileen the Dreamer.

There was one spot on the mountains near The Ghan House where, if you climbed high enough and were not afraid of an almost perpendicular path, you could get a glorious view, not only of the Loch and mountains, but of a wide stretch of sparkling silver, or dreaming turquoise, which was the sea.

It was here that Eileen Adair loved to sit and dream dreams and weave romances, such as only the true Celt knows how. What she put into them was known to none, and, indeed, probably never could be known, for they possessed that unfathomable, mysterious, yearning quality which is so present in Celtic blood, and were of those hidden thoughts and things which defy words to express them. Not that Eileen ever wanted to express them. She had not as yet met a kindred soul whom she felt could in any wise understand, and meanwhile, having the mountains, and the lake, and the sea, for companions, it did not seem that she needed a listener. She could talk to these in a rapturous silence as she could talk to no other, and feel that her spirit was one with their spirit, and that what men call “solitude” is in reality a wealth of deep companionship for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear. There was a good deal of the pagan about Eileen, for, though she always went to church, and tried to be earnest and attentive, it seemed so much easier to her to worship out in the open air among the upland solitudes of the mountain. And so real and intense to her in these solitudes was the consciousness of an All-pervading God-presence, that fear of any kind was impossible, and she was less lonely than under any other conditions.

It was doubtless these solitary climbs and silent musings, when she either thought deep, mysterious thoughts, or sitting motionless, absorbed into all her being the spirit of beauty around, that had deepened in her face year by year its dream-like loveliness. Eileen was rarely gay, but her smile was indescribably beautiful and impressed everyone who saw it. Paddy was her father’s darling, and had been, in spite of his disappointment, ever since he learned that his second child was another girl and not the fondly longed-for boy. With a sense of vain regret he had looked dubiously at the small bundle with the cause of his regret somewhere inside it, and retired without further inspection. A few days later he got a full and uninterrupted view of an ugly little brown face, with a pair of particularly bright eyes, and a suggestion of roguishness that was entirely alluring. “Bedad!” he said, looking back into the bright eyes, “I badly wanted a boy, but you look as if you’d be the next best thing.” And that was how Paddy got her self-chosen nickname.

The General was, however, very proud of Eileen, though half-unconsciously a little afraid of her. But what she missed in her father Eileen found amply in her mother, whose only fear was that she might worship this sweet-eyed, fair-faced daughter too much. Mrs Adair was a woman with whom few ever felt quite at home. Distinguished in bearing, and still with the remains of considerable beauty, she was in general an object of awe to her acquaintances. Those who once got to know her and were admitted into her friendship ever after loved her dearly—but these were few and far between. Foremost among them were the little ladies at the Parsonage, who had been waiting at The Ghan House to welcome their old friend’s bride the day he brought her home from India. She had been just the same white-faced, reserved woman then, and for a little while they had been non-plussed; but one day a letter from India had told them her story, and soon afterward the three women had cemented a lifelong friendship in tears of common sympathy.

“I hear General Adair has married Miss Brindley and is taking her to your neighbourhood,” the letter had run. “She was governess with a friend of ours in India, and we know her well and are very fond of her. Do all you can for her; she has had a very sad life, and lately, on the top of all the rest, saw her love killed before her eyes guarding her from a band of Afghans on the frontier. He was a cousin of General Adair’s, and they were very devoted to each other, and the latter nearly lost his life also going to their assistance. Afterward he fell in love with Miss Brindley himself, and we helped to persuade her to marry him, because she was so friendless, and poor, and broken-hearted.”

This, then, surely had something to do with the wistful expression in the little sad-eyed Eileen’s face, and in later years so deeply entwined her round her mother’s heart. Only Mrs Adair rarely showed it, for she was eminently a just woman, and in the peaceful waters of her after-life she put her sad past resolutely aside, and tried to live only for the husband who was so good to her, and for her harum-scarum tom-boy daughter, as much as for the child who would always possess the largest share of her heart.

But Eileen’s eyes were not sad when she hurried up the mountain on the day the Misses O’Hara called with their piece of news. She carried a small packet of sandwiches and a flask which the cook had hastily prepared for her, and revelled inwardly at the prospect of at least five hours all to herself. She knew they would not be anxious at home, for both she and Paddy often took their lunch with them and vanished for a day, though it must be confessed nothing in the world would ever have induced the latter to waste an afternoon, as she would put it, mooning about on the mountains alone. No, Paddy would be off in the yacht, fishing or sailing, with or without Jack, or she would be away to Newry for tennis, or to Greenore for golf, or to Warrenpoint to see her great friend, Kitty Irvine, and listen to the Pierrots on the front; and in any case no one would dream of worrying about her, for had she not possessed a charmed life she must surely have ended her short career in some sudden fashion long ago.

But to-day it was not the five hours only that lit that glow in Eileen’s eyes. It was something quite different—quite apart, indeed, from the whole tenor of her life, except for a few short months three years ago.

That was the summer when Lawrence Blake, instead of going off to foreign climes as usual, remained at his home, Mourne Lodge, a beautiful place in the mountains about two miles from The Ghan House. He kept his yacht that summer moored by the General’s landing-stage, so each time he went out in it he passed through the grounds of The Ghan House, and one of his sisters usually ran in to fetch Paddy or Eileen if they chanced to be at home. Paddy, as it happened, much preferred the greater excitement, not to say danger, of taking her pleasures with Jack O’Hara, so it usually chanced that Eileen went in the Blakes’ boat. In the middle of September Kathleen and Doreen Blake had to go back to Paris, where they were still finishing their educations, but somehow it had seemed perfectly natural for Lawrence still to go down to his yacht and for Eileen to keep him company. On the first occasion Jack and Paddy went with them, but an indefinable, strained feeling, owing doubtless to Jack’s antipathy to the wealthy, polished University man, had caused the lively pair to come to the conclusion that it was too tame a proceeding altogether, and they could better amuse themselves elsewhere. In this decision Lawrence and Eileen were secretly glad to acquiesce, for there was never any peace for anybody when Paddy was on board. She would not sit still herself, nor let anybody else if she could help it, and was altogether a most dangerous young person to take on a small sailing yacht.

So sweet September glided into a sunny, warm October, and still Lawrence went through the grounds to the bay and Eileen met him at the water’s edge.

To him she was a beautiful girl with poetical ideas, which he found rather amusing.

To her he was a revelation.

In all her nineteen years Eileen had never met any one so cultured as Lawrence Blake, except Jack’s father, and he, since his wife’s death, had grown so reserved and retiring that no one was able ever to bring him out of himself. There seemed to be nothing that Lawrence did not know and had not studied, and so eager was she to learn from him that she was blind altogether to the defects which made him an object of aversion to honest, outspoken Jack. It must be confessed, however, that Lawrence, when he liked, could be as charming a companion as any one need wish, and if it so pleased him, and he were not too lackadaisical, could make his way into almost any one’s heart. It was generally said of him that he had the most disarming smile in the world, and from wearing a cynical, morose expression, could change in an instant to a polished courtier if he so wished, and turn an enemy into an ally after half an hour’s conversation.

And it pleased him during that sunny October to stand well with Eileen. He liked her. She was not only beautiful to look at, but interesting to talk to, and a delightful listener, and for the rest—well, what harm in it?

So it chanced in the end that a certain subdued love-light drove much of the usual wistfulness from Eileen’s eyes, and when unoccupied she would steal oftener to the mountains or sit longer in the starlight on her favourite seat by the Loch. Her mother watched her a little anxiously, but feared to do harm by speaking. Paddy treated it all as a great joke, and Jack, without in the least knowing why, felt a quite unaccountable longing to duck Lawrence in the bay whenever he heard him mentioned. Then suddenly Mr Blake died, and everything was changed. Lawrence, being very fond of his mother, rarely left her in her terrible grief. Finally, by the doctor’s advice, he took her abroad, and the beautiful, hospitable house was closed, to the loss of the whole neighbourhood. That was three years ago, and now they were coming back once more, and it seemed likely that the old régime would recommence.

To Eileen it was simply “he” was coming back.

She told the birds about it as she hastened up to her beloved nook, and the little trickling streams, and the flowers, and the mountains that towered all round.

She was so sure he was coming back to her. Had he not lived in her thoughts and been the central figure of her dreams ever since he went away three years ago? Was it likely it could have been otherwise with him, after the way he had looked at her and sought her companionship?... And now he was to love her so much more than before, for had she not read and thought and studied, to make herself a fitter companion? She smiled to think what a little ignoramus she must have seemed to him three years ago. Of course she was that, compared to him, still, but she had at least tried to educate herself to a higher plane and knew that she had not tried altogether in vain. “Will he know it at once, I wonder?” she whispered to herself, sitting in her favourite attitude, with her elbows on her knees and her chin sunk deep in her hands, gazing at the deep blue of the distant sea. “Will he be glad? Is he feeling as I feel now?—as if Heaven had somehow come down to earth and shed a new loveliness over the mountains, and the valleys, and the sea?—as if one must always be good because of the joy in the world, and make everyone so happy that evil must eventually die out?”

Then she fell to dreaming golden dreams of love, and wonder, and tenderness, till her eyes shone, and losing all consciousness of time and space her soul carried her away into an unreal dreamland of ecstasy.

From this she was somewhat suddenly and forcibly awakened by the apparition of a stalwart form, not in the least ethereal or dream-like, with a gun on his shoulder and two brace of snipe in his hand. He had, moreover, emerald green on his stockings, a tan waistcoat, and a pale green tie instead of a terra cotta one that had raised such objections in the morning; and whatever Paddy or anyone else might like to say, he formed as pleasing a picture of a typical young Briton as any one need wish. He expressed surprise at seeing Eileen, but not being a good actor, any experienced ear would easily have detected that he had come to that spot with the express hope of finding her.

“Have you been up here long?” he asked, throwing down the gun and the birds in the heather and telling his spaniel to keep guard over them.

“About three hours, I should think,” she replied, looking a little askance at the gun. “Is it unloaded?”

“Yes. You’re not afraid of it, are you?”

“N-no,” slowly. “Isn’t it rather early to shoot snipe?”

“Yes, but there wasn’t anything else.”

“I thought you and Paddy were going across to Rostrevor this afternoon?”

“So we were, but we fell out.”

“Has Paddy gone alone, then?”

“Yes. She said she’d rather swim across than have to go in the same boat with me.” And he smiled at the recollection.

Eileen smiled vaguely also, but she was not listening very attentively, so she was not quite sure what she was smiling at. She had unconsciously slipped into her old attitude again, and, chin in hand, was gazing out to sea.

Jack, having thrown himself down beside her, pulled at the heather in silence, watching her secretly. “What do you think about when you sit here by yourself?” he asked suddenly. “It seems as if it must be so awfully slow.”

“Oh, no, it isn’t at all slow,” she answered simply.

“But what do you think about?” he reiterated.

“I don’t think I could explain,” slowly, “except that it’s just everything.”

There was a short silence, then he said:

“You and Paddy are very different, aren’t you?” And she smiled as she answered in the affirmative.

“I shouldn’t think sisters are often so different,” he went on. “Aunt Jane and Aunt Mary are almost exactly alike. There isn’t much difference between Kathleen and Doreen Blake, either,” he added, as if leading up to something, and then blurted out a little awkwardly, “I suppose you’re very glad they’re coming back?”

“Yes,” Eileen replied simply; “aren’t you?”

Jack did not reply, but remarked instead:

“I don’t suppose Lawrence will stay at home long. This place is much too tame for him.”

Eileen only gazed fixedly at the distant sea.

“I can’t say I think it will be much loss to the neighbourhood,” continued outspoken Jack. “He does fancy himself so.”

“I don’t think he does,” she said. “It is only that the people about here do not appeal to him in some way, and so he stands aloof.”

“We’re not clever enough, I suppose; but we could give him points in a good many things, all the same,” a little savagely, biting at a piece of string with his strong white teeth. “What has he ever done beyond taking a few degrees at Oxford?”

“You haven’t even done that.” And Eileen turned to him suddenly, with serious eyes. She was the only one of all about him who ever took him to task seriously about his idle life. His aunts were too fond and too indulgent, his father too wrapped up in his books and his loss, and Paddy, being as irresponsible and happy-go-lucky herself, only thought about the good time they were having in the present. Eileen, however, saw further, and sometimes tried to influence him.

He was silent now before the veiled reproach in her words, but presently, with an irresistible little smile, he said.

“You wouldn’t have me go away and leave Aunt Jane and Aunt Mary weeping over my empty chair and old shoes and things, would you?”

“Perhaps you will have to go some day,” she said.

“Yes, but why worry about it now? Sufficient unto the day—”

“Yes; only you are wasting your best years.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, and I’m not doing any harm to anyone.”

“You may be harming yourself.”

“How?”

Eileen gazed dreamily before her, and presently said:

“You see, I don’t think life is altogether meant to be just a playtime for anyone. We have to make our five talents ten talents.”

“But not all in a great hurry at the beginning.”

“It is possible to put things off too long, though.”

“That’s what Paddy said because I kept her waiting nearly half an hour this afternoon. She was very uppish,” and again he smiled at the recollection, and Eileen gave him up.

“You are quite incorrigible,” she said. “I might as well try and inspire Kitty,” and she patted the spaniel, now curled up beside them.

“Perhaps, but it really isn’t worth while to worry now, it is? Everything’s so jolly, it would be a pity to spoil it. You’re so serious and solemn, Eileen. Paddy never bothers her head about any mortal thing—why do you?”

“I expect I’m made that way. It would not do for everyone to be the same. Shall we go home now? We shall be just in time for tea.”

He got up at once and shouldered his gun, starting ahead of her to clear the brambles and stones out of her path, and turning to give her his hand where the descent became difficult. Had it been Paddy they would have scrambled down at a breakneck pace together, and he would have given no thought at all to her progress, for the simple reason that she would only have scorned it if he had.

But Eileen, somehow, was different. She was really quite as good a climber as Paddy, and probably a much surer one, but on the other hand she seemed more frail and dependent, and Jack liked helping her, even though he knew she would get along quite as well by herself.

At the lodge gates they met the two aunts, and Eileen was promptly carried off to the Parsonage to tea, the two little ladies at once commencing to pour into her sympathetic ears an account of the sad fate of one of their favourite cats as they went along.

“My dear, when we started out this afternoon,” began Miss Jane, “we heard a most heartrending cry in the bushes, and after hunting about, we found such a pitiful object. It was scarcely recognisable even to us.”

“Not even to us,” echoed Miss Mary sadly.

“It was actually poor dear Lionel, one of Lady Dudley’s last kittens,” continued Miss Jane, “and what do you think had happened to him?”

“Was he caught in a trap!” asked Eileen.

“Oh, far worse,” in a tearful voice. “Mary and I are feeling terribly upset about it.”

“Yes; quite upset,” came the sad echo.

“Has he singed the end of his tail?” asked Jack with due solemnity, “or has Lady Dudley been giving him a bad time because he stole her milk as usual?”

“Worse, my dear Jack, worse still,” with a mournful shake of both heads. “He has fallen into a barrel of tar.” And the two little ladies stood still suddenly, to further impress the terrible nature of the calamity.

“Oh, Christmas!” exclaimed Jack, unable to resist laughing, while Eileen asked most anxiously, “But he got out again?”

“Yes, my dear, but think of the poor darling’s condition!”

“What a home-coming!” said Jack irrelevantly.

“He was coated all over with tar,” went on Miss Jane, now addressing Eileen only, and ignoring Jack with contempt, “and he had tried to clean himself, and of course, in licking his fur, had swallowed a lot of tar.”

“Actually swallowed it,” put in Miss Mary on the point of tears.

“And of course he was in a dreadful state, and probably in great pain, so we put him in a basket and took his straight away to Dr Phillips.”

“Tar must be very indigestible,” murmured Jack.

“And did he cure him?” asked Eileen kindly.

“Alas, no: he said nothing could be done for him at all, and the kindest thing would be to poison him at once.”

A big tear rolled down Miss Mary’s cheek.

“Poor Lionel,” she murmured tenderly.

“We buried him ourselves,” finished Miss Jane, “under the cedar tree, as close to the churchyard gate as we could put him.”

“Much better have put him by the rhubarb,” said Jack, for which Eileen frowned at him over their heads, but instead of being in the least ashamed of himself, he looked up at the clouds and murmured feelingly: “Lady Dudley has still five living—let us be thankful for small mercies.”

CHAPTER IV
Paddy’s Adventure.

Meanwhile in a very ruffled frame of mind, not only because Jack had kept her waiting half an hour, but also because she knew he had gone off quite contentedly up the mountain to look for Eileen, when he found he was in disgrace with her, Paddy trimmed her sail and sped across the Loch to Rostrevor. There was a fairly strong breeze, and the management of the boat kept her busy, but when she landed at Rostrevor alone, she had time to further anathematise Jack in her heart, and was in two minds about going up to the Hendersons at all. They had arranged to come over for tennis, but somehow Paddy did not think she wanted to play. She felt as if she wanted to work off her ill-humour by doing something daring, that would take her out of herself. So it happened that she stood on the quay irresolute and looked out to sea. Her quick eye was taking note of the wind and the tide, while her brain considered the advisability of taking a little trip toward Greenore. One half of her, the wise half, said, “Don’t go; the wind is too choppy.” The other half said coolly, “All the more fun! At the worst it would only mean a ducking, as you can keep near enough to the land to swim ashore.” Then, however, came the thought that Jack would certainly find out she had given up the tennis because of him, and feel ever so pleased with himself. That, of course, would never do. Whatever she had to put up with in the way of tennis was better than giving Jack such a triumph after his behaviour.

“I guess I’ll do both,” she said, “and I’ll tell Jack it was the finest tennis I ever had in my life.”

Consequently she made fast the painter, reached her racquet, and made her way briskly to the Hendersons, meaning to play one set and then get back to the boat and have her sail.

Directly she appeared, she was hailed with a chorus of delight, and was instantly claimed for a partner by four or five different players, from whom she calmly made her choice like a young queen.

“I’m not going to play with you, Harry Armstrong,” she said, “because you poach too much. Nor with you, Dick, because you’re so slow—you always reach the ball a second too late, and it’s bad for my nerves. And Basil Whitehead won’t be serious enough. I guess I’ll play with you, Bob,” and she nodded to a shock-headed schoolboy of about fourteen, all arms and legs, and feet.

“How just jolly, thundering fine!” he exclaimed excitedly. “You are a brick, Paddy; we’ll knock them into a cocked hat, won’t we!”

“You know the other girls here are such awful sillies,” he remarked to her confidentially, as they walked toward a vacant court. “A fellow can’t have half a good time with a set like this. They’re no better than a pack of schoolgirls,” and he turned up his snub nose contemptuously.

“Oh, well, of course! when a ‘man-about-town’ like you comes along,” said Paddy, “we all feel horribly countrified and shy and awkward. It’s only natural, living away out here among the mountains.”

“I suppose so,” said Bob, hesitatingly, not quite sure whether she was laughing at him or not. “Still,” brightening up, “they might be more like you if they tried. You know I think you’re just an awfully jolly girl,” he finished with great condescension.

Paddy made him a mock bow. “I’m sure I feel highly honoured,” she said, “but you mustn’t tell the other girls, or they’d be frightfully jealous, and hate me like anything.”

“Well, you needn’t mind that,” he replied stoutly. “I’ll look after you, and settle them pretty quick if they’re cheeky.”

“That’s all right, then. Let’s set to work and win this set, because I have an important engagement directly after tea.”

Bob’s face fell a little at this, but he quickly decided to make the best of the prevailing good, and not worry about what came next.

But Paddy did not get away quite so quickly as she had intended, as Kitty Irvine came and pulled her on one side to tell her an important piece of news in confidence.

“Have you seen him?” she exclaimed in an eager undertone. “Isn’t he perfectly scrumptious?”

“Seen who!” asked Paddy in bewilderment—“Who’s perfectly scrumptious?”

“Why, Colonel Masterman’s nephew, of course. You must have heard about him?”

“The Mastermans at Carlingford?” still unenlightened.

“Yes, Colonel Masterman has a nephew come to stay with them, from London. Fancy you not knowing!”

“Well, I think I did hear Jack say something about it; but I had quite forgotten. When did he come?”

“Only yesterday, but he was in Newry this morning, and bought a picture post-card at the same time that I did.”

“Ump!” expressively. “I loathe picture post-cards. He must be a nincompoop, if he actually buys them.”

“Not at all,” asserted Kitty. “He’s probably going to send them home. He’s not exactly handsome, but he has got the loveliest smile, and such a nice voice.”

“Rubbish!” exclaimed Paddy, whose ill-humour was still not very far-off. “A man with a lovely smile and a sweet voice is always a silly ass. I expect he curls his hair, and wears patent-leather boots, and lavender kid gloves.”

“You’re very cross,” from Kitty in an aggrieved tone; “I thought you’d be pleased to hear there was likely to be some one fresh at the tennis parties, to talk to.”

“So I should be if they were jolly, but I’m sure this man isn’t. He sounds just awful. I loathe him already.”

Kitty was silent for a moment, then she asked suddenly, “Where’s Jack?”

“I don’t know,” with a fine air of indifference. “He was so long getting ready, that I just came across without him. I must go back now, as I’m alone, and if the wind gets up, I mightn’t be able to manage the boat. Say good-by to Mrs Henderson for me—she’s just in the middle of a set,” and without waiting for more, she slipped away unobserved, and hurried down to the water’s edge.

Loosening her boat quickly, she sprang in and pushed off, the light of an adventure glowing in her eyes.

“Now to ‘breast the waves,’ as Eileen puts it in her poetry,” she said gleefully, and headed for the open sea.

For about half an hour everything went well, in spite of the continued freshening of the breeze. Paddy trimmed her sail in a masterly fashion, and felt so elated that she quite forgot her grievance of the afternoon, and sang little “coon” songs to herself from joyousness.

Two or three times she met some old skipper who knew her well by sight, and shouted a word of warning, about the breeze being very stiff out beyond the bay—but she only called back a friendly good-day, and held on her way.

As she neared Greenore she met another boat, not much bigger than her own, which a young man was sailing, like herself, single-handed, and as they passed he watched her with no small wonder. He had himself started off at mid-day in spite of various warnings concerning the choppiness of the wind, but being a first-rate yachtsman he had no fear, and had even gone out into the open sea beyond Greenore. When, however, he met this other small skiff, handled only by a mere girl, he could hardly believe his own eyes, and could not help staring hard to make sure he was right.

“Upon my word!” he ejaculated mentally—“these Irish girls have some pluck,”—but he instinctively loosened his sail, and let it flap idly, while he turned with a half-anxious expression to watch her movements.

Paddy, already intoxicated with excitement, and what she had already achieved, was becoming more and more rash; and when a sudden strong gust caught her sail and nearly capsized her, the occupant of the other boat gave a muttered exclamation, and prepared at once to turn round, with a vague idea of hanging about in her vicinity.

He had scarcely got his bow toward her, when a second gust, a still stronger one, caught her before she had quite recovered from the last, and in less time than one can write, her boat was upside down, and she herself struggling in the water.

“Hold on to the boat,” shouted a voice near at hand; “I’ll be with you in a few seconds.”

Paddy’s first idea had been to swim for the shore, but at the sound of the voice, she was glad enough to turn and cling to her capsized boat, though with no small wonderment that anyone should be so near.

Then she recognised the little yacht bearing down on her, and saw that the occupant must have turned some minutes before, and probably been watching her. A moment later he was helping her up the side, and she stood before him, like a half-drowned rat—with the water pouring off her in all directions.

For one moment they looked at each other silently, not quite sure how to proceed, and then the humour of the situation became too much for Paddy, and she burst out laughing, he immediately following suit, quite unable to help himself.

“What in the name of wonder do I look like?” she said, glancing down at her dripping skirt, and the streams of water all round.

“A little damp!” he suggested, and they laughed again. “But you must be awfully plucky and awfully rash,” he added, not without admiration.

“Oh, yes! I’m all that,” asserted Paddy; “but I’ve got a charmed life, so it doesn’t matter. I must look perfectly awful, though,” and she laughed again.

“Not at all,” gallantly; “but I’m afraid you’ll take cold. Do you live near?”

“Only at Omeath, but we shall have to tack, so it will take rather a long time.”

“I should think so,” impressively. “We’ll go into Carlingford, and I’ll take you to my aunt’s to get some dry clothes.”

“Who is your aunt?” asked Paddy, inwardly admiring the skill with which he managed his boat; and not a little also his broad shoulders and frank, pleasant face.

“Mrs Masterman, at Dunluce.”

“Goodness!” she exclaimed in surprise, without stopping to think. “Are you Colonel Masterman’s nephew who came yesterday?”

“Yes, why?” looking up curiously.

Paddy found herself in a fix, and she flushed crimson, feeling ready to bite her tongue out for being so hasty.

“Why?” he asked again, in a way that made her feel she must answer.

“Only that I heard something about you this afternoon,” she stammered.

“And what did you hear?”

His grey eyes had an amused twinkle in them now, and there was something so disarming about his smile; that with an answering twinkle in her own, Paddy looked at him slyly and said:

“Oh! nothing much—only that you bought picture post-cards.”

CHAPTER V
Ted Masterman.

“Was that all?” asked Ted Masterman, reaching across to tuck his rain-proof coat, which he fortunately had with him, closer round her, and looking still more amused.

“Not quite, but it’s all I’m going to tell you,” said Paddy.

“Oh, no, it isn’t,” with a smile; “you’re going to tell me the rest.”

“How do you know I am?” archly.

“Because people always have to do what I want them to.”

“How very odd!” in feigned surprise; “that is exactly how it is with me!”

“So I should imagine,” looking into her laughing eyes with growing interest.

“That’s pretty of you,” she said, “so I’ll go on. I was told you had a lovely smile.”

“Someone was a kindly judge then. I wonder what you said.”

The twinkle in Paddy’s eyes literally shone.

“I said that if you bought picture post-cards and had a lovely smile you must be a nincompoop.”

Ted threw his head back and shouted with laughter, exclaiming, “That’s the best of all, and I quite agree with you!” Then they ran up against the landing-stage, and he hurried her out of the boat and along the road to his aunt’s as fast as she would go.

“My dear child!” was all Mrs Masterman said, when she saw her, and without another word bustled her off upstairs, and flew to prepare a hot bath.

“It’s nothing new,” she explained in answer to Ted’s queries later, shaking her head drolly. “She’s just the wildest harum-scarum that ever breathed, and her father positively delights in it. I must take you to call. He’ll laugh himself nearly ill over this escapade, but for my part, I think he would do better returning thanks for the multitudinous times she has been given back to him, from the very gates of death.”

“But she wouldn’t have been drowned to-day, aunt. She could have swum ashore.”

“She might have had cramp, or caught her death of cold, or a hundred other things. It’s dreadful, to my thinking, for a girl to be so absolutely a boy in everything. But there! she’s young yet, and I daresay she’ll improve by and by.”

Ted, standing at the window with his hands in his pockets, staring across the Loch, had an odd, inward conviction that there was no room for improvement, but this he kept to himself, asking instead of her father and home.

A little later, he made their acquaintance, as his aunt decided to keep Paddy all night, and sent him to The Ghan House with a note of explanation. Jack and Eileen were just returning from the Parsonage as he arrived, and while Mrs Adair read the note aloud to the General, out on the lawn where they were sitting, the two young people sauntered up.

“Lord love us!” exclaimed the General gleefully; “was there ever such a girl before! Capsized, did she?—right out by Greenore!—managing the boat alone, too!—and out there a day like this—by my faith a good-plucked one! Here, Jack! you young scoundrel! why weren’t you out with Paddy this afternoon? Here she’s been getting capsized right out by Greenore and fished out of the water by this young man, while you were wasting cartridges trying to hit snipe.

“Here’s my hand, sir,” turning to Ted and giving him a hearty hand-shake, “and an old soldier’s thanks and blessing, and if there’s anything I can do for you at any time just name it. Lord! what a girl she is!” he finished, and held his sides and shook with laughter.

Meanwhile Mrs Adair added her thanks in a low, eager voice, asking anxiously after Paddy’s welfare; and Jack took stock of the stranger generally.

When he had finished reassuring Mrs Adair concerning her daughter, and reasserting that he had really done nothing at all deserving of thanks, Ted returned Jack’s scrutiny with almost as great interest, wondering if this handsome young Irishman were Paddy’s brother.

“Let me introduce you to my eldest daughter,” said Mrs Adair. “Eileen, this is Mr Masterman from Dunluce.”

Eileen shook hands with her usual charming smile, and then Mrs Adair introduced Jack, who, after a little further scrutiny, started on his favourite topics of shooting and sailing, and finding Ted as interested as himself, they quickly became good friends.

“Your daughter called out something about returning in the morning,” Ted said to Mrs Adair, as he prepared to leave. “Some fishermen have been out for the boat this afternoon, so very likely she will return in it.”

“Perhaps you will accompany her,” said Mrs Adair at once. “We shall be delighted to see you to lunch if you will.”

Ted thanked her and accepted the invitation gladly, then hurried back with various portions of Paddy’s belongings to Carlingford, hoping vaguely that she might have insisted upon getting up and coming down to dinner. Manlike, he had quite forgotten she could hardly appear without a dress, and he felt quite unreasonably disappointed when he found the table only laid for three, and he and his uncle and aunt sat down together.

“I took the precaution of locking Paddy’s door,” Mrs Masterman remarked, as they sat down. “I know what a terror she is to manage, and after such a wetting it is most important that she should remain in bed for the rest of the day.”

She had scarcely finished speaking when an apparition in the doorway, clothed in an assortment of odds and ends of borrowed garments, and with a face wreathed in smiles, remarked: “I wish roses hadn’t thorns. Coming down the spout was child’s play, but the beastly thorns on the rose creeper have quite spoilt my elegant hands.”

Mrs Masterman’s arms went up in horror, but the depressed rescuer was instantly all smiles likewise, while he made room for her in his seat.

“If you’d known me as well as my own father does,” Paddy replied to her hostess’ expostulations, “you’d as soon have thought of putting me down the well, as locking me in a ‘common or garden’ bedroom. There’s always a spout, or a coping, or a bow-window with leads, or something. How do you do, Colonel Masterman?” extending her hand graciously. “I couldn’t be expected to stay upstairs, with such delicious odours coming from the kitchen, could I now?”

“Why, of course not, of course not,” exclaimed her host, who vied with her father in enjoying all her adventures; “you must be very hungry after such an adventure.”

“I should just think I am—ravenous!”

“But my dear, there is a tray all ready for you, and I was just going to send your dinner upstairs.”

“I know you were, and you are very sweet and kind, but I’ve got an odd failing about meals. I simply can’t eat, however hungry I am, if I’m alone. It’s quite terrible, you know,” looking abnormally serious. “I might be ready to eat myself with hunger, and if I’m all alone I couldn’t take one single bite.”

“A lucky thing for yourself,” laughed Colonel Masterman, “though not, perhaps, for anyone who chanced to be with you—for you’d be quite certain to begin on them first.”

“It would depend upon who it was, and if they were nice and plump.”

“Oh, my dear,” exclaimed Mrs Masterman in a shocked voice; “what a dreadful idea!”

“Then we’ll change the subject,” said Paddy, adding roguishly, “Do you like picture post-cards, Mr Masterman?”

“I think people are very wanting in taste and very out-of-date who don’t,” he answered promptly; “but perhaps in an out-of-the-way place like this you have not yet seen many?”

“On the contrary,” sweetly, “we have seen so many that we are positively sick of the very sight of them. I’m thinking of starting a society, like the one in New York, for suppressing the tune called ‘Hiawatha,’ only mine will be directed against the post-card craze.”

“But I think they are so beautiful,” said Mrs Masterman, looking up from her plate with a puzzled expression. “Really! sometimes I can hardly tear myself away from Linton’s, they have such beautiful specimens.”

“No? Well, you must take Mr Masterman with you to-morrow. He’ll simply love it, and he won’t know how to tear himself away either. Colonel Masterman will have to come by the next train to try and lure you both home again.”

Ted Masterman’s expression had a “wait-till-I-catch-you” air, but she only went off into an airy description of her youthful admirer on the tennis court, which lasted until the two elder ones retired to their books, leaving her and Ted to amuse each other over their coffee in the conservatory. Paddy at once opened fire with a cross-examination.

“So you live in London?” she remarked; “seems to me one might as well live in a coal mine.”

“Oh, come! that’s rather strong; London is a grand place.”

“It’s a good thing you think so, since you live there. I loathe the very name of it.”

“But why?”

“Why? Everything’s why. Look at the dirt, and the smoke, and the smuts,” in a tone of unutterable disgust. “On a fine day the poor sun struggles to shine through the atmosphere, and only succeeds in giving a pale, sickly glow, and on a wet day the clouds appear to literally rest on the house-tops and rain-smuts. If you look up, you see nothing but roofs and chimneys, and if you look down, you see nothing but paving-stones and basements, and if you look round generally, you see little else but pale, sickly, tired people all trampling on each other to live.”

“Didn’t you ever look in the shops?”

“Yes, and I got so sick of them, I just longed to go inside the windows and jumble everything up into a heap anyhow, and then write a big 1 shilling 11 pence farthing over the whole lot.

“The only thing I really enjoyed,” running on, “was the front seat on the top of an omnibus, with a talkative driver. That was always funny, whether he discoursed on politics, or religion, or the aristocracy; or expressed himself forcibly on motor-cars and the ‘Twopenny Tube.’ Do you use the Tube much?”

“Nearly every day of my life.”

“Goodness!—and you still live! Don’t you think Dante must wish he had thought of a Tube for his Inferno? It must be like Heaven to come here and sniff our lovely mountain air all day long. I wonder you don’t go about with your nose in the air too busy sniffing to speak.”

“It reminds one of what one might imagine Heaven, in various ways,” he said, with smiling innuendo.

“Eileen and mother might stand for the angels,” she ran on, “and Jack for the prodigal son or penitent sinner.”

“And where would you be?”

“Well, I guess I’d be most useful helping Saint Peter keep the door,” looking wicked, “but perhaps I shouldn’t be admitted at all.

“Not but that I’d stand as good a chance as Jack,” she finished with a decisive air.

“Is Jack Mr O’Hara?”

“Yes. He lives at the Parsonage next door to us.”

“And you’ve known him all your life?”

“Every single bit of it. I can remember hitting him in the face, and kicking at him generally, as soon as I can remember anything.”

“Then I suppose you’ve made up for it all since.”

“Oh, dear no! except to hit harder as I grew stronger.”

“He’s very handsome,” said Ted a little thoughtfully. “He’s Irish,” replied Paddy promptly.

“Ah, yes! I forgot,” slyly; “it covers a multitude of sins, doesn’t it, to be Irish?”

“We usually call them virtues!” she rapped out, quick as lightning, and then they both laughed, and a moment later the Colonel was heard calling to them to come and play Bridge with him.

The following morning they sailed back together, and Ted was made to remain, much to his delight, for the rest of the day. They played tennis all the afternoon, and then, after having tea on the lawn, rowed across the Loch to Warrenpoint to listen to the Pierrots. When they came to sit quietly, however, everything did not continue quite so smoothly. Jack had been playing tennis with Paddy most of the afternoon, because it made more even games, but now he manifested a marked desire to talk to Eileen, just as Ted, who had been playing with Eileen, wanted now to talk to Paddy. With the usual contrariness of events, Eileen was perfectly indifferent which of the two she talked to, but Paddy, a little upset by her old playfellow’s growing predilection for her quiet sister, wanted to talk to Jack.

The time had hardly come yet for Paddy to realise just why she was upset. She only knew that Jack somehow stood alone in her little world, and felt vaguely that no future could be happy without him.

For a little while she succeeded in keeping the conversation general, but as Eileen grew more and more dreamy, and Jack silent, she finally tossed her head, told them they were the dullest pair she had ever the misfortune to be out with, and went for a walk along the front with Ted.

Meanwhile, left to themselves, Jack again introduced a certain topic constantly in his mind.

“The Blakes came back to-day,” he said suddenly; “they crossed last night.”

Eileen gave a little start, and was silent a moment.

“How do you know?” she asked at last.

“Barrett, at the station, told me they were in the boat train.”

“How many of them?” trying to speak naturally.

“All, Mrs Blake, Kathleen, Doreen, and Lawrence.”

There was a pause, then he added, “I suppose Lawrence has just come to settle them in.”

Eileen remained silent. The news had taken her by surprise, as she had not expected them for a week or two, and she felt her pulses throbbing oddly.

Then an unaccountable presentiment that Lawrence was somewhere near took possession of her, and, making some excuse about feeling cold, she got up to follow Paddy and Ted Masterman along the front. Jack, wishing very much to remain as they were, was obliged to get up also, and they walked briskly in the direction of Rostrevor.

They had not gone far before Eileen caught her breath a little, at the sight of two figures coming toward them.

Nearer they came and nearer, the girl chatting merrily, and the man listening with languid amusement. Eileen felt herself watching—watching—for the upward glance, the recognition, the pleased greeting.

They were almost together now—he looked up—the recognition came instantly, but a second later, Lawrence Blake had raised his hat and passed on with a bow.

CHAPTER VI
Lawrence Blake.

While Paddy and Jack were sitting on the table a week previously, swinging their feet and discussing the news of the Blakes’ home-coming, just brought by Aunt Mary and Aunt Jane, Lawrence Blake, in his own special sanctum in Cadogan Place, lounged in a big arm-chair, and considered the interesting subject of his own boredom. He was particularly bored with his mother and his two sisters. Having seen a good deal of them in the last three years, he was anxious for a spell of existence without them.

And now his mother wanted him to go across to Ireland with them before his projected tour to India. And it was so beastly damp and dull in Ireland—so altogether unpleasant. Then there would be this tiresome “coming-out” dance of the girls; such a fatuously idiotic idea to have a preliminary “coming-out” at home, and then repeat it in grander measure in London. He didn’t mind going out of his way occasionally to please his mother, but to be bothered with Doreen and Kathleen was too much to expect. To his august personality they were so young, and crude, and foolish. He told himself he was bored to death with their aimless vapourings, and this time he must really follow his own inclinations, and let them go to Ireland without him—at which decision he got up leisurely, and prepared to stroll round to the club.

But almost at the same moment, the door opened, and a soft voice said, “Are you here, Lawrence?”

An antique Egyptian screen of beautiful workmanship hid the interior of the room from the door, and it was not until an intruder had passed it, he could tell if the room were occupied or not.

“I am,” replied Lawrence casually; “but I am just going out.”

Mrs Blake closed the door and advanced into the room, seating herself in the big chair he had vacated.

“I want you to come to Ireland with us,” she began at once, with a note of persuasion in her voice. “There is so much you ought to see to on the estate, before you start off again travelling.”

Lawrence remained standing on the hearthrug.

“May I smoke!” he asked, with a mixture of indifference and courtesy that was entirely typical of him.

His mother inclined her head, and looked anxiously into his face.

It was, perhaps, noticeable that, in spite of his non-responsive manner, she in no wise appeared abashed, merely reiterating her request.

But then who should know a man better than his mother, if she happen to have been blessed with discernment? With Lawrence and Mrs Blake this was emphatically the case, hence the direct opening of the subject, without any preliminary leading up. Mrs Blake knew when she came to the smoke-room that he had made up his mind not to go; she knew that he would be politely unresponsive and calmly difficult. As a matter of fact, he almost always was, but she had found that directness was better than any amount of circumvention, and, though he could not be driven, he could just occasionally be led.

“Why do you want me to go?” he asked. “It only causes dissension, and you know more about the estate than I do.”

“Perhaps. But I ought not. Do you never intend to take it in hand?”

“I did not think of doing so, until most other things had failed.”

She was a clever woman, who had won through a good deal of stress and difficulty, with a husband she adored and a son she worshipped, both of whom had been what is generally described as “peculiar tempered.” If she had cared for either of them less, the home would have been pandemonium. Fortunately for all concerned, her love had stood every test, and her natural cleverness had been content to expend itself on tactfully managing her male belongings. The people who had only a superficial insight, and were at considerable pains to pity her, might have saved their sympathy. Mrs Blake was eminently no object for condolence. A clever woman must have some outlet for her cleverness, and why not direct it toward managing two interesting, if difficult, specimens of the male sex? If she truly loves them, what could be more engrossing, and what reward more enthralling, than the intervals of devotion and tenderness won by consummate tact? Certainly, these had never been missing; both men, below the surface awkwardness and obstinacy, unswervingly returned her devotion.

It was the other members of the household who suffered generally, and felt aggrieved at the male belongings with which they had been saddled. It was in allusion to this that Mrs Blake now remarked:

“Kathleen and Doreen would not quarrel with you, if you spared them your sarcasms.”

“Kathleen and Doreen are silly little fools,” coldly.

“It is only that they don’t understand you,” she told him, “and you must remember they are very young. Of course you often aggravate them purposely, when you are not pointedly indifferent to their very existence, and they are quite justified in resenting it.”

“Then why not let well alone, and go to Ireland without me?”

“This dance is to be a sort of family affair, and I want you to be present.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and his thin, clever face broke into a half-satirical smile; “You don’t want me to aggravate the girls with my presence, but you want me to be there. Couldn’t I please you best by promising to be there in spirit?”

“Why don’t you want to come?” ignoring his flippant air.

“Why do you want to go?” he retaliated.

“We have been absent so long and I must bring the girls back to town for the winter. It is a good opportunity to put in two months there.”

“My dear mother, Mourne Lodge has got on so nicely without us for three years, it will quite safely manage to exist until July. I dislike rushing about needlessly. In an age of exclamation stops and interrogation marks, couldn’t you support me in trying to be a semicolon for a little while?”

She smiled, but refused to humour him.

“You are to come, Lawrie,” she said, getting up, “and you are to try and be nice to the girls. Perhaps if you were to forget they were sisters?” significantly.

“They will not allow me to. No one but sisters would go out of their way to be so persistently aggravating.”

“Except a brother,” with a little smile.

“Perhaps; but the brother, you must remember, is not always there from choice.”

“Well, you won’t see much of each other in Ireland, as they will be out all day with their own friends. Come, Lawrence—put up with us for a few weeks longer; your companionship will mean so much to me.”

And it was then one of those swift and sudden changes transformed his face, as it had done the face of his father, and made everything worth while. He bent down with a look of fond amusement, and kissed her forehead.

“I don’t know why in the world I went to the trouble of making up my mind not to come,” he said; “I should have saved my energy, realising that a wilful woman always has her way.”

Mrs Blake smiled a little wistfully, and moved toward the door, which he hastened to open for her. She was thinking if only she could conjure up that lightning smile, with its extraordinary charm, a little oftener, or if only he would—

But what was the use of expecting Lawrence to be rational and considerate. Had he ever been? He was tired of gaiety, yet he hated monotony. Tired of idleness, yet indifferent to his estate. Tired of flirting, yet averse to considering marriage. Full of latent possibilities of achieving, that he was too indolent to develop. She hoped someone, or something, would sting him alive some day, but at present he persisted in adopting the rôle of the blasé looker-on, and no one appeared to have any influence over him whatever.

For his part, left alone, Lawrence once more sank into the roomy, inviting-looking chair, instead of going out, and watched his cigarette smoke with a cogitating air.

He was thinking of Eileen Adair.

She had probably grown prettier than ever since he last saw her, and he had an artist’s appreciation of beauty. He was glad that she would be there. Her high-flown idealistic sentiments would probably be somewhat boring, but, on the other hand, she was simple and natural, with a simpleness and naturalness that were decidedly refreshing for a change. And then there was that young fool, Jack O’Hara, at the rectory, who could look such outspoken dislike, and seemed to develop rather a sudden fancy for Eileen whenever Lawrence was winning her smiles, and he, himself, overlooked. It would be rather amusing to annoy him.

Yes, since he must go to humour his mother, he was glad Eileen would be there. They would go on where they left off for a little while. He was not quite sure at what stage that was, but it involved many very sweet, serious upward glances from a pair of exceedingly beautiful eyes, and some enlightening on his part that was entertaining, because so surprising. Of course he would be circumspect, and not intentionally mislead her. He would, in fact, make a point of shocking her, partly for her own sake, and partly, because, when a girl became fond of him, she usually bored him to extinction at once. After which, he once more got up and prepared to go to the club.

“I shall not be in to dinner,” he told the butler as he went out, having forgotten to mention the fact to his mother, and half an hour later he was making a fourth at bridge at a table called the Monte Carlo table, because the players always played for specially high stakes; and, except with an interval for dinner, would continue until the early hours of the morning.

And on the mountain side, Eileen was dreaming, and Jack was trying to fathom her, and both were alike in vain.

CHAPTER VII
Lawrence Finds Eileen on the Shingles.

For several paces after the encounter at Warrenpoint, neither Jack nor Eileen spoke, and though he tried hard to see her face, she kept it resolutely turned from him toward the Loch.

“Is Mr Blake’s friend someone staying with them?” she asked at last.

“I expect so,” he answered. “I don’t remember ever seeing her before.”

Eileen was feeling a little sick and dazed, so when they met Paddy and Ted Masterman, she suggested at once that they should return home, and Paddy, feeling irritated with things in general, agreed with alacrity.

“Oh, by the way,” she remarked later, as they were going up to bed, “Mr Masterman and I met Lawrence Blake with that Harcourt girl, who used to stay with them. She’s a cousin or something, don’t you remember? Lawrence used to say she could talk as fast as three ordinary women in one, but that as she never expected to be answered, it was rather a rest, because you needn’t listen. That’s how he looked to-night; as if he were taking a rest.”

“Are you sure it was Miss Harcourt? I didn’t recognise her.”

“Quite sure. She looks very different with her hair up, that’s all. I should have stopped them, but I heard her say they were very late, and they seemed in a hurry, so I didn’t.”

Eileen turned away in silence, but a weight was lifted off her mind.

The following day, as she was sitting reading by the water, while Jack and Paddy were out fishing, a firm step on the shingle suddenly roused her, and Lawrence himself approached.

“How do you do?” he said, with a pleasant smile. “I came down here before going up to the house, rather expecting to find some of you such a beautiful afternoon.”

Eileen shook hands simply, with the usual greetings, but a lovely flood of colour, that she could not control, spread over her face, and was noted with a certain amount of gratification by Lawrence’s experienced eye.

“It’s pleasant to be seeing old friends again,” he said. “May I sit down?”

She moved to make more room for him, and asked at once after his mother and sisters.

“Mother is very well,” he said, “and the girls are full of frocks and hair-dressing. There’s to be a big dance next month, and I suppose I shall have to stay for it.”

“Were you going away again, then?”

“I rarely stay long anywhere,” a little ambiguously.

“Have you decided where to go?”

“Not quite. I shall not decide until a few days before starting, I expect. But how is everybody at The Ghan House? Does his lordship of the rectory hate me as cordially as ever? I see Paddy has not yet managed to get herself transported to a better clime.”

While Eileen replied to his questions, her slender white hands played a little nervously with a flower, and her deep eyes fluttered between the distant mountains and her companion’s face. She felt he was studying her, and knew there was admiration in his eyes, and her heart felt foolishly glad.

“Have we been away three whole years?” he said presently. “How strange! It seems like three months now I am back. Shall I find everyone as unchanged as you, Eileen?”

“I am three years older,” she said, with a little smile.

“Yes, but there are some people to whom the years make very little difference. I think you are one of them.”

“Yet I feel different.”

“How?” looking at her keenly.

“It wouldn’t be easy to describe. It is just different, that’s all,” and she gazed a little wistfully toward the mountains.

“I expect you are getting too thoughtful,” he said.

“You ought to go away somewhere, and see something of the world outside these mountains.”

“I am very fond of the mountains,” she told him simply. “I don’t want to go away. I do not think any place could be as lovely as this.”

“That is where you are wrong. I acknowledge the scenery among these mountains is very beautiful, but there are heaps of equally and indeed more beautiful places in the world.

“The only thing is one gets tired,” relapsing into a languid manner, that Eileen could not but see had gained upon him during his absence. “I’d give something not to have seen, nor heard, nor learned, more than you have. To have it all before me, instead of all behind.”

“But surely,”—leaning forward with ill-concealed eagerness—“the future is just brimming over with interest and possibilities for you.”

“Why for me particularly?”

“I was thinking of your brains, and your money, and your position—why you have everything to make life interesting.”

He shrugged his shoulders, and the expression on his thin cynical mouth was not pleasant.

“Oh, I don’t know about that. It’s too much bother altogether. I’ve seen behind the scenes too much to care; it’s all rather rotten at the core, you know—everything is.”

Eileen looked pained, and gazed away to her beloved mountains. “I am sorry you feel like that,” she said simply; “it is all so beautiful to me.”

“Just at present perhaps—but by and by—”

“I hope it will be, by and by also. Anyhow, I shall still have my mountains.”

“And after all they’re nothing in the world but indentations and corrosions on the crust of a planet, that is one in millions.”

There was a pause, then she asked slowly: “Is that how you look upon human beings?”

“Yes, more or less. You can’t deny we are only like midges, coming from nowhere, and vanishing nowhere; or at best, ants hurrying and scurrying over an ant-hill. ‘Life is a tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.’”

“Ah, no! no!” she cried, turning to him with a beseeching look in her eyes. “If that were so, where would be the use of all its sacrifices, and conquests, and nobleness?”

“Where is the use of them?” in callous tones.

She looked at him blankly a moment, then got up and walked to the water’s edge, feeling almost as if he had struck her.

After a moment he followed, and stood beside her, idly tossing pebbles into the water.

“Take my advice, Eileen,” he said, “and don’t get into the way of caring too much about things. It’s a mistake. Later on, your feelings will only turn, and hit you in the face.”

“And what is it your favourite poet, Browning, says?” she repeated half to herself—

“One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed though right were worsted, wrong would triumph,
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better,
Sleep to wake.”

“It sounded well,” he sneered. “No doubt if I were to write a novel it would be full of beautiful sentiments that sounded well—and I should care that for them in my heart,” and he snapped his fingers carelessly.

She looked up and descried Jack and Paddy coming over the Loch toward them.

“Here are the others,” she said, almost with an air of relief. “They have just seen us and are coming in.”

“Hullo!” cried Paddy, as they came within earshot. “I hope your Serene Highness is well.”

“Very well, thank you,” replied Lawrence, giving her his hand as the boat reached the landing-stage. “I was just remarking to your sister, that you had not succeeded in getting yourself transported to a better clime yet!”

“No, the old proverb seems to be reversed in my case, I am not too good to live, but too good to die.”

“Or else too bad, and so you are always getting another chance given you,” remarked Jack.

“Be quiet, Jack O’Hara, for the pot to call the kettle black is the height of meanness. Come out of that boat and say ‘how do you do’ prettily to this great man from abroad,” and her brown eyes shone bewitchingly.

Everybody in the neighbourhood teased Paddy, and Lawrence was no exception.

“’Pon my soul!” he exclaimed with feigned surprise, “I believe you’re growing pretty, Paddy.”

“Nothing so commonplace,” tossing her small head jauntily. “What you take for mere prettiness is really soul. I am developing a high-minded, noble, sanctified expression; as I consider it very becoming to my general style of conversation. Father thinks it is ‘liver,’ but that unfortunately is his lack of appreciation, and also his saving grace for all peculiarities.”

“I should call it pique,” said Jack, “if by any chance I was ever treated to a glimpse of anything so utterly foreign in the way of expressions, on your physiognomy.”

“Oh, you wouldn’t recognise it,” was the quick retort. “‘Like to like’ they say; and I never find it is any use employing anything but my silliest and most idiotic manner and expression with you.

“But with Lawrence, of course,” running on mischievously, “it is only the high-souled and the deeply intellectual that he is in the least at home with. Witness his companion last night, with whom he was so engrossed he could not even stop and shake hands with old friends from cradlehood.”

“To tell you the honest truth,” said Lawrence, “my cousin, Miss Harcourt, had got so thoroughly into the swing of some extraordinary harangue, which required nothing but an ejaculation every five minutes from me, and seemed to go delightfully on without any further attention whatever, that it would have been downright cruelty to interrupt such a happy state of affairs. I knew I should be seeing you all to-day, and at the last moment my heart failed me. I might add that the harangue lasted until we got home, and a final ejaculation on the door-step, with a fervent ‘by Jove,’ satisfied, her beyond my best expectations. If my life had depended upon it, I could not have told anyone what she had been talking about.”

“It must simplify life tremendously, to have such a perfect indifference to good manners,” said Paddy, who could never resist a possible dig at Lawrence.

To her, he was the essence of self-satisfied superiority, and she apparently considered it one of her missions in life to bring him down to earth as much as possible. Lawrence found it on the whole amusing, and was not above sparring with her.

“You are improving,” he remarked, with a condescension he knew would annoy her; “that is a really passable retort for you.”

“I am glad that you saw the point. I was a little afraid you might have grown more dense than ever, after being absent from Ireland so long.”

“Ah! Lawrence Blake!” exclaimed a voice close at hand, as the General and Mrs Adair joined them from a side walk. “How are you? I’m very glad to see you back again. We all are, I’m sure,” and he bowed with old-world courtliness.

Lawrence thanked him, and walked on a few paces with Mrs Adair to answer her warm inquiries for his mother and sisters.

Afterward he told them about the dance to take place shortly, for his sisters’ “coming out” and left Paddy doing a sort of Highland Fling with Jack round the tennis court to let off her excitement. She tried to make her sister join in, but Eileen only smiled a little wistfully, and when no one was looking, stole off by herself to the seat down by the water, where Lawrence had found her in the afternoon.

There she sat down and leaned her chin on her hand, and gazed silently at the whispering Loch.

Was she glad or sad?

She hardly knew.

She could not forget the unmistakable admiration in his eyes, and yet—and yet—

“Like midges coming from nowhere and vanishing nowhere, or wits hurrying and scurrying over an ant-hill,” she repeated vaguely. “Ah! he could not have meant that—surely—surely he could not... For if so, what could one ant be to him more than another?”

For a moment her heart was heavy, then she remembered his fondness for his mother and took comfort again.

“It is only that someone or something has disappointed him,” she told herself, “and it has made him bitter and cynical, but it is only a passing mood. By and by he will change again, and perhaps I can help him.

“Yes,” her eyes glowed softly, “perhaps I can help him to find faith again, and to be happy instead of hard and indifferent.”

The stars came out and a crescent moon hung over the mountains.

The night was gloriously beautiful—gloriously still—and a deep restfulness stole over her spirit. In the deep, silent depths of her Celtic imagination, in which dwelt ever paramount, before all, that divine love of beauty which imbues a too often prosaic world with a vague wonder of loveliness, and fair promise, she saw only the heights to which men might rise, and the power of goodness, and held to her ideals in the face of all destroying.

She was aroused at last by a step approaching over the shingle that was so like the step of the afternoon that she started and held her breath in wondering expectation.

But it was only Jack, seeking for her with anxious qualms about the damp night air, and a certain glow in his eyes when he found her, which might have told her many things, had she had leisure to observe it.

“You had better come in, Eileen,” he said simply. “It is too damp to sit by the water. I have been looking for you everywhere; I was so afraid you would take cold.”

She got up at once, and with a murmured word of thanks, followed him silently to the house, still lost in a far-off dream of happiness.

CHAPTER VIII
Paddy’s Pigs.

A spell of beautiful autumn weather brought Lawrence often to the beach as of old to get his boat, but Kathleen and Doreen no longer accompanied him. They were not asked, and had they been would have declined the honour. A nameless feud was waging between the dilettante brother and the two lively Irish girls, scarcely less wild than Paddy, who resented his cool superiority and cutting sarcasms to their inmost core.

It did not interfere with anyone’s pleasure, however, as they had hosts of friends all over the countryside, and Lawrence preferred having Eileen to himself. It was hardly realised by the elders that with so many young folks about two should have much opportunity of being alone, or a little more discretion might have been shown. They were all supposed to be out together, and probably were at the start-off, but a moment’s thought might have suggested Paddy and Jack most unlikely occupants of Lawrence’s trim yacht.

However, they were mellow, dreaming days, and an atmosphere of peaceful dreaminess seemed to pervade them all—like the calm before a storm.

To do Lawrence justice, he did not go out of his way to win Eileen’s love. On the contrary, he did go a little out of his way to shock her, but since she possessed divination enough to realise something of this, it had the opposite effect. She was so simple and natural herself that she was incapable of understanding deception. She believed Lawrence wanted her to know him at his worst—to know all the thoughts he harboured so directly opposed to her dearest beliefs—and so let her love him as he was instead of as she would have him.

And the mere idea only stimulated her love. Pained she inevitably was, but the offered up her pain at the shrine of Love, and went deeper into the maze.

If Lawrence dimly perceived this, he blinded himself to it. To him love-making was a very different process to this calm interchange of ideas, and he certainly refrained from much that he would not have thought twice about with any other pretty girl who interested and pleased him. Could any more be expected? No one could ever say he made love to Eileen. He did not make love to her, but he sought her companionship beyond all other, and looked his admiration of her quiet loveliness, regardless that to such as she these delicate attentions were almost a declaration. For the rest, a man must have something to amuse him, and her naïvété really was rather refreshing, and of course it wouldn’t hurt her to learn a little more about the world generally from a less narrowed horizon. So he sought her day by day, and made no further allusion to that projected Eastern tour, till Eileen forgot all about it, and waited in a dreaming ecstasy for her joy to take actual shape.

The only two who seemed at first to scent danger were the harum-scarums, Paddy and Jack. Such glorious days could not, of course, be wasted in a piffling little sail on the Loch or mooning on the beach, but there was time occasionally for a passing thought of the two who sailed and mooned so contentedly.

“I can’t think why Eileen doesn’t pack him off,” Paddy said once. “He makes me want to stamp, with his calm superiority. Fancy spending hours listening to the drivel he talks when she might be ratting with us,”—which somewhat remarkable comparison would no doubt have rather astonished the Oxford B.A.

As a matter of fact, he was enlightened with it the following day, for while leaving The Ghan House to go home, he was suddenly knocked nearly silly by a flying, furious apparition, who charged into him round a sharp corner, carrying a blackthorn in one hand and a ferret in the other.

For one second Paddy regarded him with unmistakable disgust for staying her progress, then her face suddenly grew excited again, as she exclaimed: “There! there, see, there it goes. Come on—we’ll have him yet,” and dragging the astonished Lawrence after her, charged on down the hill. “Here! you take the ferret,” she gasped, “but mind how you hold him. He bites like old Nick,” and she thrust the offensive little beast into his hand. Lawrence took it with as good a grace as he could! command, and when they ran the rat to earth exhibited a momentary enthusiasm nearly equal to hers.

“There!” said Paddy, holding up the slaughtered vermin, with shining eyes. “Wasn’t that a good catch?”

“Very. What shall I do with this!” and Lawrence held up the ferret, with which he had again been unceremoniously saddled, with a comical air of martyrdom.

“Put it in your pocket for the present,” promptly “or are you afraid of spoiling the shape of your coat?” with a scornful inflection, as he looked vaguely disgusted.

“You can put it so, if you like,” he retorted, “though. I have many other coats.”

“What’s the matter with Peter?” eyeing the ferret affectionately. “He’s a beauty—if only he didn’t bite so. I’ll take him, if you like. Come along back to the barn and I’ll find you another blackthorn. You can’t think what sport it is. Fancy sitting in a spick and span little yacht, that could hardly turn over if it tried, and talking about stuffy, uninteresting people like Browning and Carlyle, when you might be ratting!” Leading the way up the hill again.

“Fancy!” ejaculated Lawrence. “You must really take me in hand. I’m afraid my education has been guided into foolish and worthless channels.”

“You needn’t bother to be sarcastic,” hurrying on, with her eyes eagerly on the barn. “It’s all wasted on me. I know what’s life and fun. You only know a lot of useless stuff that someone thought about life a long time ago, I don’t know how Eileen has the patience to listen to you. Come on,”—growing more excited—“Jack and Mr Masterman have evidently unearthed some more!”

“I bow to your superior wisdom,” with a little smile that made his face suddenly almost winsome, and straightway threw himself heart and soul into the ethics of ratting, noting with a slight amusement, the big, cheery Ted Masterman’s evident predilection for the fair ratter.

But it was over Paddy’s adventure with the pigs that he won his first real spark of approval from her.

Paddy and Jack had a great friend near by in the person of one Patrick O’Grady, who farmed a small farm with an Irishman’s dilatoriness, helped therein by the two playmates. Paddy had sown seed for him, ploughed, harrowed, and dug potatoes—Jack likewise—both considering it their due, in return, to be consulted on all matters pertaining to the farm. This was how it came about that Paddy was mixed up in the sale of the pigs. She was at the farm when the disposal of those forty-five young pigs was discussed, and naturally took an active part in the impending decision. It was finally decided they should be sold by auction at the next market, and Paddy should mingle with the crowd—Jack also, if procurable,—to run up the prices. She also undertook to turn up the previous afternoon, bringing Jack with her, to help to catch the forty-five little pigs and put them in a wagon. When they arrived on the day in question they were first of all regaled with tea by Patrick O’Grady’s housekeeper, who was commonly called Dan’el, though whether from her transparent fearlessness of all things living, or because her enormous bulk was supported on feet that could only, under ordinary circumstances, belong to a big man, remains a mystery. Paddy had once remarked that if you were out in a storm with Dan’el it didn’t matter about having no umbrella, because if you got to the leeward side you were sheltered same as if you were up against a house, but that, of course, was a little of Paddy’s Irish exaggeration. Howbeit, having finished tea, the farmer piloted them all to the big barn into which he had driven the pigs ready for catching.

“I thought we’d have ’em all together here,” he remarked, “but ’tis a pity there’s no door to close the entrance.”

“Never mind,” said Paddy slyly, “Perhaps if there had been you couldn’t have got them in.” At which Patrick scratched his head and looked thoughtful a moment before he replied:

“Why, no, begorra! I’d never thought o’ that; but how’s we goin’ to keep ’em in whiles we catches ’em?”

“We must have Dan’el,” said Paddy promptly. “She shall be Horatio and keep the bridge,” whereupon poor Dan’el was duly installed to fill up the doorway with her accommodating bulk. Then began a rare scrimmage. Bound, and over, and through dashed those young pigs, with Paddy and Jack and Patrick after them—shrieking with laughter—till Paddy finally leaned up against the wall on the verge of hysterics and begged for a halt.

“Don’t let me see Dan’el for a few minutes,” she prayed Jack. “Come and stand in front of me. When I see Dan’el rolling about in that doorway, like a German sausage on a pivot, it makes me feel as if I should burst.”

By this time half the pigs were safely installed in the wagon, but this, instead of lightening their labour, considerably increased it, for the remaining half had more room to escape their pursuers. Finally a farm youth was called in to help, and the work progressed until only a dozen remained. A brief halt was again called, and then they all returned to the fray feeling refreshed. Unfortunately the pigs were refreshed also, and had apparently taken advantage of the halt to concoct some plan of concerted action. They slipped and scuttled between legs with a lightning speed that suggested a reinforcement of the devils of old time, until the moment came for the grand coup. This consisted in a dash at Paddy’s legs, which took her entirely by surprise and tripped her up, she emitting a shriek that made everyone pause a second to see if she was getting killed. In that same second, while the moment of unguarded surprise still held their captors, another concerted rush was made for the mountainous apparition in the doorway. The breach was carried gloriously. Dan’el came down like an avalanche, and in the pandemonium that followed it was discovered she had entrapped one small pig under her person, and its shrill screams were mingled stridently with the helpless laughter of the outwitted captors. Paddy lay on the floor, buried her face, and gave it up. Tears poured down her cheeks, and for very exhaustion she could not look on while the two men, nearly as helpless as she, tried to hoist poor Dan’el on to her feet and release the screaming little pig. They got her to a sitting posture, and then they had to take a rest while Jack leant up against the wall of the barn, hid his face on his arm, and shook with convulsive laughter. The pigs meanwhile, in a distant corner of the yard, held another council of war, squeaked and grunted their glee and awaited developments. When Jack was moderately calm again, and Paddy recovering, Dan’el was finally hoisted to her feet and prevailed upon to do a little more entry blocking while the pigs were chased round the yard, and after a terrific hunt they were all safely collected in the wagon, ready to start for market at daybreak.

So far all was well, but the next day Paddy’s praiseworthy intentions of getting her farmer friend good prices did not have quite the result she had anticipated. Again and again the clear young voice rang out with a higher bid, to be outdone satisfactorily by some pig-desiring Pat; but occasionally there was no higher bid, and then the pig was surreptitiously replaced among the rest, to be re-offered presently. How long, in consequence, the sale of pigs might have proceeded, it is impossible to say. Jack, who was having a little fun on his own, sometimes mingled with the buyers, and disguising his voice, made careful bids after solemnly advising Paddy to go one higher, till a system of buying in and re-offering was in progress that seemed likely to last until doomsday.

At last Jack came up to Paddy with an inquiring air.

“What in the world are you going to do with fifteen pigs, Paddy?” he asked. “I shouldn’t buy any more if I were you.”

“I—buy—fifteen—pigs!” she exclaimed. “What in the world—”

“Well, of course, you have,” he urged. “They’re all in the wagon waiting for you. Patrick just asked me if you were going to drive them home yourself,” omitting, however, to mention that he had previously impressed upon the doubtful Patrick that the pigs belonged to the fair buyer. “After robbing him of purchasers, you can’t very well leave them on his hands. I don’t suppose he’ll want you to pay in a hurry, but you must take charge of them.”

Paddy regarded him with a haughty stare, and then turned to encounter the visibly perturbed Patrick.

“They fifteen pigs, miss,” he began hesitatingly. “Are they to go to The Ghan House?”

“They’re not mine,” she declared stoutly. “I bought them for you.”

“Very good of you, miss; but what would I be wanting with ’em, when I be selling ’em?”

Paddy looked perplexed. “Whose in the world are they?” she asked doubtfully. “They’re not mine—and they’re not yours—I give it up.”

“Begorra! I’m shure I dunno, miss,” and Patrick fell to scratching his head in great perplexity; “but it seems as if, seeing I sold ’em and you bought ’em—”

“But I bought them for you.”

“But if I was selling ’em, how could I want for to buy ’em?”

“If Patrick doesn’t want them,” put in Jack, “of course you must take them home, Paddy. I’ll help you drive them.”

“Oh! don’t be an idiot!” stamping her foot. “They don’t belong to me.”

“But you’ve just said you bought them.”

“I didn’t.”

“You did; you said you had bought them for Patrick.”

Paddy stamped her foot more impatiently still and grew more perplexed.

“Share, and it’s beyond me,” and Patrick fell again to his head-scratching. “If you bought ’em it seems as if they ought to be yours, don’t it?”

Paddy looked round with a worried air, and at that dreadful moment descried Lawrence, in the very act of dodging two small pigs that had escaped their owner and were making tracks back to the wagon as fast as they could go. She signalled to him, and he came up at once.

“I don’t know what’s happened to Newry,” he said, “but every third person seems to have acquired a small pig. I’ve been dodging them for the last half-hour. They’re all over everywhere.”

Jack began to chuckle in a most annoying manner.

“Paddy’s bought fifteen,” he said.

“I haven’t. Be quiet, you—you—great, silly clown.”

“Now, don’t get cross, Paddy,” soothingly; “and you’ve said so many times that you did buy them that it sounds dreadfully like a fib.”

Paddy looked as if she were not quite sure whether to laugh or cry, and Lawrence asked:

“What’s the matter, Paddy? Why does he say you’ve bought fifteen pigs?”

“It’s just this way—” began poor Paddy.

“The real trouble,” put in Jack, “is that Patrick O’Grady doesn’t know whether he’s been selling pigs or, buying them, and Paddy doesn’t know whether she’s been buying pigs or selling them. For the last two hours they’ve been doing both in a sort of cycle, and now they’re left with fifteen on their hands, and we want a Solomon to say who they belong to,” and he exploded again.

“If you don’t shut up, Jack—I’ll—I’ll throw a pig at your head,” said Paddy furiously.

“And I offered to help you drive them home,” in an aggrieved voice.

“I’ll help instead,” volunteered Lawrence. “I’m a positive genius at pig-driving.”

“Or I could take them to The Ghan House on my way back,” said Patrick cheerfully.

“But they’re not mine, I tell you. I don’t want the things. What in the world could I do with fifteen pigs?”

“They certainly wouldn’t be very nice in your bedroom, and I don’t see where else you could hide them,” put in Jack.

“Come, what’s it all about?—don’t mind him,” as Paddy again looked furiously at her tormentor. “Perhaps I can help?”

Wherewith, turning her back on the delinquent, who continued to chuckle audibly, Paddy related the history of the fifteen pigs, and the Gordian knot she and Patrick had managed to tie between them.

Lawrence had a good laugh—not the least at Paddy’s mystified air as to whether she had bought the pigs or not—and then he nobly offered to solve the difficulty by taking them off her hands.

“You can take them to the Mourne Lodge farm,” he told the no less bewildered Patrick, “and call for the money in the morning.”

Paddy was instantly all smiles. “And don’t forget my commission, Pat!” she cried.

“Your commission was for selling,” was Jack’s parting shot. “You bought these, so you can’t claim it.”

“Let’s all go and have coffee at the café,” suggested Lawrence. And ten minutes later Paddy and Jack were again chuckling uproariously over the relation of the whole episode from first to last.

And it was then that Paddy, under the spell of a certain sense of gratitude, decided Lawrence was very nice when he liked, and, of course, if Eileen was growing to care for him, and thought she would be happy with him, it was no use worrying about things. It was, of course, too much to expect that Lawrence could do other than love Eileen if she would let him.

CHAPTER IX
Concerning a Supper-Dance.

As the date fixed for the great dance drew near, no other topic of conversation was of any real interest. Even the two little ladies at the Parsonage got quite excited over it, and confided to Paddy and Eileen one afternoon, that they were each having new dresses on purpose.

“Oh! how splendid!” Paddy cried ecstatically; “do tell us what they are like.”

“Black silk,” said Miss Jane. “And Honiton lace,” added Miss Mary.

“Lovely!” cried Paddy. “I am certain you will be the belles of the ball. No one will look at Eileen and me.”

“Nonsense, my dear,” shaking her head; “two old things like Mary and myself belles of the ball indeed! No, no; you and Eileen will be that, and we shall rejoice to see it.”

“Now you are sarcastic, auntie,” shaking a threatening finger at her; “as if any belle of a ball ever had a sallow skin and snub nose like mine. No, if I am a belle at all it will have to be from a back view only. I really do think my hair is prettier than Eileen’s, so with the front of her and the back of me, we ought to carry off the palm.”

“What about Kathleen and Doreen?” put in Eileen, “they have improved wonderfully.”

“Yes, and their dresses were bought in Paris. It’s not fair,” and Paddy pulled a face. “We all ought to have started equally with dresses made in Ireland.”

“My dear, dress makes very little difference,” said little Miss Mary; “expression and manner are everything, and Kathleen and Doreen, though charming girls, are both a little stiff at present. I haven’t a doubt your programmes will be full almost before you are in the ball-room.”

“I guess so,” said Paddy mischievously. “I’ve promised twice the number of dances there are already, but as I’ve forgotten who they were all to, it doesn’t matter. I am thinking of arriving with two boards like a sandwich man, and on one side I shall have in large letters ‘Please note all previous engagements cancelled,’ and on the other ‘Book early as a great rush is anticipated.’”

The two little ladies laughed merrily, and then suddenly grew serious and looked at each other, as if preparing for some pre-arranged announcement.

“My dears!” began Miss Jane, the spokeswoman, while Miss Mary nodded her head in solemn agreement.

“Mary and I have each been looking through certain of our old treasures to see if we could find anything suitable to give you for this happy occasion, and we have decided upon the two fans our uncle, General Alvers, gave to us for our first ball in Dublin. They are old-fashioned, perhaps, but they are very good and we hope you will value them for our sakes.”

“Yes, that is it, sister,” murmured Miss Mary; “we hope you will value them for our sakes.”

“How good of you!” cried Paddy and Eileen together, and then Paddy flew straight at each little lady and hugged them both in turn. When she had released them, Miss Jane rose and went to a drawer, and took from it two parcels which she slowly began to unfold. At last, from enough tissue paper to have kept half a dozen fans in, she drew two beautiful hand-painted ivory ones, and presented them to the two girls.

“Oh! lovely! lovely!” and Paddy was almost beside herself. “But how can you bear to part with them!”

“Are you sure you would not rather lend them?” asked Eileen gently.

“No, my dear, Mary and I have thought it over, and we have decided it is folly to hoard up pretty things that might be giving pleasure to someone we love. We had our time when we were young, and we were very happy, and loved pretty things as you do. Now it is your turn, and we must sit and look on.”

“You seem to have been doing that always,” exclaimed Paddy with a sudden burst, “just sitting and looking on at other people’s happiness,” while Eileen slipped a hand into little Miss Mary’s with her slow sweet smile.

“Oh, no, my dear,” Aunt Jane answered at once, “we had just as gay a time as you and Eileen when we were your age.”

She paused.

“And then!” said Paddy, with half-veiled eagerness.

The two sisters looked at each other a moment, and then Miss Mary said a little nervously:

“Not just yet, sister. Some day, if they still care to know we will tell them, but not just yet.”

Eileen pressed the hand in hers with silent sympathy, while warm-hearted Paddy took the opportunity to administer two more hugs in the middle of which Jack entered and claimed that it was his turn next.

“Look what aunties have given us,” cried Paddy, ignoring his request. “Their own beautiful fans that they had for their first ball.”

Jack duly admired, and then asked what they were going to give him that they had worn at their first ball.

“Hadn’t you two sashes!” asked Paddy of the little ladies; “he could wear one round his waist, and one for a tie, and just think how pleased he would be, and how he would strut about in the ball-room, like a dog with two tails.”

“I’ll strut you about in a few minutes,” remarked the maligned one, “speaking of your elders and betters in that light fashion.”

“Betters!” echoed Paddy scornfully. “Did you say betters?”

“I did, Madam. Do you mean to dispute it!”

“It is so utterly silly, it is hardly worth while,” and then she ducked hastily to avoid the missile aimed at her head, and a second later they were flying round the room after each other.

Instantly there was a flutter of skirts, and the two little ladies were collecting breakables, while Miss Jane gasped to Eileen in a horror-struck voice:

“The fans, my dear! The fans!”

Eileen rescued the two heaps of tissue paper with their precious contents, and then held the door open for Paddy to fly out. The next moment they saw her scrambling over the wall between the two gardens, with Jack at her heels.

Eileen remained with the two little ladies, and presently they all went down to the beach together. Here they sat and worked, while Eileen read aloud to them, until they were disturbed by a footstep on the shingle and looked up to see Lawrence Blake approaching.

Instantly, in spite of herself, a crimson flush dyed Eileen’s cheeks, and an anxious look passed between the two little ladies.

Lawrence came up with his pleasantest smile, and greeted all alike with his polished charm, and though the two little ladies had long felt an instinctive mistrust of him, they could not but be impressed, and received him graciously. A boat was pulled up on the beach, beside where they were sitting, and with the same perfect ease, he seated himself upon it, and drew them into conversation. For one moment they made an effort to maintain a formal atmosphere; but since it pleased Lawrence to be gracious, they could no more resist him than anyone else, and almost before they knew it, they were deep in an eager discussion on the picture galleries of Europe.

At the most interesting part a maid from the Parsonage came to say they were wanted, and with real reluctance they rose to go.

Nevertheless, as they walked across the garden their faces grew serious.

“He talks wonderfully well,” said Miss Mary at last, anxious to know what was in her sister’s mind.

“Yes; wonderfully. He is no doubt an extremely cultured young man. And yet—” she paused.

“And yet?” asked Miss Mary.

“I cannot help it,” answered Miss Jane gravely, “but there is something in his face that makes me distrust him. I—I think I wish he had never come back to Omeath.”

“I wish so, too, sister,” said Miss Mary, with like gravity. “I wish it very much;” then they passed into the house.

Meanwhile Eileen sat on, and Lawrence leaned against the boat and looked into her beautiful eyes. He had a way of doing this that was vaguely a caress in itself, and that made poor Eileen’s heart flutter almost fearfully, at the mere thought of all it, perhaps, involved. When he looked at her like that, it made no difference that he might be seated some little distance away, and their conversation of the most matter-of-fact order; the whole atmosphere was electric to her young ingenuousness. Lawrence might tell himself he meant no harm; and console himself at occasional uneasy moments with the reflection that he had uttered no word of love, nor drawn any nearer to her than was entirely circumspect; yet he, of all others, could not fail to know just what power of magnetism he was able to throw into a glance, and what inflection of unnamed tenderness could delicately colour his voice, though he spoke of only the most commonplace things. Had he not practiced the fine art half over the world; and quietly walked in to conquest, over the heads of far better looking and more attractive men. Yet he remained unattached: a circumstance sufficiently dangerous in itself. Never in all these years had he gone one inch too far; never become more than lightly entangled; yet always a conqueror. The personality that imbued him to his finger-tips, coupled with a certain indifference, against which women who loved him flung themselves in vain, yet could not break away, had undoubtedly worked far more harm and misery than the honest, gay flirtations of many a more censured man. Yet he had good points and could be lovable. Was it, perhaps, the age he lived in? the blasé, free-thinking, free-living set he had become identified with, tipping the delicately adjusted balance to the wrong side. However, that might be, the hour had gone by when anyone could save Eileen; it must now be either radiant joy or heart-broken misery. And meanwhile, into her beautiful eyes, noting also the delicately moulded form and exquisite skin, Lawrence looked that vague caress, with a willfully blind indifference to the future. He only knew that she was entrancingly fair to gaze upon; and he had not by any means suffered from the boredom he had anticipated, before yielding to his mother’s persuasions.

He chatted on a little while casually now, and then suddenly brought the colour flaming to her cheeks by saying, with a charming air of persuasion:

“If I am not too premature, Eileen, will you promise me the first dance, and the supper-dance on Thursday? I feel it’s rather cheek asking you so soon; but I shall get so bored doing the host all the evening; I wanted to make quite sure of the two dances that matter the most.”

Under the lowered lids her eyes shone. She had so hoped he would ask her for the supper-dance; the event of the evening at their merry dances, and yet had hardly dared to hope. Still, with an exquisite flush, she bantered him a little. “But you may change your mind by Thursday! It seems a long way off yet, and it would be so awkward for you if you did.”

He laughed lightly. “I’ll promise to tell you if I do, I’ll go down on my knees and implore your pity and clemency, and your permission to ask someone else.”

She laughed with him, and then he added, “Mind, I don’t say I shall be content with those two only, but I daren’t claim another now. Perhaps, if my duties as host allow me another opportunity, you will again be kind?”

She said nothing, but glanced away from him, feeling deliriously happy; and at the same moment Paddy emerged from the garden, with Jack and Ted Masterman, one on either side of her.

Lawrence got up at once. “Here comes your sister,” he remarked, “with her usual train of admirers. If you will not mind making excuses for me, I will say good-by, as I have to ride on to Carlingford;” and he hurried away.

“Where’s his august majesty off to, in such a hurry?” asked Paddy, as she came up. “I was just going to ask him to reserve the supper-dance for me, as I always like a supper-partner who thinks it is too much trouble to talk, and so leaves more time for eating.”

“He had to ride on to Carlingford,” said Eileen, rising, “so he asked me to excuse him to you. How do you do, Mr Masterman? I am glad to hear you are going to remain for the ball after all.”

“Thank you,” Ted answered heartily. “I wouldn’t have missed it for anything, if I could possibly help it.”

“Mr Masterman has just saved my life, or at any rate my beauty,” remarked Paddy. “What do you think I ought to do?”

“How?” questioned Eileen.

“Well, you see, I caught my foot on the top of the wall, when I somewhat hastily left the Parsonage just now, and he happened to be on the other side, in just the right spot to catch me.”

“I expect the poor chap was nearly crushed to death,” remarked Jack. “He’ll go home with a nice opinion of wild Irish girls.”

“I shall, indeed,” was the fervent rejoinder, looking hard at Paddy; but as usual she was already attending to something quite different, and the remark, with its double meaning was entirely lost upon her.

Later on, they all four strolled down to the water after dinner, and Jack managed to detain Eileen a little behind the others.

He was a trifle awkward and shy as if he had something on his mind, and at last, without much preliminary, he blurted out, “You’ll give me the supper-dance, won’t you, Eileen? I wanted to ask you before, but I thought you’d think I was so silly to be asking so soon.”

“Oh! I’m sorry, Jack,” with genuine regret for his sake; “I’ve promised it.”

“You’ve promised it!” he echoed in astonishment.

“Yes, this afternoon.”

“To whom?” looking hard into her face.

“To Lawrence Blake,” and she did not meet his eyes.

Jack stood still suddenly, without quite knowing it, and stared across to the mountains. It seemed to him all in a moment as if some grim phantom had suddenly risen, and menaced him for the first time in his life, with a vision of striving and failure.

He ground his teeth together angrily.

“Curse Lawrence Blake,” he muttered, and kicking some pebbles angrily into the lake, strode forward.

CHAPTER X
A Letter from Calcutta.

Paddy sat on the morning-room table swinging her feet, and Jack leaned against the mantelpiece with his hands in his pockets, biting at the end of an empty pipe fitfully, as was his wont when all did not fall out as he wished.

“There was a little girl
And she had a little curl
Right in the middle of her forehead,”

sang Paddy.

“And when she was good
She was very, very good;
And when she was naughty, she was ’orrid.”

“Are you going to save me the supper-dance, Paddy!” he asked, without moving.

Paddy put her head on one side like a little bird, and eyed him quizzically a moment in silence.

“How many people have you already asked!” she said suddenly.

He coloured a little under his sunburn.

“Why should you suppose I have asked anyone!”

“I only wanted to know if you had. You have got a very tell-tale face, and now I can see for myself. Was it Eileen!”

“Are you going through this cross-examination with all your partners?” with a touch of sarcasm.

“It wouldn’t be necessary. You are the only one likely to use me as a makeshift.”

“You are in a beastly temper this morning.”

“Oh no, I’m not,” good-naturedly. “I only had reasons of my own for wanting to know. I suppose Eileen was already promised to Lawrence Blake!”

“It was like his impudence,” savagely.

“I don’t see that. ‘First come, first served,’ is a perfectly fair rule. You should have been sharper and got there before him. You see you’re too late in this quarter also.”

“What! Have you promised too?”

“Yes; yesterday.”

Jack bit his lip and felt furious with himself and all the world.

“What in the name of fortune am I to do?” he asked. “With neither you nor Eileen for the supper-dance, I shan’t know myself.”

“You must ask Kathleen Blake, of course. It is what you ought to have done all along,” and then suddenly Paddy swung herself half across the room and stepped out of the French window into the garden, and vanished in the direction of the shore. It was unpleasantly present in her mind that Jack had not been sufficiently interested to ask to whom she had promised the dance; and it left her in that mood when the only relief is occupation. So she untied the boat, stepped in, and proceeded to take a steady row. If Jack continued blind, she wondered vaguely, what would become of them all?

“Heigho!” she murmured, resting on her oars. “It seems to me we’re all changing. Jack’s getting serious, and Eileen is getting serious, and if I don’t mind I shall get serious too. What a pity we can’t stay children another ten years.” She looked a little dreamily to the horizon. “I wonder if something’s going to happen,” she mused. “I’ve an odd feeling somewhere, either in my head, or in my boots—I don’t quite know which—that there’s something in the air; an ‘Ides of March’—sort of feeling that makes me inclined to be quite tragic and Julius Caesarish. Well! well!”—gripping her oars again—“if it comes, it comes, Paddy Adair, and you’ll just have to make the best of it. Meanwhile you had better make hay while the sun shines, and go out with the boys shooting as you promised,” and she turned homeward again.

Eileen, from far up in the mountain, watched her a little wonderingly, recognising the boat and Paddy’s vigorous strokes, even from that distance. But she was too engrossed with her own thoughts to wonder long, and presently gained her own favourite nook, in which the October sun was shining warmly. Here, sitting down in her favourite attitude, she leant her chin in her hands and gazed at the turquoise sea on the horizon. But the old soft dreaminess was changed to-day for that wistful, troubled look that had grown of late, and in the depths of the deep blue eyes there was a new sadness.

“I cannot help it,” she said at last. “Whether he is a good man or not; whether it is right or wrong, I love him, I love him.”

Then, raising her eyes to the deep vault of the blue above, she breathed softly, “Oh God! help me to help him; teach me, teach me, that if the time comes that he should want me, I may be ready and strong to lead him back to love, and faith, and happiness. For the rest, if there must be suffering, I will try to be brave and content.”

Then she got up and started down the mountain, and when she was about half-way home she turned a boulder and came suddenly upon Lawrence Blake with his gun and his dogs.

Instantly his thin face lit up with a smile.

“I saw your sister with Masterman and O’Hara about fifteen minutes ago,” he said, “and I wondered where you were. Your sister shot a rabbit running in fine style.”

“She is a splendid shot,” replied Eileen warmly. “She killed her first snipe this summer.”

“Did she, indeed! That’s excellent for a girl. But then she ought to have been a boy, really, oughtn’t she? One can’t help feeling there’s good material wasted.”

“Why wasted?” she asked.

“Well, to be rather rudely candid, I am not an admirer of your sex at all.”

“Isn’t it rather poor to judge the many by a few who may have disappointed you?”

“It would be more correct to say the ‘few’ by the many who have disgusted me.”

“I am sorry,” she said simply: “I wish it had not been so.”

“If you knew the world as I do, you would see that it could hardly be otherwise.”

“Still, I am sorry,” she reiterated; “dreadfully sorry.”

He watched her a moment covertly.

She was looking her best, with the freshness of the mountain air glowing in her eyes and cheeks. He was thinking she looked as well in her tam-o’-shanter, short skirt, and blouse, with linen collar and cuffs, as anything he had ever seen her in. Compared with some of the resplendent beauties he had admired, she was as the cosy fireside is to the marble palace, or the fragrant violet is to the dazzling poppies. And then for a moment on the mountain side, with the fresh blowing winds, and the fragrance, and the loveliness of the lake and mountains, an unusually soft mood seemed to take possession of him, and something apart from her beauty to stir his pulses and rest his senses. As they moved on, he dropped the bitter, sneering tone so habitual to him, and chatted to her frankly and charmingly with unmistakably an assumption of some special link between them.

Later on, Eileen went in home with shining eyes and light footsteps, feeling as if already her prayer had been answered; and Lawrence’s mother glanced at him across the luncheon table, wondering to what good angel they were indebted for his amiability, instead of his more usual taciturn moodiness.

In the afternoon he drove her out himself to pay a call some miles distant, chatting pleasantly all the way; and at dinner, he condescended to discuss various matters connected with the dance, instead of preserving his customary silence.

Then he went into his den for a smoke, and so preoccupied was he for a few moments that he did not notice a large, flat piece of pasteboard lying on the table, which had evidently arrived by the evening post. Instead, he glanced with a casual air of appreciation round his beloved bachelor domain, wondering, half-unconsciously, if perhaps the time were coming for him to settle down and give up his wanderings.

His eye roved dreamily over his fine collection of foreign swords, picked up in all quarters of the globe, and many other strange weapons of warfare, arranged fantastically upon the walls—his sporting prints, worth large sums of money as originals—his guns and riding stocks—his trophies of big game shooting.

Lastly, his books, of which he had also a fine collection, though it could not altogether be said to be a credit to his taste; and his prints and photographs strewn in all directions.

“I wonder what Eileen would think of them?” was the involuntary thought in his mind, and his thin lips parted in a slight smile.

Then he caught sight of the carefully tied pasteboard, and stepping forward picked it up with a curious expression.

“By Jove!—Queenie,” he muttered, seeing the writing, and proceeded to cut the string.

Then he drew from its wrappers the full-length portrait of a beautiful girl in fancy dress.

For a long time he stood perfectly still looking at it, then he held it at arm’s length, trying it in different lights, and surveying it with keenly criticising eyes.

“Superb,” was his final verdict, muttered under his breath; then he leaned it up against another photograph in the place of honour on his writing desk, and turned his attention to a little scented note that had accompanied it. A printed slip of newspaper was enclosed in the letter, but first he read, in a bold, girlish handwriting:

“Dear Old Lawrie,—
“Read the enclosed slip and bow down—even your cynical old head owes homage to such a paragon, and foreseeing my victory, in gracious acceptance of the same homage, I send you the latest portrait of this Queen of Beauty.
“When shall we prepare your den for you, and duly banish your favourite enemies? You said you would come again in the autumn—and consequently Calcutta waits.
“Earl Selloyd haunts our door-step, and mamma has a fancy for a peer as son-in-law. Comprenez?

“Queenie.”

On the slip of newspaper he read:

“At the fancy dress ball last night, given in honour of Lord Kitchener, one of the most striking among the younger women was the beautiful Miss Gwendoline Grant-Carew, only daughter of the Hon. and Mrs Jack Grant-Carew. She is undoubtedly one of the reigning queens of English beauty, and as charming and vivacious as she is fair to look upon.”

Holding the letter in his hand, Lawrence again gazed critically at the portrait on his desk, and the suggestion of a pleased expression dawned on his face.

“So Selloyd’s trying to get in the running there, is he?” he mused. “Beastly cad! I owe him one or two since our college days. It will be almost as good sport as tiger shooting to spoil his game for him. I think I’ll start for India next month.”

Then he put the little note carefully into his pocket-book, and, lighting a cigar, sank into a deep arm-chair and stared into the fire, dreaming of Gwendoline Grant-Carew.

CHAPTER XI
The Scrimmage Party.

Yet the very next morning he was again at Eileen’s side, again looking that unspoken homage into her eyes.

It was the occasion of what was generally known as a Scrimmage Party at The Ghan House, to which he has been inveigled partly on false pretences.

“Are you coming to my birthday party?” Paddy had shouted to him as he was riding past in the morning, from the top of a hen-house where she was busily endeavouring to mend leakages in the roof.

He reined in his horse, and came as near as he could get.

“What in the name of fortune are you doing up there?”

“I’m fixing on a few odd slates to keep out the rain. Don’t you admire my handiwork?”

“Why don’t you let your man do it? Lord!” with amusement, “I never saw such a position.”

Paddy glanced at her somewhat generous display of ankle, and her feet trying to hang on to the roof.

“To tell you the honest truth, Jack was supposed to be going to do it, while I handed up the slates, but we quarrelled.”

“You seem to enjoy quarrelling with your friends beyond anything. I wonder you have any left.”

Now that he had come near, he was in no violent hurry to go on, for Paddy, perched on her hen-house roof, had a roguish, dare-devil look that was distinctly alluring.

“Oh! they come round again,” airily. “It would often be more fun if they didn’t. That’s why I like quarrelling with you. Your thunder-clouds last longer.”

“Then in future I shall suppress them altogether.”

“Not you. You wouldn’t know yourself amiable too long.”

“Am I so very bad-tempered?”

Paddy glanced up from her work.

“You’re the most detestable person I know, as a rule,” she informed him.

Lawrence could not help laughing, though she was evidently quite serious.

“I suppose the few intervals when I bask in the sunlight of your favour, are when I buy pigs to oblige you, and that kind of thing! I shouldn’t have taken you for a time-server, Paddy—only liking people for what you can get out of them.”

“Daddy was ill over the pigs,” she remarked, ignoring his thrust. “I told him while we were at tea, and he choked, and got dreadfully ill, because every time he was just calming down, he remembered about Dan’el on the floor, or about you having to buy my fifteen. I daren’t even mention such a thing as a pig in his hearing now. He isn’t strong enough for it. You see he hadn’t quite got over my charging into you when I was after that rat, and then making you carry the little beast of a ferret and join in,” and her eyes shone bewitchingly.

“If you think I’m detestable, what do you suppose I think of you?” he asked.

“Oh, no one thinks at all when it’s me,” with a funny little pursing up of her lips, and a sweeping disregard of grammar. “You see, I can’t be judged after any ordinary standard, as I’m not ordinary. I’m not a girl, and I’m not a boy—I’m Paddy—‘Paddy-the-next-best-thing.’”

He laughed again. “Oh no! you’re not ordinary,” he agreed, “and I’m rather sorry there are not some more Paddys—I like the breed.”

“Jack doesn’t,” calmly going on with her tinkering. “He started helping me to do this job, and then he got wild, and when I suggested he took the slates off the good part to mend the bad, he went off in a huff. He implied that he could do with me when I was funny, but not when I was silly,” and she chuckled to herself with a remembering relish.

“He has very bad taste. He should like you in any mood.”

“His taste is apparently much the same as yours.” Paddy looked up with a queer expression in her eyes, before which he glanced away. He knew she was alluding to Eileen. “Unfortunately for him,” she finished calmly.

Lawrence glanced at her again, and when he did so he blew that she had spoken with intent. She had given him either a hint or a warning; he could not quite say which; but he understood at once, that in her eyes he was already her sister’s recognised suitor. He touched up his horse to ride on. “Well, good-by,” lightly. “May I bring you a birthday present this evening?”

“No,” she laughed back, “bring a few thunder-clouds to entertain me.”

It was not until the evening began, that he discovered what kind of a party he had accepted an invitation for.

Paddy enlightened him.

“You’ve got to begin by sitting on the floor, and playing, ‘Brother, I’m bobbed!’” she announced. “You’ll find it rather hot work, but you can cool down afterward, while someone takes your place.”

“I’ve a great admiration for you, Paddy,” he answered calmly. “But not for all the Paddys in the world will I sit on the floor and play, ‘Brother, I’m bobbed!’”

“Tut tut!” mimicked, Paddy, screwing up an imaginary eyeglass. “Your—your—shoe a little too tight—did you say!—or was it your—ahem—divided skirt...?”

“I said I should not play ‘Brother, I’m bobbed,’” repeated Lawrence, laughing; “but if a score has to be kept of the bobbing—whatever process that may be—I am at your service.”

“You can go and sit with Daddy, and the old people,” scathingly. “You might have guessed my birthday party wasn’t very likely to be reclining in arm-chairs, and conversing politely.”

“May I, as a special favour, be allowed first to mention a package in the hall, intended for your Serene Highness—?”

“A package!—in the hall!—Oh! go and sit where you like, and do what you like,” and she flew off to look for it, returning triumphantly with the finest production in confectionery that Newry could boast.

After that Lawrence was left in peace, to sit by the delighted old soldier, who laughed till he was again ill, at the wild scenes which ensued; until the climax of Paddy on the floor, with a small table of bric-à-brac, and the coal box on top of her, with the coals flying in all directions, proved too much for him. When she at last scrambled to her feet, with a face Jack and Doreen Blake had surreptitiously smudged with coal dust, he had to be led away to his own den for a smoke, whither Lawrence accompanied him. “These Scrimmage Parties are too much for me now-a-days,” said the fine old warrior, sinking back into his big chair. “Lord! what a girl she is!—what a girl she is!” and there was a ring of delight and pride in his voice, which his gentle, beautiful daughter never inspired.

“She informed me this morning she was not a girl,” remarked Lawrence. “She said she was neither a girl, nor a boy, she was Paddy!”

The father chuckled in delight. “It’s about true, for there’s not her like anywhere. Begorra, lad!—if she’d been a boy—there’d not have been a soldier in the British army to touch her. But she’ll go far yet,” nodding his head sagely. “I’ll give any beautiful woman points in another two or three years, and back Paddy against her. While the other woman’s doing her hair, and arranging her dress, and thinking what to say, Paddy’ll be getting there. She won’t need to stop and think. She’ll be just herself, and if I’m not much mistaken, the men’ll go down before her like ninepins. O Lord!—and she’ll snap her fingers in their faces, and go rampaging on, like a real, thoroughbred Irish Fusilier.

“But I shall not be there to see,” dropping his voice suddenly to a note of sadness. “Take my advice, Lawrence, and marry young. I married too late, and when everything is just at its best, I shall get my summons to go.” He shook his head mournfully, and sank for a moment into a reverie, seeing his heart’s darling, his boy that was a girl, queening it over an admiring throng, and he no longer at hand to rejoice. Lawrence commenced to chat with him of his travelling adventures, in his most engaging manner, to cheer him up; smiling inwardly a little at his estimate of the tom-boy, whom he could hardly conceive as yet, compelling anything but the indulgent fondness for an amusing child.

A little later she broke in upon them herself, to say they were all going for a row on the Loch by starlight, to finish up with an impromptu open-air concert, with Ted Masterman’s banjo, and Kathleen’s guitar. They rose to follow her, and soon after the whole night seemed to ring with merry choruses from the two boats; a rowdy one containing Jack and Paddy, and a few other kindred spirits; and a quiet one with Lawrence and Eileen, little Miss Mary, and one or two other less boisterous members of the party.

Eileen was very quiet. Owing to the number in the boat, she and Lawrence, he rowing and she in the bow, were nearer than they had ever been before, and only the alluring darkness around them. The rowers shipped their oars for a little to listen to the others, and Lawrence turned round to the silent figure, half-sitting, half-reclining, beside him.

It was an entrancing night, warm and luscious and still, but for the lapping of the water against the boat, and the merry sounds from the other party. Overhead gleamed and glittered a million stars. All round, mysteriously grand, mysteriously lovely, towered the Mourne Mountains. Eileen felt herself breathing fitfully, under the spell of some ravishing, dream-like ecstasy. He was so close to her that his coat brushed against her arm, and the touch thrilled through all her being. Yet she never moved nor spoke, looking out into the fathomless, mystical depths of the night, one little hand resting lightly on the edge of the boat, unconsciously near to her companion.

And something in the enervating atmosphere, and the dream-like charm, again had that dangerously soothing effect upon Lawrence. Look where he would, think as he would, he could not turn his consciousness from the sense of that little soft hand so temptingly close to him in the darkness. What would she do if he followed his impulse, and clasped his own over it.

He tried to think of other things and forget it. If it had been any other girl—but not Eileen—no, he dare not trifle with Eileen. Yet it was such a little thing, and he wanted desperately at the moment to feel the touch of the little warm fingers in his. One more effort to forget—one more failure—and in the shadows his thin, artistic fingers closed over those others.

Eileen did not move nor speak. For the moment she was too much taken aback, and then she was only aware of a swiftly beating heart, and a heavenly sense of delight. But in a few moments, out of the shadows, shot the other boat straight toward them, with Paddy leaning over the side. She reached out her hand, and grasping at the bow that held Lawrence and Eileen. Her grasp closed over a dim white object, two hands—a man and a woman’s—clasped together.

“Ah!” said Paddy to the darkness, with rather startling suddenness, and then subsided into silence.

CHAPTER XII
The Ball.

Paddy was dressed first, because Eileen did her hair for her, and when she was ready she surveyed herself with critical eyes in the long pier glass.

“I rather think Paddy will surprise them to-night,” she remarked. “They’ll be coming round and asking her where her snub nose and sallow skin are. I shall say, ‘They are still there, good people, but don’t you observe that her hair has entirely effaced everything but itself?’”

In truth she was right, for it would be hard to find lovelier hair than Paddy’s, and under Eileen’s skillful handling it had, indeed, overshadowed everything else.

It was of a rich auburn tint, as fine as silk, and had a way of waving and curling in thick masses, with a beautiful natural wave, when given sufficient freedom. Paddy, in her perpetual haste, usually spoilt it by twisting it too tightly, but to-night Eileen had given the rich coils full play, and they curled themselves lovingly round Paddy’s pretty forehead and slender neck in a way that somehow concealed her failings by drawing all attention to themselves. And then, too, she had the fine eyes of her country, and to-night they sparkled and danced in a way that was wholly bewitching. “Daddy,” she called through into her father’s room, “you just won’t know me I look so beautiful. You never thought I could look even pretty, did you?—but just wait till you see!”

Then she danced into his dressing-room, and swept him a low courtesy.

“Begorra!” exclaimed the old General delightedly, “you’ll take ’em all by storm yet. Get out your scouts, young men, and lay your plan of action, for there’s a prize to be captured and carried off to-night, and no mistake.”

“No, there isn’t, then, daddy, for I don’t mean to be captured nor carried off, nor anything else, as long as I can just stay here at The Ghan House with you and the motherkins,” and she threw her arms round the old soldier’s neck and hugged him until he cried out that he would be suffocated.

Then she smilingly surveyed her crumpled lace.

“I guess we’ll get into trouble if we don’t mind!” she remarked. “See what you’ve done to my lace!”

“What I’ve done, indeed! I should like to know who had a finger in that pie beside yourself.”

Paddy smoothed her lace and went downstairs a little thoughtfully, to see if Jack had come across yet from the rectory.

She found him standing in the hall, and when he saw her he exclaimed, “Is that you, Paddy?—is that really you?”

“Yes,” with a little nod, “it’s really me. You’ve always been at great pains to impress upon me that I’m hopelessly plain, Jack. Perhaps, now, you’ll have the politeness to own you were wrong,” and she looked up at him with her brilliant smile.

“I don’t somehow feel sure that it’s you yet, though,” he answered. “Where did you get all that hair from?”

“It’s been there all along, but I couldn’t be bothered to do it properly, so to-night Eileen did it.”

“Isn’t she dressed yet?”

“No; so I took the opportunity of coming down to be admired before I am outshone.” She tripped across the hall and stood where the full light of the lamps shone upon her, throwing back her small head triumphantly, and unconsciously striking an attitude full of grace and piquancy.

There was a dark wainscoting round the hall, and Jack saw with no small surprise that, thrown into relief by the dark background, her dainty dress becoming her perfectly, she formed a really lovely picture. His admiration showed in his eyes, and suddenly a beautiful flush spread over her somewhat colourless cheeks.

“That’s the first time you’ve ever seen anything in me but a harum-scarum tom-boy, isn’t it, Jack?” she said, and there was an unaccountable note of wistfulness in her tone. “Look again—Eileen will be here directly, and then you will forget.”

A light footstep sounded at the top of the stairs, and instantly she dashed her hand across her eyes as if to drive away some unwelcome recollection, and laughing gayly, called:

“Come along, Eileen; I’ve been playing your rôle of family beauty for nearly ten minutes, just to see how it felt, but ‘harum-scarum Paddy’ suits me best, and you’ve come just at the right time to save me from a total collapse.”

Jack took a step forward to the staircase, with all his soul in his eyes, as Eileen came slowly down, saying:

“Don’t be silly, Paddy. I’m sure the first place is yours to-night.”

Jack said nothing, but he thought he had never in all his life seen anything so beautiful as Eileen Adair. She wore white only, and the fluffy, lacy style that was so becoming to Paddy was replaced in her dress by an almost severe simplicity, that suited perfectly her Madonna-like sweetness, and deep, calm, wonderful eyes.

“Well, we won’t let Jack be a second Paris, anyhow,” laughed Paddy, “because he would not give a perfectly unbiased judgment, being already prejudiced. But where are the aunties?” turning to the drawing-room, from which came a sound of voices; “are they here yet?”

“Rather!” exclaimed Jack impressively. “You just see! I tell you, you and Eileen are not in it,” and they all crossed the hall together.

Paddy threw open the drawing-room door with a flourish, and, as they entered, exclaimed, “Behold!—not the meeting of the two great monarchs of old, but the meeting of the reigning beauties of Omeath to-day.”

Then she darted forward toward the two little ladies, crying, “Oh, you look just lovely!—lovely! I really must hug you.”

“Oh! my dear! my dear!” they both gasped, and Miss Jane got quickly behind her chair, while Miss Mary fluttered across the room and ensconced herself behind the sofa.

“What’s the matter!” cried Paddy. “I won’t touch you—I promise I won’t. Do come out and let us have a full view.”

After thoroughly reassuring themselves that she really meant it, Miss Jane stepped forward, and Miss Mary timidly followed suit, and then began a general criticising and admiring all round, in which Jack joined in his usual lively fashion.

“Aunties, don’t you think Cinderella’s Fairy Godmother must have been here with her magic wand!” he exclaimed, “and turned Paddy into as much of a beauty as she could possibly get her? I shall take care not to be dancing with her at twelve o’clock, because I feel quite certain on the first stroke of the hour she will become herself again, and her hair will be coming down, her dress torn, and she will look just like she does in ordinary life.”

“Then we shall only be better paired than we were before,” retorted Paddy, “because you do not look in the least like a prince. Aunt Mary, you are lovely!” running on with eager warmth. “Oh! I should like to know what you looked like at my age.”

“She was very beautiful, my dear,” said Aunt Jane proudly. “I always dressed her for balls myself.”

“Oh; no, not quite that, sister,” murmured Miss Mary, in anxious self-deprecation; “just pretty, perhaps, sister, but that was all.”

“No; beautiful,” asserted Miss Jane again, in a voice that allowed no contradiction.

“And you the same, Aunt Jane, I expect!” said Eileen, smiling.

“No, I was more like Paddy here. I knew that my chief charm lay in my expression and spirits, and so I did not worry any more than she about my appearance and clothes.”

“Do I understand you to say you didn’t bother to wear clothes, Aunt Jane?” asked Jack in solemn surprise, at which the two little ladies looked horrified and Paddy and Eileen laughed, and just then the General, who had at last managed to get into his extra-special best dress suit, bustled into the room.

“Jack, my boy,” he said, taking the younger man’s arm, “take my advice and don’t let yourself get stout. If you only knew what I have gone through, trying to get into these clothes!—I wonder I didn’t have a fit of apoplexy! There! I do indeed! And five years ago they fitted me perfectly. Bedad! I’m not sure now the coat won’t split all up the back before the evening is half over, and I’m afraid to see if I can sit down for fear it might result in my not being able to go to the ball at all.”

“We wouldn’t go without you, daddy, anyhow,” exclaimed Paddy. “Don’t the aunties look lovely? Aren’t you just dreadfully in love with both of them? I’m sure mother will be jealous before the evening is over.”

“Certainly I am; I always have been! Didn’t you know that, you minx! If they hadn’t both been so obdurate long ago all sorts of things might have happened, eh, Jane?” and the old man laughed heartily. “Do you remember boxing my ears under the mulberry tree one Sunday afternoon? Faith! you were a vixen,” and he laughed so heartily that Mrs Adair hurried forward with anxious reminders concerning his clothes.

“They weren’t made to laugh in, daddy,” cried Paddy delightedly, “and I feel a little like that about mine, so we’d better keep together, and remind each other occasionally, hadn’t we?”

Carriage wheels were heard then, and the roomy omnibus engaged to carry them all to the Lodge drove up to the door.

The two little ladies got in first, holding their new silk dresses very high above their ankles, and carefully folding shawls all round them before they ventured to sit down, in case there was a speck of dirt on the seats. Then Mrs Adair and Eileen, whose eyes were shining already with a new happiness; and lastly Paddy and Jack hoisted the General up between them, so that there was the least possible strain upon his clothes.

Then they set off amid the usual sparring between Jack and Paddy, a gentle sort of purring from the two little ladies, and sundry loud guffaws from the General. Only Eileen and her mother were silent—the one lost in a dear dreamland of delicious anticipation, and the other anxiously, watching with vague misgivings in her heart.

There were no misgivings for Eileen that night. The last week had held so many dear moments, her mind was only too ready to be blinded to all else and wait dreamily for her joy.

But a mother’s eyes see so much, and Mrs Adair knew her world—likewise little Miss Mary, who, in the midst of her soft purring, now and then threw wistful glances toward Eileen’s shining eyes and beautiful face.

Mrs Blake and Lawrence received their guests in the large billiard-room, which had been cleared for dancing, and by the time the party from The Ghan House arrived quite a large number had already collected. When General Adair led Miss Jane into the room with old-fashioned courtly grace, followed closely by Mrs Adair and Miss Mary, and the young folks at their heels, there was quite a little stir among the chatting groups. For though they did not entertain in a big way themselves, General and Mrs Adair were known and respected throughout the county, while the two girls were favourites wherever they went; and, as has already been said, the little ladies from the rectory were almost an institution.

When Mrs Blake and Lawrence had shaken hands with them, others clustered round eagerly, but Lawrence had time to look hard into Eileen’s eyes, and murmur, “Don’t forget the first dance is mine,” before she was carried off by other friends. Paddy and Jack were almost immediately seized upon by Kathleen and Doreen, who were in great glee over their own coming-out.

“How does it feel?” asked Jack. “Anything like a snail squeezing out of a shell, or like falling out of a tree?”

“Neither,” they exclaimed; “more like being crowned queen.”

“And expecting everyone to bow down to you,” added Doreen gayly. “I hope you are prepared to be finely ordered about?”

“That won’t be anything new. It seems to me I have been at yours and Kathleen’s beck and call ever since I can remember—to say nothing of Paddy and Eileen, who treat me as if I was only created to wait on them. I suppose I shall be expected to lead off the ball with one of you!” feigning disgust.

“What impudence!” they cried together. “Here are we impressing upon you that in future you are to treat us with great respect, and you start off by coolly claiming one of the greatest favours we can confer.”

“Not at all,” quoth Jack. “I merely await your orders. I know that one of you will expect me to have the first dance with you, and all I ask is, which?”

“Then you are just wrong,” said Doreen, tossing her head. “I wouldn’t lead the dance off with you—if—if—my kingdom depended upon it.”

“Well, I never asked you to,” wickedly. “You shouldn’t be in such a hurry to decline before you’re asked.”

“You wretch,” with a laugh. “Well, I’ll just take you to pay you out. There—write ‘Jack’ on the first line at once,” and she handed him her programme.

Jack took it readily, for of the two he preferred Doreen, the younger, and he calmly proceeded to write his name faintly the whole way down the cardboard.

“Goodness!” she cried, when he gave it back to her. “Look at this, Paddy! Did you ever see such cool impudence?”

“They’re nearly all promised to me,” said Paddy calmly, “so it’s of no consequence, and now we can both treat him as we like. He’ll be very useful if we get partners we don’t like, and, of course, he can’t dance with anyone else.”

“No of course not—what fun,” and Doreen and Paddy went of gayly, while Jack sought Eileen.

“He’s put the supper-dance very black, so he means that,” said Doreen. “Why isn’t he having it with you as usual?”

“I guess he thought he’d like a change,” Paddy replied loyally, “and quite time,” and Doreen was satisfied.

The next moment a voice in Paddy’s ear, with a ring in it that she could not well mistake, said quietly:

“I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Miss Adair.”

“Then you must be very blind,” she answered brightly, “for in my own estimation I’ve been very much en évidence all the time so far. But perhaps you did not recognise me?”

“Perhaps,” with a little smile, and Ted Masterman surveyed her in that quiet, masterly way of his, that always made Paddy feel rebellious, with the most unmistakable admiration written on his face.

“You look like the Great Mogul,” she exclaimed, “criticising me in that calmly superior way. It’s all my own hair; don’t be alarmed.”

“It’s the most beautiful hair I have ever seen,” he said, in a quiet way that could not possibly offend her. “I always thought it was a pity you did not treat it better.”

“Then you had no business to think about it at all, or to criticise me.”

“A cat may look at a queen. How many dances are you going to give me, now I have risked losing my berth to be here!”

“Perhaps two,” hiding a twinkle in her eyes.

“More,” he answered.

“No,” resolutely.

“I say more.”

“I don’t care what you say.”

“I am going to have my dances all the same,” and he gained possession of her programme.

“I’ve a great mind to cancel the supper-dance, and not have any with you,” trying to look annoyed.

“Now you look angry,” he said; “but don’t be cross to-night. After to-morrow I shall not trouble you again for a long time, so you can well afford to be magnanimous.”

Paddy evidently agreed, for she took back her programme and only feigned a slight frown when she saw his name on four different lines.

Without meaning to be unkind, the thought, “perhaps it will vex Jack,” entered into her mind and stayed there.

And so the game at cross-purposes went on.

CHAPTER XIII
Paddy’s Views on Sentimentality.

When the music for the first dance commenced, General Adair led out Mrs Blake, and almost simultaneously Kathleen and Doreen with their partners, and Lawrence with Eileen followed suit. Paddy, however, waited breathless, to watch her father.

“I’m all on thorns,” she explained to her partner. “I simply can’t dance for a minute or two. Daddy’s clothes are too tight for him to laugh in with any safety, so goodness knows what will happen if he dances long!—I must warn him.”

She succeeded in getting within earshot, and at a loss for an appropriate warning, remarked in an audible whisper, with feigned anxiety: “Daddy—remember Lot’s wife,” which so tickled the old soldier that he nearly come to grief through her, instead of being saved from it.

“How well she looks to-night!” Mrs Blake said warmly, following Paddy with admiring eyes. “You must be very proud of your girls, General. One is beautiful, and the other full of originality and charm.”

“I am, Madam,” he said. “I am, indeed. There’s not an officer in the British Army knows less about fear than Paddy—she’d storm any stronghold in the face of any guns, and never turn a hair. If she’d been a man, she’d have written her name in English History. I used to fret about it a little, but Lord! I wouldn’t change her now for all the fame in Europe. I’m thinking there’s just as much need in the world for brave women as brave men, and none too many of them.”

“Indeed, you are right, General. Paddy will find her vocation yet, and perhaps write her name in history too.”

Meanwhile, Lawrence and Eileen glided round almost in silence. Both were perfect dancers, and content while the music continued to leave all conversation alone. Afterward they rested in a small alcove, and Lawrence took the opportunity to feast his eyes on his partner’s loveliness.

“You are looking splendid, Eileen,” he said, with unwonted warmth for him, “that dress suits you perfectly. Did you choose it yourself?”

“Yes,” lowering her eyes, that they might not tell too plainly their tale of gladness.

He hatched her a moment, thinking of her perfect naturalness, and then across his mind floated the picture and remembrance of Gwendoline Carew. How different they were, these two girls, who, for the present at any rate, held sway in his fickle affections.

Against Eileen’s simplicity, he could not help a little inward smile at the thought of Gwendoline’s past-masterdom in the art of attracting, and holding, and queening it generally over the opposite sex. He thought he would like to see them together, and supposing Gwendoline should take it into her head to be jealous, he smiled inwardly at the notion of what her summing up of her rival might be.

Then Eileen looked up into his face, and somehow again his defences grew weak.

“Out of sight, out of mind,” had ever been his motto, and while the image of Gwendoline faded, a recklessness took possession of him to enjoy the evening to the full. It was so seldom he found anything to enjoy now, and he easily persuaded himself Eileen was too sensible to jump to rash conclusions.

And for the rest! well! he was going to India directly, and things would easily smooth themselves out again.

So he leaned forward and talked to her just in the way she liked best, and the way that brought the colour quickest to her cheeks, and the changing lights to her eyes that were so good to look upon.

“Now I must go and give myself up to duty,” he finished with a sigh, when the second dance was about to commence. “It feels rather like journeying through a sandy desert, with an occasional oasis when I dance with you.”

“Oh, no!” she said quickly. “There are such a lot fit nice people here, you will enjoy it all ever so much.”

“Opinions differ,” with a slight shrug of his shoulders. “But I shall certainly get half an hour’s amusement out of Paddy.”

The supper-dance at all private dances in the neighbourhood of Newry was looked upon as the dance of the evening, because it was the one in which any two young people who had a special preference for each other could be quite sure of a tête-à-tête. Things were arranged very leisurely, as it was customary for the hand to follow to supper after the guests, and meanwhile the young folks amused themselves.

On this particular occasion, however, there chanced to be several young folks to whom circumstances had not been kind, and consequently, contrary to all precedent, the time hung heavily.

Of these, Jack perhaps was the greatest sufferer. If he could have been with Eileen he would have been in a seventh heaven, but not only was he debarred of this, but he saw with raging heart two vanishing forms in the direction of one of the conservatories, unmistakably those of Eileen and Lawrence Blake. At supper he had been near them, and in one or two brief passages, his honest outspoken antipathy to Lawrence has been neatly turned upon himself by the accomplished society man, and there had at the same time been a half-tolerant, amused expression in his eyes that made Jack feel like a caged wild beast. This naturally had only given his enemy the greater secret satisfaction.

Then if only he had had Paddy, he thought he might have relieved his feelings a little; but having Lawrence’s own sister for a partner, there was nothing for it but to try and hide his chagrin under a show of hilarity. In this he at least entertained such of those who remained chatting in groups by the fire.

He little dreamed, however, that poor Paddy was in scarcely better plight. Not that she disliked Ted Masterman in any way, indeed she liked him immensely, but when he was lover-like it fidgeted her, feeling just that soreness over Eileen, that made any other man’s attentions unwelcome and irritating.

Nevertheless, she found herself sitting in the little alcove half-way up the big staircase with him, where the moonlight came through the stained-glass window and made a pattern on the floor, shaded by the heavy curtains from the glare of the lights.

Below them in the bright comfortable hall near a large log fire, they could see the little groups, that laughed and applauded, while Jack in company with a youth as lively and irresponsible as himself, feigned a merriment he was far from feeling. Paddy watched, and in her own quaint way, rebelled against a Fate that made puppets of herself and her friends, for she understood exactly what was passing in Jack’s mind.

Indeed, she was so engrossed that she gave quite a start when her companion, after watching her in silence for some minutes, remarked quietly:

“I’d give something to know what you are thinking of, Miss Adair.”

“Why! the group down there, of course,” she answered. “They look so pretty, don’t they, in evening dress, with the big old hall for background and the firelight on their faces?”

“Yes,” quietly, “but personally I can find a still more pleasing picture close at hand.”

“Oh, the moonlight!” with a gesture of impatience. “It’s making you look quite sentimental. Please don’t give way to it, though, because if so, I shall be obliged, to give up this comfortable chair and go to the hall. I can’t bear sentimental people; they irritate me frightfully.”

The man smiled a little in the shadow, and the look of innate strength and resoluteness of purpose deepened on his face. There was that in Ted Masterman’s eyes to-night, as from the vantage ground of shadow, they jested unceasingly on Paddy’s face, which suggested a preparation for a struggle in which he meant to win.

How long or how short seemed a matter of little importance just then; for one instinctively saw in him the steady perseverance of the man who knows how to wait.

And it is generally to such the victory is given; for greater than the power of riches, or learning, is the power of knowing how to wait.

Ever since Ted Masterman helped a drenched, dripping figure of a girl into his little sailing yacht, and met that frank face that ended in laughter, in spite of her sorry plight, he had known himself her slave, and that henceforth the purpose of his life would be to win her. If the winning was to be hard, and suffering entailed, he was prepared to face it, because he knew that Paddy was worth the cost, whatever it proved, from the first time that he saw her in her own home.

His keen eyes noted instantly that the charm and brightness, which made her so popular abroad, were just as freely lavished upon her own circle, and that if she were beloved by her outside friends, she was yet more beloved and idolised there.

Then, when he found her perfectly indifferent to his attentions, the spirit of conquest was roused within him tenfold, and he loved her yet more for her airy independence.

He half guessed her feeling for Jack O’Hara; but Jack’s devotion to Eileen had recently become so plaint to all except Eileen herself, that he did not let it trouble him. In this he was wrong, for Paddy was, before all thing, staunch, and having given her affections, she would not easily change.

“I’m not getting sentimental at all,” he replied. “I know better, for I don’t want to have my head bitten off my last evening.”

Paddy smiled, and was mollified.

“It’s awfully silly, isn’t it?” she said. “I hate anything sentimental. I like people who call a spade a spade.”

“And I wonder what you like them to call love?” he suggested.

“Oh, ‘love,’ I suppose, only they needn’t look like sick sheep over it, and prefix half a dozen idiotic adjectives.”

“I thought perhaps the mere word was too sentimental,” with a little smile, “and you would prefer to invent some term of your own.”

“Very likely I shall, when the time comes for it. At present I have a great deal too much on my hands to have time to think of anything of the kind.”

“In what way?”

“Why! every way of course! There’s Daddy, and mother, and Eileen, and the aunties.” She paused a moment, but something in his eyes made her run on recklessly. “Oh! and the Sunday School, and the garden, and the hockey club, and the aunties’ cats, and Jack—!”

“It’s quite a long list,” looking amused, “and O’Hara at the far end.”

“He’s in good form to-night,” she said, gazing down at the group in the hall.

Ted followed her eyes.

“He seems to have cheered up since supper.”

“He can’t bear Lawrence Blake, he never could, and they were sitting rather near together at supper.”

“I fancy there’s a little rivalry,” he suggested.

“Oh, I don’t know!” with an attempt at unconcern. “He never did like him at any time.”

“Blake is a very clever man,” thoughtfully.

“Yes—but he’s awfully conceited. I’m always trying to take him down a little.”

There was a short silence, then Ted remarked very quietly:

“This time to-morrow I shall be on my way home, and my holiday will be over—the very best holiday I ever had in my life. I suppose I shall not see you again until next summer, when I hope to come back!”

“I guess not.”

“I’m sorry Omeath is so far from London—”

Paddy began to fidget, and kept her eyes fixed on the group in the hall.

Ted watched here again with that keen gaze of his; and a great tenderness all unknown to himself spread over his strong face. He seemed to see instinctively, that in some way, a hard time lay ahead for this eager, impulsive girl; and that with all his love and devotion, he would have to stand aside and look on, without being able to help her. If so, he knew that whatever it proved for her, it could not be less hard for him, and his heart sank a little. He wanted very much to tell her about his love before he went home, but her very attitude told him the uselessness of it, and he did not want to vex her their last evening.

So instead, he asked with a smile: “Would it be too sentimental to say ‘thank you’ for all you’ve done to make my holiday the best I’ve ever had?”

“Yes, decidedly. Besides, I haven’t done anything at all except torment you occasionally. Let us go down to the hall. I want to know what they’re all laughing at,” and she got up without another word and led the way downstairs.

Jack glanced toward them as they approached, and Paddy saw vaguely an expression of pain underlying the gaiety of his manner, that hurt her like a blow. She could not bear to be miserable herself, but she could bear it still less if those she loved were miserable. She looked round vaguely for Eileen, feeling an impulse to annihilate Lawrence, and make Eileen see how things stood. But neither were to be seen. Under the large palm by the fountain in the conservatory, Lawrence was again feasting his eyes on his partner’s loveliness, and skillfully drawing that changing colour to her cheeks, and those lights and shadows to her beautiful eyes.

CHAPTER XIV
The Conservatory and the Den.

The fountain had a little tinkling, singing sound, and there was a delicious odour of flowers, which mingled entrancingly with the shaded lights and graceful bending ferns. Eileen felt it rather than saw it, as though all her senses had become one deep appreciation and enjoyment.

Long afterward, when recalling every moment of that quiet half-hour, she was conscious of exactly the light, and the scent, and the sound, and would shrink away from certain hot-house flowers as if they hurt her.

But for the present there was only a deep content in her heart and a vague dream of happiness, shedding a soft light over all her future. In all their intercourse, it seemed to her that Lawrence had never been quite so fascinating before, and though now and then he seemed to draw himself up sharply and suddenly adopt a very matter-of-fact tone, she scarcely heeded it. In truth, though Lawrence meant to enjoy his half-hour to the full, he had no intention of becoming lover-like; and when he found her charm growing too much for him, he did indeed pull himself up with a jerk and try to resist. Yet he could not bring himself to be sufficiently honest to speak of his approaching departure for India. He felt there was time enough, and if he told her now, he might be led into explanations that would be troublesome.

And Lawrence hated anything at all disturbing or troublesome, or in the nature of an explanation.

Eileen was not blind to his failings, and many a time his callousness had hurt her, but, like so many good women, she had a boundless faith in the power of goodness, and believed she could make anything of him once he loved her. In this she was doubtless right, but she was too pure-minded and honest herself to perceive double-dealing in others, and she did not realise that a man like Lawrence might act one thing and feel another.

If he had loved her, she might have made anything of him; yet—but what if he did not? Lawrence admired her beauty and respected her goodness, but he did not love her—he only pretended to himself that he liked her better than any one else when they happened to be together. Possibly, if “love” came at will, he would have chosen then and there to love her with his whole heart and make her his wife. But Love is a fugitive, wild thing—bold as a robin, and timid as a lark—and usually none can fit any “why” or “wherefore” to its erratic wanderings. And hand in hand with Love is usually Pain—pain against which we cry out blindly, and wrestle and struggle to escape—childishly indifferent to the teaching of the Ages—that Pain alone is the soil in which grow Strength, and Courage, and Joy.

In the worst hour of her suffering afterward, Eileen was yet, in a sense, happier and richer than the man who caused the pain.

But now the fountain tinkled and the lights glowed softly, and the scent of hot-house flowers filled the air.

“I thought it would be deadly at Omeath,” Lawrence was saying. “If it had not been for the mater, I should not have come, and, instead, it has been very pleasant. How often it happens that we start off on some trip we expect to enjoy thoroughly, and are disappointed all through; whereas we make martyrs of ourselves and undertake something we detest, and it turns out a pleasure from beginning to end.”

Eileen looked a little thoughtful. The thought crossed her mind that he had not, then, came back for her.

“Yet you seemed happy enough here before?” she remarked at last.

“So I was,” he replied at once; “and I had just the same feeling about coming in the first place. But then I did not know about you, Eileen.”

“But you did this time,” smiling.

“Three years is so long,” he answered unblushingly; “and I imagined, of course, you would have changed, or got married, or something. Most girls change very much in three years.”

“Do they?” quietly.

“Yes; but you and Paddy are evidently different. I might have known you would be.” He turned the subject deftly to a less dangerous theme, speaking of mutual friends, until a sudden cutting censure brought a remonstrance to her lips.

He looked into her face and changed his tone suddenly.

“All the black sheep are white to you, Eileen. You are too ideal. You look at everything through the spectacles of idealism, and expect too much of life. You would be wiser to try and harden your heart, and care a little less about everything. You seem to regard most of your fellow-creatures as possible angels, and all the time we are most of us rogues and scoundrels.”

“I don’t believe it,” firmly.

“That’s because you don’t want to. All the same it is true. Half the world knows it, and makes no fuss; and the other half pretends to be blind for their own satisfaction.”

“You only talk like this to tease me,” she said; “but I like your honesty. A man who pretends to nothing and is something is so much nicer than the man who is nothing and pretends much.”

“I am neither,” he answered, “for I combine the two. I pretend nothing, and I don’t care.” She smiled a little in spite of herself. “You do pretend something, for you pretend that you do not care.”

He looked into her eyes a moment, with a curious expression in his, and Eileen glanced away with embarrassment. He was thinking for the hundredth time how sweet she was, and how—if only—?

He knew vaguely that the man who won her would win a treasure; but he loved his liberty, and his heart said “not yet,” and so he contented himself with a look that might mean volumes, or nothing.

And Eileen was satisfied. He had paid no real attention to anyone but her, merely doing his duty as host to the rest of his guests, and, undoubtedly, that meant a good deal.

As a matter of fact it was so. Lawrence was nearer proposing that evening than he had ever been in his life before, and he could hardly himself have told what deterred him. Perhaps it was a question of the bandsmen finishing their supper five minutes earlier than was expected—upon so slight a thread hang the issues of life. Certainly, leaning forward with his arms resting on his knees, and his whole soul drawn toward the sweet-faced girl beside him, he felt himself on the brink of the plunge that would have changed all her life and his, when, quite unexpectedly, the band struck up in the distance.

At the first note, he sat up suddenly, as if he had been awakened, and instead of the question trembling on his lips he smiled a little, and said: “How cruelly the time has flown! I had no idea we had been here half an hour!” and then they both got up, and he gave her his arm back to the ball-room.

Eileen felt a queer little tremor that was almost fear, but she only answered in her usual quiet tone, and smiled up at the partner who came forward to claim her for the dance.

But the evening was not over yet, and another incident had still to add its mark upon the unfolding of the hours. Lawrence had still to have his dance with Paddy.

It came toward the end, when some of the guests, who had a long drive, had already departed, and the formality of the commencement of the evening had merged into a more free and easy air for all. Paddy had had a set of lancers with Jack, and Doreen and Kathleen and their partners, that had bordered upon a romp, and had made her eyes shine, and her cheeks glow with radiant enjoyment, for she had the happy knack of throwing herself heart and soul into the moment, and in this instance the moment had been full of delight.

Lawrence found her trying to get cool again, while carrying on her usual flow of chatter, to the amusement of the others; and with a smile, he remarked:

“I’m sorry to deprive you all, but this is my dance with Miss Adair.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Paddy in alarm. “Do I dance with you next?”

“According to my programme you do.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” frankly. “I was only thinking my hair was rather untidy, and my face somewhat highly coloured for such an august occasion as a dance with your majesty.”

“Your hair never looked better,” he replied, “and your colour is most becoming.”

“Really!” with a gay laugh. “If you keep this up for five minutes I shan’t know myself. You must be careful, for the high honour of dancing with you alone is almost sufficient to unhinge my giddy brain.”

“You could hardly dance with me and someone else at the same time,” with corresponding lightness; “but I’m glad that you appreciate the honour so thoroughly.”

“Appreciate it! Why, my dear man, I’ve been dying for this dance all the evening.”

“May you be forgiven,” he retorted as they glided away. Paddy was quite as good a dancer as Eileen when she gave herself up to it, and, with such a perfect waltzer as Lawrence, she could not fail to do so, even if she could not be prevailed upon to enjoy it in silence. So, as they glided round, she plied him with a string of eager questions relating to dancing and gayeties in far-off lands.

“You ought to get your father to take you abroad,” he told her presently! “you’d enjoy all the novelty so tremendously.”

“Should I meet a lot of nice, superior, cultured young men like you?”

“Well, hardly up to my standard,” he laughed.

“Then I don’t want to go. When I can talk to you, and dance with you, and gaze upon you here, why cross the sea to other climes?”

“I was thinking more of the countries.”

“And have you ever seen anything in all the world so beautiful as the Mourne Mountains and Carlingford Loch?”

“Yes, many things.”

“I don’t believe it,” stoutly.

“Well, come and see some of my photographs in my den.”

“What! Enter the throne-room!” in mock amaze.

“Yes; why not?”

“Oh no ‘why not’ at all. I’m simply dying to go. I have been, ever since I can remember.—I’m wild with curiosity to know what kind of things an animal of your lofty nature collects in its den,” and she followed him eagerly down a long passage, and through a little conservatory into the large, airy room known as Lawrence’s den.

When he had switched on the electric light, her eyes grew wide with interest and admiration.

“Well! if this isn’t just all right,” she exclaimed. “How daddy would love it!”

“It’s somewhat warlike,” glancing at his swords and weapons, “so you ought to feel at home.”

“I?—Why?” in surprise.

“Because you are always trying to quarrel with me.”

“Nonsense! I only tell you a few home truths for your good.”

“I hope you find your pupil progressing favourably.”

“Very middling,” with a shake of her head. “You know perfectly well you have been bored to death nearly the whole evening, because there were only two or three people you thought worth talking to.”

“And if so—it is hardly my fault.”

“Why, of course it is! The people were just as nice as you, really—rather nicer in fact—the only difference is a mere question of having studied Browning, and Darwin, and a lot of musty old German and French writers, whom, I’ll be bound to say, you don’t half understand.”

“Possibly not. But they have a way of developing the mind.”

“Developing the mind!” scornfully. “What’s the matter with my mind?—it develops itself. I don’t pore over musty books.”

“Perhaps you are naturally more gifted,” with light satire.

“Sarcasm is wasted on me,” she retorted. “It flows off like water from a duck’s back. Why not tell me straight I’m an ignoramus? Just as I tell you straight that all your learning and experience does not give you the right to think yourself so superior to other people, and give yourself such airs.”

“You are very outspoken,” smiling a little in spite of himself.

“Yes; but I can take plain speaking, too, so if you want to have your revenge, fire away. I know that I’ve got a snub nose and no complexion, and am always more or less untidy, because I’ve been told so often, but you can tell me again if you like.”

“I’d rather set you an example in good manners.”

“That’s good,” appreciating it at once.

“Besides,” he added slyly, “I don’t see that it isn’t just as bad to be proud of a snub nose and untidiness, as of a beautiful nose or book learning, and from the way you speak you positively revel in them.”

“You have me again,” she replied frankly. “I guess we’ll be friends for ten minutes and you shall show me your views.”

They sat down, and he opened an enormous album, but after the first few pages she looked up at him entreatingly, and said with a delightful little air of pathos:

“I’m so sorry, but if you only knew how I hate sitting still. I—I’m just dying to prowl round, and look at all the queer things on the walls.”

He closed the book with a laugh, and she sprang up at once, saying:

“I’ll look at the views when I’m old and rheumaticky. You must save them for me,” and then she went into raptures over a beautiful case of foreign butterflies, afterward fingering with delight his guns and swords.

“You ought to have been a man,” he said almost regretfully.

“Why, of course I ought. I’ve known that ever since they put Jack in trousers, and not me. But I guess I’ll have to stay a woman now to the end of the chapter, and make the best of it.”

“Then you’re sorry?” he asked, with interest.

“Sorry!” she repeated impressively. “Oh, yes, I’m that all right, but I don’t believe in crying over spilt milk.”

He watched her silently a moment.

“I shouldn’t wonder if you haven’t got a future, Paddy,” he remarked. “There’s something about you that has the ring of achievement—only there’s not much room here,” signifying the surrounding neighbourhood. “Quite room enough,” picking up a Mauser pistol and examining it with the eye of a connoisseur. “Can’t I ride straight, and shoot straight, and sail anything with a rag and a mast—that’s achievement enough for me. What more do you want?”

He drew a bow at a venture, out of idle curiosity. “I wonder where the opposite sex will come in? Don’t you want to have adoring males at your feet by and by!—most women do.”

She looked frankly into his eyes with a gay laugh. “Not me! I haven’t time. I’ll leave that for Eileen. Of course, if your lordship—!” with a sudden irresistible twinkle.

He could not help laughing, and watched her with growing interest as she wandered on from one curio to another, until she came to his writing table. Here she came to a sudden standstill, and a little involuntary exclamation escaped her. Lawrence looked past her quickly, to find she was gazing with wide eyes, and a strangely mingled expression, at the beautiful full-length portrait of Gwendoline Carew, noticeably in the position of honour on his table.

CHAPTER XV
Dread and Wrath.

“Who is she?” she asked at last, with her customary out-spokenness.

“Do you mean the big portrait?” carelessly.

“Yes.”

“Miss Gwendoline Grant-Carew.”

Paddy gazed at the portrait silently for another space, and then remarked:

“She is very beautiful.”

“Yes, very,” dryly.

Again Paddy was silent.

If she had tried she could not have analysed her feelings just then. She was only conscious that in some way the photograph was a shock to her. Though she had scarcely confessed it to herself, she undoubtedly shared the opinion of the neighbourhood, that Lawrence was paying Eileen such marked attention with a view to marriage, and since the incident of the clasped hands she had grown to think of him as a prospective brother-in-law. Unaccountable divination told her the rest.

“Why do you look at her like that?” asked Lawrence at last. “Don’t you like her?”

“No,” said Paddy slowly, “I hate her.”

“But how can you,” he laughed, “when you don’t even know her? As a matter of fact she is just your sort. Up to any fun, full of life, and not the least bit conceited, though half Calcutta is at her feet.”

“Calcutta,” echoed Paddy a little sharply.

“Yes, why not?”

Again there was a moment’s silence.

“Doreen told me you were going to India,” she said at last. “Is it true?”

“Yes.”

He picked up a paper knife and toyed with it. Something in Paddy’s honest face made him avoid her gaze.

“When are you going?” she asked.

“In about three weeks.”

She gulped down an exclamation.

“For long?”

“What a list of questions!” with light sarcasm; “it feels like an examination paper.”

But Paddy would not be put off. She fidgeted restlessly with a letter weight, and then asked again:

“Are you going for long?”

“I haven’t the least idea.”

“And this—er—Miss Gwendoline Grant-Carew,” with a slight curl of her lips, “you are engaged to her, or—going to be?”

“Can’t a man have a chum’s photograph on his table without being engaged to her?”

“I don’t know. I am not a man.”

There was a long pause, then she added: “I don’t know much about men, either, but I believe a good many of them think it very amusing and entertaining to make love to three or four girls at once, and not care a snap of their fingers for any one of them. It may be amusing, but to my thinking, it is the trick of a scoundrel. I’d hate such a man,” and she tossed her head and drew up her slight form, with a defiance that was almost a challenge.

Lawrence paled slightly, but he watched her with his keen eyes in a way that bespoke a sudden and unusual interest.

He tried, however, to counteract the sense of strain in the situation, by chaffing her.

“I believe your real name is Patricia,” he said, “but this is the first time I have seen you look the part. I shall have to start calling you ‘Patricia the Great.’”

She flashed a glance of scorn at him.

“‘Patricia,’ to me, means loyalty,” she said, with significance. “You may call me what you like, but whether it is Paddy or Patricia, ‘loyalty’ is my watchword.”

He felt almost as if she had struck him. As if a glove, flung passionately down, should lie on the floor between them. He got up from his chair, and half turned away, at a momentary loss for words.

“I hear the band,” she said, and moved toward the door.

And it was noticeable this time that Lawrence had not heard it, and instead of leading he followed. Moreover, there was something about Paddy’s manner that forebade him offering his arm, and at the ball-room door she turned her back on him without a word, and commenced chattering to her next partner.

It would be difficult to describe the feelings of the different occupants of the omnibus which took the party from the Vicarage and the Ghan House home again that night, but undoubtedly the elder folks were now the gayest.

The General was very lively, doubtless because he had got through the evening without the dreaded mishap to his clothes, and was at the same time relieved from the weight of anxiety they occasioned.

Miss Jane had enjoyed herself immensely, and was lively also, and even little Miss Mary was aroused to an unusual gaiety for her. Mrs Adair saw the subdued light of happiness glowing in Eileen’s eyes, and anxiety gave place to hopefulness.

But for Paddy and Jack, there was only increased dread, though they both strove bravely to continue to hide it beneath an assumed merriment.

Paddy saw, as her mother, the light in Eileen’s eyes, and something seemed to grow cold within her, and she bit her teeth together, murmuring savagely, “I’ll kill him, if he’s been trifling with her.”

Jack saw it, too, and his hopes grew weak, for he believed he was already worsted; and he saw, with an inward yearning, the vision of all the happy, careless, sunny days at Omeath passing slowly and surely away. “What should he do?” he asked, “and where should he go?”

His two devoted aunts noticed there was something wrong later on, before separating for the night, and in Miss Jane’s bedroom, they asked each other anxiously.

“What is it?—what is wrong with our boy?”

Miss Mary having the greater intuition, was the first to offer a solution. “Can it be Eileen?” she asked with dread—“Eileen and Lawrence Blake?”

They looked into each other’s eyes with a sudden sense of awakening.

“Surely not—” murmured Miss Jane, but her face belied her words.

“Oh, sister,” breathed little tender-hearted Miss Mary, “if it is true he will suffer so. I can’t bear to think of our boy suffering,” and two big tears gathered in her eyes.

“Don’t fret, sister,” said Miss Jane bravely, blinking back a suspicious moisture in her own eyes, “I don’t think it can have gone far enough for that. You see we have lately somehow associated Eileen and Lawrence, and Jack, of course, knew, so he would be guarded against caring too much. Probably it is just the sudden realisation that a change must come over their old happy life, and he will quickly get accustomed to it. There is still Paddy, and I have always hoped so—” she paused, and then concluded with a little smile, “What a dear, wild, irresponsible pair they would make!”

Across at The Ghan House, in a room from which a bright light shone through the trees, in view of Jack’s window, the two other sisters were taking off their pretty dresses, and preparing to slip into their two dainty little white beds. Now and then they laughed over something that had happened at the ball, but for the most part Eileen was dreamy and Paddy preoccupied.

“Was Lawrence very nice to-night?” asked the latter at last, longing to know what had transpired.

“Yes,” Eileen answered simply. Paddy looked round suddenly and opened her lips to speak, but something in her sister’s face held her back.

She was going to ask if he had told her about going to India, but realising how it might hurt Eileen if he had not, she changed her mind.

“I can’t—I can’t,” she said to herself. “She looks so happy. I can’t damp it; if he has been playing with her, I will kill him—kill him—kill him,” and she clenched her hands together and tumbled into bed, forgetting for the time her own trouble in her wrath against Lawrence.

CHAPTER XVI
The First Awakening.

It was through her father, a few days later, that Eileen first heard of Lawrence’s plans. He came blustering in from his usual daily walk one morning and exclaimed:

“That fellow Lawrence is off again—going back to India to kill a few more tigers—never knew such a chap—can’t stay quiet scarcely a month—pity he doesn’t look after his estate at home, I think, instead of gadding off over the seas again, and I nearly told him so.”

Mrs Adair, at the first words, had looked up in surprise, but Paddy, who was interested in a small sailing boat at the window, turned and covertly watched Eileen. As she half expected, she saw her turn deadly pale, as if the news were a shock, and Paddy knew at once that Lawrence had not told her the evening of the dance, although his plans were already formed, and she hated him yet more vigorously.