I am sure this did not interest me in the least at that moment, so false is it that fate forewarns us when momentous events are about to occur.  And now that I had time to think, a dreadful truth was beginning to dawn on me, so that when Father Dan, who was much excited, went off to pay his respects to the great people, I crudled up in the corner of the cabin that was nearest to the door and told myself that after all I had been turned out of my father’s house, and would never see my mother and Martin any more.

I was sitting so, with my hands in my big muff and my face to the stern, making the tiniest occasional sniff as the mountains of my home faded away in the sunlight, which was now tipping the hilltops with a feathery crest, when my cabin was darkened by somebody who stood in the doorway.

It was a tail boy, almost a man, and I knew in a moment who he was.  He was the young Lord Raa.  And at first I thought how handsome and well dressed he was as he looked down at me and smiled.  After a moment he stepped into the cabin and sat in front of me and said: 

“So you are little Mary O’Neill, are you?”

I did not speak.  I was thinking he was not so very handsome after all, having two big front teeth like Betsy Beauty.

“The girl who ought to have been a boy and put my nose out, eh?”

Still I did not speak.  I was thinking his voice was like Nessy MacLeod’s—­shrill and harsh and grating.

“Poor little mite!  Going all the way to Rome to a Convent, isn’t she?”

Even yet I did not speak.  I was thinking his eyes were like Aunt Bridget’s—­cold and grey and piercing.

“So silent and demure, though!  Quite a little nun already.  A deuced pretty one, too, if anybody asks me.”

I was beginning to have a great contempt for him.

“Where did you get those big angel eyes from?  Stole them from some picture of the Madonna, I’ll swear.”

By this time I had concluded that he was not worth speaking to, so I turned my head and I was looking back at the sea, when I heard him say: 

“I suppose you are going to give me a kiss, you nice little woman, aren’t you?”

“No.”

“Oh, but you must—­we are relations, you know.”

“I won’t.”

He laughed at that, and rising from his seat, he reached over to kiss me, whereupon I drew one of my hands out of my muff and doubling my little mittened fist, I struck him in the face.

Being, as I afterwards learned, a young autocrat, much indulged by servants and generally tyrannising over them, he was surprised and angry.

“The spitfire!” he said.  “Who would have believed it?  The face of a nun and the temper of a devil!  But you’ll have to make amends for this, my lady.”

With that he went away and I saw no more of him until the steamer was drawing up at the landing stage at Liverpool, and then, while the passengers were gathering up their luggage, he came back with Father Dan, and the tall sallow man who was his guardian, and said: