“What is a nice affair?” asked our friend Alley, for she it was, as the reader of course is already aware—­“What is a nice affair?”

“Why, that Miss Gourlay, they say, fell in love with a buttonmaker’s clerk from London, and is goin’ to marry him in spite of all opposition.”

“Who’s your authority for that?” asked Alley; “but whoever is, is a liar, and the truth is not in him—­that’s what I say.”

“Ay, but what do you know about it?” asked the grazier.  “You’re not in Miss Gourlay’s saicrets—­and a devilish handsome, gentlemanly lookin’ fellow they say the button-maker is.  Faith, I can tell you, I give tooth-an-egg-credit.  The fellow will get a darlin’ at all events—­and he’ll be very bad indeed, if he’s not worth a ship-load of that profligate Lord Dunroe.”

“Well,” replied Alley, “I agree with you there, at all events; for God sees that the same Lord Dunroe will make the cream of a bad husband to whatsoever poor woman will suffer by him.  A bad bargain he will be at best, and in that I agree with you.”

“So far, then,” replied the grazier, “we do agree; an’, dang my buttons, but I’ll lave it to this gentleman if it wouldn’t be betther for Miss Gourlay to marry a daicent button-maker any day, than such a hurler as Dunroe.  What do you say, sir?”

“But who is this button-maker,” asked the stranger, “and where is he to be found?”

Lucy, on recognizing his voice, could scarcely prevent her emotion from becoming perceptible; but owing to the darkness of the night, and the folds of her thick veil, her fellow-travellers observed nothing.

“Why,” replied the grazier, who had evidently, from a lapse of memory, substituted one species of manufacture for another thing, “they tell me he is stopping in the head inn in Ballytrain; an’, dang my buttons, but he must be a fellow of mettle, for sure didn’t he kick that tyrannical ould scoundrel, the Black Baronet, down-stairs, and out of the hall-door, when he came to bullyrag over him about his daughter—­the darlin’?”

Lucy’s distress was here incredible; and had not her self-command and firmness of character been indeed unusual, she would have felt it extremely difficult to keep her agitation within due bounds.

“You labor under a mistake there,” replied the stranger; “I happen to know that nothing of the kind occurred.  Some warm words passed between them, but no blows.  A young person named Fenton, whom I know, was present.”

“Why,” observed the grazier, “that’s the young fellow that goes mad betimes, an’ a quare chap he is, by all accounts.  They say he went mad for love.”

From this it was evident that rumor had, as usual, assigned several causes for Fenton’s insanity.

“Yes, I believe so,” replied the stranger.

Alley, who thought she had been overlooked in this partial dialogue, determined to sustain her part in the conversation with a dignity becoming her situation, now resolved to flourish in with something like effect.