Evening was now tolerably far advanced; Donnel Dhu sat gloomily, as usual, looking into the fire, with no agreeable aspect; while on the opposite side sat Nelly, as silent and nearly as gloomy-looking as himself.  Every now and then his black, piercing eye would stray over to her, as if in a state of abstraction, and again with that undetermined kind of significance which made it doubtful whether the subject-matter of his cogitations was connected with her at all or not.  In this position were they placed when Sarah entered the cabin, and throwing aside her cloak, seated herself in front of the fire, something about halfway between each.  She also appeared moody; and if one could judge by her countenance, felt equally disposed to melancholy or ill-temper.

“Well, madam,” said her father, “I hope it’s no offence to ask you where you have been sportin’ yourself since?  I suppose you went to see Charley Hanlon; or, what is betther, his masther, young Dick o’ the Grange?”

“No,” she replied, “I did not.  Charley Hanlon!  Oh, no!”

“Well, his masther?”

“Don’t vex me—­don’t vex me,” she replied, abruptly; “I don’t wish to fight about nothing, or about thrifles, or to give bad answers; but still, don’t vex me, I say.”

“There’s something in the wind now,” observed Nelly; “she’s gettin’ fast into one o’ her tantrums.  I know it by her eyes; she’d as soon whale me now as cry; and she’d jist as soon cry as whale me.  Oh! my lady, I know you.  Here, at any rate, will you have your supper?”

The resentment which had been gathering at Nelly’s coarse observations, disappeared the moment the question as to supper had been put to her.

“Oh! why don’t you,” she said; “and why didn’t you always spake to me in a kind voice?”

“But about young Dick,” said the suspicious prophet; “did you see him since?”

“No,” she replied, calmly and thoughtfully; but, as if catching, by reflection, the base import of the query, she replied, in a loud and piercing voice, rendered at once full and keen by indignation.  “No!  I say, an’ don’t dare to suspect me of goin’ to Dick o’ the Grange, or any sich profligate.”

“Hollo! there’s a breeze!” After a pause, “You won’t bate us, I hope.  Then, madame, where were you?”

Short as was the period that had passed since her reply and the putting of this last question, she had relapsed or fallen into a mood of such complete abstraction, that she heard him not.  With her naturally beautiful and taper hand under her still more finely chiseled chin, she sat looking, in apparent sorrow and perplexity, into the fire, and while so engaged, she sighed deeply two or three times.

“Never mind her, man,” said Nelly; “let her alone, an’ don’t draw an ould house on our heads.  She has had a fight with Charley Hanlon, I suppose; maybe he has refused to marry her, if he ever had any notion of it—­which I don’t think he had.”