“Certainly I will not harm you.  Here is Father Marty.  Mrs. O’Hara you had better be tranquil.  You should remember that you have heard nothing yet of what I would say to you.”

“Whose fault is that?  Why do you not speak?  Father Marty, what does he mean when he tells my girl that there must be disappointment for her?  Does he dare to tell me that he hesitates to make her his wife?”

The priest took the mother by the hand and placed her on the chair in which she usually sat.  Then, almost without a word, he led Kate from the room to her own chamber, and bade her wait a minute till he should come back to her.  Then he returned to the sitting-room and at once addressed himself to Lord Scroope.  “Have you dared,” he said, “to tell them what you hardly dared to tell to me?”

“He has dared to tell us nothing,” said Mrs. O’Hara.

“I do not wonder at it.  I do not think that any man could say to her that which he told me that he would do.”

“Mrs. O’Hara,” said the young lord, with some return of courage now that the girl had left them, “that which I told Mr. Marty this morning, I will now tell to you.  For your daughter I will do anything that you and she and he may wish,—­but one thing.  I cannot make her Countess of Scroope.”

“You must make her your wife,” said the woman, shouting at him.

“I will do so to-morrow if a way can be found by which she shall not become Countess of Scroope.”

“That is, he will marry her without making her his wife,” said the priest.  “He will jump over a broomstick with her and will ask me to help him,—­so that your feelings and hers may be spared for a week or so.  Mrs. O’Hara, he is a villain,—­a vile, heartless, cowardly reprobate, so low in the scale of humanity that I degrade myself by spaking to him.  He calls himself an English peer!  Peer to what?  Certainly to no one worthy to be called a man!” So speaking, the priest addressed himself to Mrs. O’Hara, but as he spoke his eyes were fixed full on the face of the young lord.

“I will have his heart out of his body,” exclaimed Mrs. O’Hara.

“Heart;—­he has no heart.  You may touch his pocket;—­or his pride, what he calls his pride, a damnable devilish inhuman vanity; or his name,—­that bugbear of a title by which he trusts to cover his baseness; or his skin, for he is a coward.  Do you see his cheek now?  But as for his heart,—­you cannot get at that.”

“I will get at his life,” said the woman.

“Mr. Marty, you allow yourself a liberty of speech which even your priesthood will not warrant.”

“Lay a hand upon me if you can.  There is not blood enough about you to do it.  Were it not that the poor child has been wake and too trusting, I would bid her spit on you rather than take you for her husband.”  Then he paused, but only for a moment.  “Sir, you must marry her, and there must be an end of it.  In no other way can you be allowed to live.”