that he liked the mother quite as well as the daughter.  When Lady Mary Quin had thrown at him her very blunt arrow he had defended himself on that plea.  Accident, and the spirit of adventure, had thrust these ladies in his path, and no doubt he liked them the better because they did not live as other people lived.  Their solitude, the close vicinity of the ocean, the feeling that in meeting them none of the ordinary conventional usages of society were needed, the wildness and the strangeness of the scene, all had charms which he admitted to himself.  And he knew that the girl was very lovely.  Of course he said so to himself and to others.  To take delight in beauty is assumed to be the nature of a young man, and this young man was not one to wish to differ from others in that respect.  But when he went back to spend his Christmas at Scroope, he had never told even himself that he intended to be her lover.

“Good-bye, Mrs. O’Hara,” he said, a day or two before he left Ennis.

“So you’re going?”

“Oh yes, I’m off.  The orders from home are imperative.  One has to cut one’s lump of Christmas beef and also one’s lump of Christmas pudding.  It is our family religion, you know.”

“What a happiness to have a family to visit!”

“It’s all very well, I suppose.  I don’t grumble.  Only it’s a bore going away, somehow.”

“You are coming back to Ennis?” asked Kate.

“Coming back;—­I should think so.  Barney Morony wouldn’t be quite so quiet if I was not coming back.  I’m to dine with Father Marty at Liscannor on the l5th of January, to meet another priest from Milltown Malbay,—­the best fellow in the world he says.”

“That’s Father Creech;—­not half such a good fellow, Mr. Neville, as Father Marty himself.”

“He couldn’t be better.  However, I shall be here then, and if I have any luck you shall have another skin of the same size by that time.”  Then he shook hands with them both, and there was a feeling that the time would be blank till he should be again there in his sailor’s jacket.

When the second week in January had come Mrs. O’Hara heard that the gallant young officer of the 20th was back in Ennis, and she well remembered that he had told her of his intention to dine with the priest.  On the Sunday she saw Mr. Marty after mass, and managed to have a few words with him on the road while Kate returned to the cottage alone.  “So your friend Mr. Neville has come back to Ennis,” she said.

“I didn’t know that he had come.  He promised to dine with me on Thursday,—­only I think nothing of promises from these young fellows.”

“He told me he was to be with you.”

“More power to him.  He’ll be welcome.  I’m getting to be a very ould man, Misthress O’Hara; but I’m not so ould but I like to have the young ones near me.”

“It is pleasant to see a bright face like his.”

“That’s thrue for you, Misthress O’Hara.  I like to see ’em bright and ganial.  I don’t know that I ever shot so much as a sparrow, meself, but I love to hear them talk of their shootings, and huntings, and the like of that.  I’ve taken a fancy to that boy, and he might do pretty much as he plazes wid me.”