But she would have thought of them as only dreams.  She would have been sure that she could have loved him had any fair ending been possible for such love; but she would have assured herself that she had been on her guard, and that she was safe in spite of her dreams.  But now the flame in her heart had been confessed and in some degree sanctioned, and she would foster it rather than quench it.  Even should such a love be capable of no good fortune, would it not be better to have a few weeks of happy dreaming than a whole life that should be passionless?  What could she do with her own heart there, living in solitude, with none but the sea gulls to look at her?  Was it not infinitely better that she should give it away to such a young god as this than let it feed upon itself miserably?  Yes, she would give it away;—­but might it not be that the young god would not take the gift?

On the third day after his arrival at Ennis, Neville was at Liscannor with the priest.  He little dreamed that the fact of his dining and sleeping at Father Marty’s house would be known to the ladies at Castle Quin, and communicated from them to his aunt at Scroope Manor.  Not that he would have been deterred from accepting the priest’s hospitality or frightened into accepting that of the noble owner of the castle, had he known precisely all that would be written about it.  He would not have altered his conduct in a matter in which he considered himself entitled to regulate it, in obedience to any remonstrances from Scroope Manor.  Objections to the society of a Roman Catholic priest because of his religion he would have regarded as old-fashioned fanaticism.  As for Earls and their daughters he would no doubt have enough of them in his future life, and this special Earl and his daughters had not fascinated him.  He had chosen to come to Ireland with his regiment for this year instead of at once assuming the magnificence of his position in England, in order that he might indulge the spirit of adventure before he assumed the duties of life.  And it seemed to him that in dining and sleeping at an Irish priest’s house on the shores of the Atlantic, with the prospect of seal shooting and seeing a very pretty girl on the following morning, he was indulging that spirit properly.  But Lady Mary Quin thought that he was misbehaving himself and taking to very bad courses.  When she heard that he was to sleep at the priest’s house, she was quite sure that he would visit Mrs. O’Hara on the next day.

The dinner at the priest’s was very jovial.  There was a bottle of sherry and there was a bottle of port, procured, chiefly for the sake of appearance, from a grocer’s shop at Ennistimon;—­but the whiskey had come from Cork and had been in the priest’s keeping for the last dozen years.  He good-humouredly acknowledged that the wine was nothing, but expressed an opinion that Mr. Neville might find it difficult to beat the “sperrits.”  “It’s thrue for you, Father Marty,” said the rival priest from Milltown Malbay, “and it’s you that should know good sperrits from bad if ony man in Ireland does.”