nephew from an ill-assorted marriage.  Mercy to Miss O’Hara!  Lady Scroope had the name of being a very charitable woman.  She gave away money.  She visited the poor.  She had laboured hard to make the cottages on the estate clean and comfortable.  She denied herself many things that she might give to others.  But she would have no more mercy on such a one as Miss O’Hara, than a farmer’s labourer would have on a rat!

There was nothing more now to be said to the heir;—­nothing more for the present that could serve the purpose which she had in hand.  “Your uncle is very ill,” she murmured.

“I was so sorry to hear it.”

“We hope now that he may recover.  For the last two days the doctor has told us that we may hope.”

“I am so glad to find that it is so.”

“I am sure you are.  You will see him to-morrow after breakfast.  He is most anxious to see you.  I think sometimes you hardly reflect how much you are to him.”

“I don’t know why you should say so.”

“You had better not speak to him to-morrow about this affair,—­of the Irish young lady.”

“Certainly not,—­unless he speaks to me about it.”

“He is hardly strong enough yet.  But no doubt he will do so before you leave us.  I hope it may be long before you do that.”

“It can’t be very long, Aunt Mary.”  To this she said nothing, but bade him good-night and he was left alone.  It was now past ten, and he supposed that Miss Mellerby had come in and gone to her room.  Why she should avoid him in this way he could not understand.  But as for Miss Mellerby herself, she was so little to him that he cared not at all whether he did or did not see her.  All his brightest thoughts were away in County Clare, on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic.  They might say what they liked to him, but he would never be untrue to the girl whom he had left there.  His aunt had spoken of the “affair of—­the Irish young lady;” and he had quite understood the sneer with which she had mentioned Kate’s nationality.  Why should not an Irish girl be as good as any English girl?  Of one thing he was quite sure,—­that there was much more of real life to be found on the cliffs of Moher than in the gloomy chambers of Scroope Manor.

He got up from his seat feeling absolutely at a loss how to employ himself.  Of course he could go to bed, but how terribly dull must life be in a place in which he was obliged to go to bed at ten o’clock because there was nothing to do.  And since he had been there his only occupation had been that of listening to his aunt’s sermons.  He began to think that a man might pay too dearly even for being the heir to Scroope.  After sitting awhile in the dark gloom created by a pair of candles, he got up and wandered into the large unused dining-room of the mansion.  It was a chamber over forty feet long, with dark flock paper and dark curtains, with dark painted wainscoating below the paper, and huge