for a young fellow so eccentric, perverse, and impetuous, where pretty faces were plentier than good fortunes, and at every tinkling harpsichord there smiled a possible mesalliance.  In the town of Chapelizod itself, indeed, the young gentleman did not stand quite so high in estimation as with his aunt, who thought nothing was good or high enough for her handsome nephew, with his good blood and his fine possibilities.  The village folk, however, knew that he was confoundedly dipped; that he was sometimes alarmingly pestered by duns, and had got so accustomed to hear that his uncle, the earl, was in his last sickness, and his cousin, the next heir, dead, when another week disclosed that neither one nor the other was a bit worse than usual, that they began to think that Devereux’s turn might very possibly never come at all.  Besides, the townspeople had high notions of some of their belles, and not without reason.  There was Miss Gertrude Chattesworth, for instance, with more than fourteen thousand pounds to her fortune, and Lilias Walsingham, who would inherit her mother’s money, and the good rector’s estate of twelve hundred a year beside, and both with good blood in their veins, and beautiful princesses too.  However, in those days there was more parental despotism than now.  The old people kept their worldly wisdom to themselves, and did not take the young into a scheming partnership; and youth and beauty, I think, were more romantic, and a great deal less venal.

Such being the old countess’s programme—­a plan, according to her lights, grand and generous, she might have dawdled over it, for a good while, for she did not love trouble.  It was not new; the airy castle had been some years built, and now, in an unwonted hurry, she wished to introduce the tenant to the well-aired edifice, and put him in actual possession.  For a queer little attack in her head, which she called a fainting fit, and to which nobody dared afterwards to make allusion, and which she had bullied herself and everybody about her into forgetting, had, nevertheless, frightened her confoundedly.  And when her helpless panic and hysterics were over, she silently resolved, if the thing were done, then ’twere well ’twere done quickly.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

IN WHICH LILIAS HEARS A STAVE OF AN OLD SONG AND THERE IS A LEAVE-TAKING BESIDE THE RIVER.

Devereux’s move was very sudden, and the news did not reach the Elms till his groom had gone on to Island-bridge with the horses, and he himself, booted and spurred, knocked at the door.  The doctor was not at home; he had ridden into Dublin.  Of course it was chiefly to see him he had gone there.

‘And Miss Walsingham?’

She was also out; no, not in the garden.  John thought maybe at old Miss Chattesworth’s school; or, Sally said, maybe at Belmont; they did not know.