’Alas, if my censure is pleasant to you, ’tis a certain sign it can do you no good.’

’It shall do me good, and be it never so bitter and so true, it will be pleasant to me too,’ he answered, with an honest and very peculiar light in his dark, strange eyes; and after a little pause, ’I’ll tell you why, just because I had rather you remembered my faults, than that you did not remember me at all.’

’But, ‘tis not my business to make people angry.’

’More likely you should make me sad, or perhaps happy, that is to say, better.  I think you’d like to see your parish improve.’

’So I would—­but by means of my example, not my preaching.  No; I leave that to wiser heads—­to the rector, for instance’—­and she drew closer to the dear old man, with a quick fond glance of such proud affection, for she thought the sun never shone upon his like, as made Devereux sigh a little unconscious sigh.  The old man did not hear her—­he was too absorbed in his talk—­he only felt the pressure of his darling’s little hand, and returned it, after his wont, with a gentle squeeze of his cassocked arm, while he continued the learned essay he was addressing to young, queer, erudite, simple Dan Loftus, on the descent of the Decie branch of the Desmonds.  There was, by-the-bye, a rumour—­I know not how true—­that these two sages were concocting between them, beside their folios on the Castle of Chapelizod, an interminable history of Ireland.

Devereux was secretly chafed at the sort of invisible, but insuperable resistance which pretty Lilias Walsingham, as it seemed, unconsciously opposed to his approaches to a nearer and tenderer sort of trifling.  ’The little Siren! there are air-drawn circles round her which I cannot pass—­and why should I?  How is it that she interests me, and yet repels me so easily?  And—­and when I came here first,’ he continued aloud, ’you were, oh dear! how mere a child, hardly eleven years old.  How long I’ve known you, Miss Lilias, and yet how formal you are with me.’  There was reproach almost fierce in his eye, though his tones were low and gentle.  ‘Well!’ he said, with an odd changed little laugh, ’you did commit yourself at first—­you spoke against card-playing, and I tell you frankly I mean to play a great deal more, and a great deal higher than I’ve ever done before, and so adieu.’

He did not choose to see the little motion which indicated that she was going to shake hands with him, and only bowed the lower, and answered her grave smile, which seemed to say, ‘Now, you are vexed,’ with another little laugh, and turned gaily away, and so was gone.

’She thinks she has wounded me, and she thinks, I suppose, that I can’t be happy away from her.  I’ll let her see I can; I shan’t speak to her, no, nor look at her, for a month!’

The Chattesworths by this time, as well as others, were moving away—­and that young Mr. Mervyn, more remarked upon than he suspected, walked with them to the gate of the fair-green.  As he passed he bowed low to good Parson Walsingham, who returned his salute, not unkindly—­that never was—­but very gravely, and with his gentle and thoughtful blue eyes followed the party sadly on their way.