Aunt Becky received him in the drawing-room.  She was looking very pale, and spoke very little, and very gently for her.  In a reconciliation between two persons of the opposite sexes—­though the ages be wide apart—­there is almost always some little ingredient of sentiment.

The door was shut, and Puddock’s voice was heard in an indistinct murmur, upon the lobby.  Then there was a silence, or possibly, some speaking in a still lower key.  Then Aunt Becky was crying, and the lieutenant’s voice cooing through it.  Then Aunt Becky, still crying, said—­

’A longer time than you think for, lieutenant; two years, and more—­always!  And the lieutenant’s voice rose again; and she said—­’What a fool I’ve been!’ which was again lost in Puddock’s accents; and the drawing-room door opened, and Aunt Rebecca ran up stairs, with her handkerchief to her red nose and eyes, and slammed her bed-room door after her like a boarding-school miss.

And the general’s voice was heard shouting ‘luncheon’ in the hall; and Dominick repeated the announcement to Puddock, who stood, unusually pale and very much stunned, with the handle of the open drawing-room door in his hand, looking up toward the bed-room in an undecided sort of way, as if he was not clear whether it was not his duty to follow Aunt Becky.  On being told a second time, however, that the general awaited him at luncheon, he apprehended the meaning of the message, and went down to the parlour forthwith.

The general, and my lord Dunoran, and Miss Gertrude, and honest Father Roach, were there; and Aunt Becky being otherwise engaged, could not come.

Puddock, at luncheon, was abstracted—­frightened—­silent, for the most part; talking only two or three sentences during that sociable meal, by fits and starts; and he laughed once abruptly at a joke he did not hear.  He also drank three glasses of port.

Aunt Rebecca met him with her hood on in the hall.  She asked him, with a faltering sort of carelessness, looking very hard at the clock, and nearly with her back to him—­

‘Lieutenant, will you take a turn in the garden with me?’

To which Puddock, with almost a start—­for he had not seen her till she spoke—­and, upon my word, ’tis a fact, with a blush, too—­made a sudden smile, and a bow, and a suitable reply in low tones; and forth they sallied together, and into the garden, and up and down the same walk, for a good while—­a long while—­people sometimes don’t count the minutes—­with none but Peter Brian, the gardener, whom they did not see, to observe them.

When they came to the white wicket-door of the garden, Aunt Rebecca hastily dropped his arm, on which she had leaned; and together they returned to the house very affably; and there Aunt Becky bid him good-bye in a whisper, a little hastily; and Puddock, so soon as he found Dominick, asked for the general.

He had gone down to the river; and Puddock followed.  As he walked along the court, he looked up; there was a kind of face at the window.  He smiled a great deal and raised his hat, and placed it to his heart, and felt quite bewildered, like a man in a dream; and in this state he marched down to the river’s bank.