She counted all her cards again before sending Mary up to Doran’s room to say that she wished to speak with him.  She felt sure she would win.  He was a serious young man, not rakish or loud-voiced like the others.  If it had been Mr. Sheridan or Mr. Meade or Bantam Lyons her task would have been much harder.  She did not think he would face publicity.  All the lodgers in the house knew something of the affair; details had been invented by some.  Besides, he had been employed for thirteen years in a great Catholic wine-merchant’s office and publicity would mean for him, perhaps, the loss of his job.  Whereas if he agreed all might be well.  She knew he had a good screw for one thing and she suspected he had a bit of stuff put by.

Nearly the half-hour!  She stood up and surveyed herself in the pier-glass.  The decisive expression of her great florid face satisfied her and she thought of some mothers she knew who could not get their daughters off their hands.

Mr. Doran was very anxious indeed this Sunday morning.  He had made two attempts to shave but his hand had been so unsteady that he had been obliged to desist.  Three days’ reddish beard fringed his jaws and every two or three minutes a mist gathered on his glasses so that he had to take them off and polish them with his pocket-handkerchief.  The recollection of his confession of the night before was a cause of acute pain to him; the priest had drawn out every ridiculous detail of the affair and in the end had so magnified his sin that he was almost thankful at being afforded a loophole of reparation.  The harm was done.  What could he do now but marry her or run away?  He could not brazen it out.  The affair would be sure to be talked of and his employer would be certain to hear of it.  Dublin is such a small city:  everyone knows everyone else’s business.  He felt his heart leap warmly in his throat as he heard in his excited imagination old Mr. Leonard calling out in his rasping voice:  “Send Mr. Doran here, please.”

All his long years of service gone for nothing!  All his industry and diligence thrown away!  As a young man he had sown his wild oats, of course; he had boasted of his free-thinking and denied the existence of God to his companions in public- houses.  But that was all passed and done with... nearly.  He still bought a copy of Reynolds’s Newspaper every week but he attended to his religious duties and for nine-tenths of the year lived a regular life.  He had money enough to settle down on; it was not that.  But the family would look down on her.  First of all there was her disreputable father and then her mother’s boarding house was beginning to get a certain fame.  He had a notion that he was being had.  He could imagine his friends talking of the affair and laughing.  She was a little vulgar; some times she said “I seen” and “If I had’ve known.”  But what would grammar matter if he really loved her?  He could not make up his mind whether to like her or despise her for what she had done.  Of course he had done it too.  His instinct urged him to remain free, not to marry.  Once you are married you are done for, it said.