monitress, her aunt, to bid her be on her guard, beware of what it is that great heiresses are courted for, steel her heart against serpent speeches, see well to have the woman’s precious word No at the sentinel’s post, and alert there.  Mrs. Lackstraw, the most vigilant and plain-spoken of her sex, had forborne to utter the usual warnings which were to preserve Miss Mattock for her future Earl or Duke and the reason why she forbore was a double one; a soldier and Papist could never be thought perilous to a young woman scorning the sons of Mars and slaves of sacerdotalism.  The picture of Jane bestowing her hand on a Roman Catholic in military uniform, refused to be raised before the mind.  Charitableness, humaneness, the fact that she was an admirable nurse and liked to exercise her natural gift, perfectly accounted for Jane’s trips to Lappett’s farm, and the jellies and fresh dairy dainties and neat little dishes she was constantly despatching to the place.  A suggestion of possible danger might prove more dangerous than silence, by rendering it attractive.  Besides, Jane talked of poor Captain Philip as Patrick O’Donnell’s brother, whom she was bound to serve in return for Patrick’s many services to her; and of how unlike Patrick he was.  Mrs. Lackstraw had been apprehensive about her fancy for Patrick.  Therefore if Captain Philip was unlike him, and strictly a Catholic, according to report, the suspicion of danger dispersed, and she was allowed to enjoy the pleasures of the metropolis as frequently as she chose.  The nursing of a man of Letters, or of the neighbour to him, a beggar in rags, would not have been so tolerated.  Thus we perceive that wits actively awake inside the ring-fence of prepossessions they have erected may lull themselves with their wakefulness.  Who would have thought!—­is the cry when the strongest bulwark of the fence is broken through.

Jane least of any would have thought what was coming to pass.  The pale square-browed young officer, so little Irish and winning in his brevity of speech, did and said nothing to alarm her or strike the smallest light.  Grace Barrow noticed certain little changes of mood in Jane she could scarcely have had a distinct suspicion at the time.  After a recent observation of him, on an evening stroll from Lappett’s to Woodside, she pronounced him interesting, but hard.  ’He has an interesting head . . .  I should not like to offend him.’  They agreed as to his unlikeness to fluid Patrick; both eulogistic of the absent brother; and Jane, who could be playful in privacy with friends, clapped a brogue on her tongue to discourse of Patrick and apostrophise him:  ’Oh!  Pat, Pat, my dear cousin Pat! why are you so long away from your desponding Jane?  I ’ll take to poetry and write songs, if you don’t come home soon.  You’ve put seas between us, and are behaving to me as an enemy.  I know you ’ll bring home a foreign Princess to break the heart of your faithful.  But I’ll always praise you for a dear boy, Pat, and wish you happy, and beg the good gentleman your brother to give me a diploma as nurse to your first-born.  There now!’