“As you seem somewhat surprised,” continued Mat, seeing that Lord Ballindine remained silent, and apparently at a loss for what he ought to say, “perhaps I ought to tell you, that Lord Kilcullen mentioned it last night very publicly—­at a dinner-party, as an absolute fact.  Indeed, from his manner, I thought he wished it to be generally made known.  I presumed, therefore, that it had been mutually agreed between you, that the event was not to come off—­that the match was not to be run; and, with my peculiar views, you know, on the subject of matrimony, I thought it a fair point for congratulation.  If Lord Kilcullen had misled me, I heartily beg to apologise; and at the same time, by giving you my authority, to show you that I could not intend anything impertinent.  If it suits you, you are quite at liberty to tell Lord Kilcullen all I have told you; and, if you wish me to contradict the report, which I must own I have spread, I will do so.”

Frank felt that he could not be angry with Mat Tierney; he therefore thanked him for his open explanation, and, merely muttering something about private affairs not being worthy of public interest, rode off towards Handicap Lodge.

It appeared very plain to him that the Grey Abbey family must have discarded him—­that Fanny Wyndham, Lord and Lady Cashel, and the whole set, must have made up their minds to drop him altogether; otherwise, one of the family would not have openly declared the match at an end.  And yet he was at a loss to conceive how they could have done so—­how even Lord Cashel could have reconciled it to himself to do so, without the common-place courtesy of writing to him on the subject.  And then, when he thought of her, “his own Fanny,” as he had so often called her, he was still more bewildered:  she, with whom he had sat for so many sweet hours talking of the impossibility of their ever forgetting, deserting, or even slighting each other; she, who had been so entirely devoted to him—­so much more than engaged to him—­could she have lent her name to such a heartless mode of breaking her faith?

“If I had merely proposed for her through her guardian,” thought Frank, to himself—­“if I had got Lord Cashel to make the engagement, as many men do, I should not be surprised; but after all that has passed between us—­after all her vows, and all her—­” and then Lord Ballindine struck his horse with his heel, and made a cut at the air with his whip, as he remembered certain passages more binding even than promises, warmer even than vows, which seemed to make him as miserable now as they had made him happy at the time of their occurrence.  “I would not believe it,” he continued, meditating, “if twenty Kilcullens said it, or if fifty Mat Tierneys swore to it!” and then he rode on towards the lodge, in a state of mind for which I am quite unable to account, if his disbelief in Fanny Wyndham’s constancy was really as strong as he had declared it to be.  And, as he rode, many unusual thoughts—­for, hitherto, Frank had not been a very deep-thinking man—­crowded his mind, as to the baseness, falsehood, and iniquity of the human race, especially of rich cautious old peers who had beautiful wards in their power.