I'll not deny I don't think that will be
worth much."

Sophia glanced helplessly at Rupert, but he was far too carefully
possessed of himself to affect to perceive her embarrassment.

"Come, come," cried Miss O'Donoghue, whose eyes nothing escaped, "you
need not look at Rupert, you can answer for yourself, I suppose--you
are not absolutely a drivelling idiot--_all_ the Landales are not
ripening for lunatic asylums--collect your wits, Sophia, I know you
have not got any, but you have _enough_ to be able to give a plain
answer to a plain question, I suppose. Do you think your brother mad,
child?"

"God forbid," murmured Sophia, at the very extremity of those wits of
which Miss O'Donoghue had so poor an opinion. "Oh, no, dear aunt, not
_mad_, of course, not in the least _mad_."

Then, gathering from a restless movement of Rupert's that she was not
upon the right tack she faltered, floundered wildly, and finally drew
forth the inevitable pocket-handkerchief, to add feelingly if
irrelevantly from its folds, "And indeed if I thought such a calamity
had really fallen upon us--and of course there _are_ symptoms, no
doubt there are symptoms...."

"What are his symptoms--has he tried to murder any of you, hey?"

"Oh, my dear aunt! No, indeed, dear Adrian is gentleness itself."

"Does he bite? Does he gibber? Oh, away with you, Sophia! I am sure I
cannot wonder at the poor fellow wanting to live on a rock, between
you and Rupert. I am sure the periwinkles and the gulls must be
pleasant company compared to you. That alone would show, I should
think, that he knows right well what he is about. Mad indeed! There
never was any madness among the O'Donoghues except your poor uncle
Michael, who got a box on the ear from a windmill--and _he_ wasn't an
O'Donoghue at all! You will be kind enough, nephew, to have delivered
to Sir Adrian, no later than to-day, the letter which I shall this
moment indite to him."

"Perhaps," said Rupert, "if you will only favour me with your
attention for a few minutes first, aunt, and allow me to narrate to
you the circumstances of my brother's return here, and of his
subsequent self-exile, you will see fit to change your opinion, both
as regards him and myself."

A self-controlled nature will in the long run, rightly or wrongly,
always assume the ascendency over an excitable one. The moderateness
of Rupert's words, the coolness of his manner, here brought Tanty
rapidly down from her pinnacle of pa