e to-morrow evening, when I shall expect you at
tea."

Mr. Hankes bowed his grateful acknowledgments.

"I suspect, sir," said she, playfully, "that I have guessed your reason
for this journey."

"My reason, my dear Miss Kellett," said he, in confusion,--"my reason is
simply the pleasure and honor of _your_ company, and the opportunity of
visiting an interesting scene with--with--with--"

"No matter for the compliment; but I began really to imagine that you
wished to learn my secret of bargaining with the people; that you wanted
to witness one of these contracts you have heard so much of. Well, sir,
you shall have it: our sole secret is, we trust each other."

CHAPTER XV. A BRIDLE-PATH

Sybella Kellett was less than just when she said that the country
which lay between the Hermitage and Bantry Bay had few claims to the
picturesque. It may possibly have been that she spoke with reference to
what she fancied might have been Mr. Hankes's judgment of such a scene.
There was, indeed, little to please an English eye,--no rich and waving
woods, no smiling corn-fields, no expanse of swelling lawn or upland of
deep meadow; but there was a wild and grand desolation, a waving surface
fissured with deep clefts opening on the sea, which boomed in many a
cavern far beneath. There were cliffs upright as a wall, hundreds of
feet in height, on whose bare summits some rude remains were still
traceable,--the fragment of a church, or shrine, or some lone cross,
symbol of a faith that dated from centuries back. Heaths of many a
gorgeous hue--purple, golden, and azure--clad a surface ever changing,
and ferns that would have overtopped a tall horseman mingled their
sprayey leaves with the wild myrtle and the arbutus. The moon was at her
full as Sybella, accompanied by Mr. Hankes, and followed by an old and
faithful groom,--a servant of her father's in times past,--took her way
across this solitary tract.

If my reader is astonished that Mr. Hankes should have offered himself
for such an expedition, it is but fair to state that the surprise was
honestly shared in by that same gentleman. Was it that he made the offer
in some moment of rash enthusiasm; had any impulse of wild chivalry
mastered his calmer reason; was it that curious tendency which
occasionally seems to sway Cockney natures to ascend mountains, cross
dangerous ledges, or peep into volcanic craters? I really cannot aver
that any of these was his actual motive, while I