nd perhaps from one vow of constancy to
another for half-a-dozen years? The adventure was very sweet. But how
was it to end? His uncle might live these ten years, and he had not the
heart,--nor yet the courage,--to present her to his uncle as his bride.

When he reached Ennis that evening there was a despatch marked
"Immediate," from his aunt Lady Scroope. "Your uncle is very
ill;--dangerously ill, we fear. His great desire is to see you once
again. Pray come without losing an hour."

Early on the following morning he started for Dublin, but before he
went to bed that night he not only wrote to Kate O'Hara, but enclosed
the note from his aunt. He could understand that though the tidings of
his uncle's danger was a shock to him there would be something in the
tidings which would cause joy to the two inmates of Ardkill Cottage.
When he sent that letter with his own, he was of course determined that
he would marry Kate O'Hara as soon as he was a free man.

CHAPTER IX.

FRED NEVILLE RETURNS TO SCROOPE.

The suddenness of the demand made for the heir's presence at Scroope was
perhaps not owing to the Earl's illness alone. The Earl, indeed, was
ill,--so ill that he thought himself that his end was very near; but his
illness had been brought about chiefly by the misery to which he had
been subjected by the last despatch from Castle Quin to the Countess. "I
am most unwilling," she said, "to make mischief or to give unnecessary
pain to you or to Lord Scroope; but I think it my duty to let you know
that the general opinion about here is that Mr. Neville shall make Miss
O'Hara his wife,--_if he has not done so already_. The most dangerous
feature in the whole matter is that it is all managed by the priest of
this parish, a most unscrupulous person, who would do anything,--he
is so daring. We have known him many many years, and we know to what
lengths he would go. The laws have been so altered in favour of the
Roman Catholics, and against the Protestants, that a priest can do
almost just what he likes. I do not think that he would scruple for an
instant to marry them if he thought it likely that his prey would escape
from him. My own opinion is that there has been no marriage as yet,
though I know that others think that there has been." The expression of
this opinion from "others" which had reached Lady Mary's ears consisted
of an assurance from her own Protestant lady's maid that that wicked,
guzzling old Father Marty