ure you are. You will see him to-morrow after breakfast. He is
most anxious to see you. I think sometimes you hardly reflect how much
you are to him."

"I don't know why you should say so."

"You had better not speak to him to-morrow about this affair,--of the
Irish young lady."

"Certainly not,--unless he speaks to me about it."

"He is hardly strong enough yet. But no doubt he will do so before you
leave us. I hope it may be long before you do that."

"It can't be very long, Aunt Mary." To this she said nothing, but bade
him good-night and he was left alone. It was now past ten, and he
supposed that Miss Mellerby had come in and gone to her room. Why she
should avoid him in this way he could not understand. But as for Miss
Mellerby herself, she was so little to him that he cared not at all
whether he did or did not see her. All his brightest thoughts were away
in County Clare, on the cliffs overlooking the Atlantic. They might say
what they liked to him, but he would never be untrue to the girl whom
he had left there. His aunt had spoken of the "affair of--the Irish
young lady;" and he had quite understood the sneer with which she had
mentioned Kate's nationality. Why should not an Irish girl be as good as
any English girl? Of one thing he was quite sure,--that there was much
more of real life to be found on the cliffs of Moher than in the gloomy
chambers of Scroope Manor.

He got up from his seat feeling absolutely at a loss how to employ
himself. Of course he could go to bed, but how terribly dull must life
be in a place in which he was obliged to go to bed at ten o'clock
because there was nothing to do. And since he had been there his only
occupation had been that of listening to his aunt's sermons. He began
to think that a man might pay too dearly even for being the heir to
Scroope. After sitting awhile in the dark gloom created by a pair of
candles, he got up and wandered into the large unused dining-room of the
mansion. It was a chamber over forty feet long, with dark flock paper
and dark curtains, with dark painted wainscoating below the paper, and
huge dark mahogany furniture. On the walls hung the portraits of the
Scroopes for many generations past, some in armour, some in their robes
of state, ladies with stiff bodices and high head-dresses, not beauties
by Lely or warriors and statesmen by Kneller, but wooden, stiff,
ungainly, hideous figures, by artists whose works had, unfortunately,
been more endu