had not thwarted by ridicule, nor a single evil temptation to
which he had yielded that had not come out of sheer opposition to that
lady's dictation.

Malevolent people, indeed, had said that Mathew Kearney had once had
matrimonial designs on Miss Betty, or rather, on that snug place and nice
property called 'O'Shea's Barn,' of which she was sole heiress; but he most
stoutly declared this story to be groundless, and in a forcible manner
asseverated that had he been Robinson Crusoe and Miss Betty the only
inhabitant of the island with him, he would have lived and died in
celibacy.

Miss Betty, to give her the name by which she was best known, was no
miracle of either tact or amiability, but she had certain qualities that
could not be disparaged. She was a strict Catholic, charitable, in her own
peculiar and imperious way, to the poor, very desirous to be strictly just
and honest, and such a sure foe to everything that she thought pretension
or humbug of any kind--which meant anything that did not square with her
own habits--that she was perfectly intolerable to all who did not accept
herself and her own mode of life as a model and an example.

Thus, a stout-bodied copper urn on the tea-table, a very uncouth
jaunting-car, driven by an old man, whose only livery was a cockade, some
very muddy port as a dinner wine, and whisky-punch afterwards on the brown
mahogany, were so many articles of belief with her, to dissent from any of
which was a downright heresy.

Thus, after Nina arrived at the castle, the appearance of napkins palpably
affected her constitution; with the advent of finger-glasses she ceased her
visits, and bluntly declined all invitations to dinner. That coffee and
some indescribable liberties would follow, as postprandial excesses, she
secretly imparted to Kate Kearney in a note, which concluded with the
assurance that when the day of these enormities arrived, O'Shea's Barn
Would be open to her as a refuge and a sanctuary; 'but not,' added she,
'with your cousin, for I'll not let the hussy cross my doors.'

For months now this strict quarantine had lasted, and except for the
interchange of some brief and very uninteresting notes, all intimacy had
ceased between the two houses--a circumstance, I am loth to own, which was
most ungallantly recorded every day after dinner by old Kearney, who drank
'Miss Betty's health, and long absence to her.' It was then with no small
astonishment Kate was overtaken in th