Castle Richmond | Page 8

reputation does not often hurt a young man's feelings. But the other rumour did wound him. What! he sell himself to a widowed countess almost old enough to be his mother; or bestow himself rather--for what was there in return that could be reckoned as a price? At any rate, he had given no one cause to utter such falsehood, such calumny as that. No; it certainly was not probable that he should marry the countess.
But this set him to ask himself whether it might or might not be possible that he should marry some one else. Might it not be well for him if he could find a younger bride at Desmond Court? Not for nothing had he ridden over there through those bleak mountains; not for nothing, nor yet solely with the view of tying flies for the young earl's summer fishing, or preparing the new nag for his winter's hunting. Those large bright eyes had asked him many questions. Would it not be well that he should answer them?
For many months of that year Clara Desmond had hardly spoken to him. Then, in the summer evening, as he and her brother would lie sprawling together on the banks of the little Desmond river, while the lad was talking of his fish, and his school, and his cricket club, she would stand by and listen, and so gradually she learned to speak.
And the mother also would sometimes be there; or else she would welcome Fitzgerald in to tea, and let him stay there talking as though they were all at home, till he would have to make a midnight ride of it before he reached Hap House. It seemed that no fear as to he daughter had ever crossed the mother's mind; that no idea had ever come upon her that her favoured visitor might learn to love the young girl with whom he was allowed to associate on so intimate a footing. Once or twice he had caught himself calling her Clara, and had done so even before her mother; but no notice had been taken of it. In truth, Lady Desmond did not know her daughter, for the mother took her absolutely to be a child, when in fact she was a child no longer.
"You take Clara round by the bridge," said the earl to his friend one August evening, as they were standing together on the banks of the river, about a quarter of a mile distant from the sombre old pile in which the family lived. "You take Clara round by the bridge, and I will get over the stepping-stones." And so the lad, with his rod in his hand, began to descend the steep bank.
"I can get over the stepping-stones, too, Patrick," said she.
"Can you though, my gay young woman? You'll be over your ankles if you do. That rain didn't come down yesterday for nothing."
Clara as she spoke had come up to the bank, and now looked wistfully down at the stepping-stones. She had crossed them scores of times, sometimes with her brother, and often by herself. Why was it that she was so anxious to cross them now?
"It's no use your trying," said her brother who was now half across, and who spoke from the middle of the river. "Don't you let her, Owen. She'll slip in, and then there will be no end of a row up at the house."
"You had better come round by the bridge," said Fitzgerald. "It is not only that the stones are nearly under water, but they are wet, and you would slip."
So cautioned, Lady Clara allowed herself to be persuaded, and turned upwards along the river by a little path that led to a foot bridge. It was some quarter of a mile thither, and it would be the same distance down the river again before she regained her brother.
"I needn't bring you with me, you know," she said to Fitzgerald. "You can get over the stones easily, and I can go very well by myself."
But it was not probable that he would let her do so. "Why should I not go with you?" he said. "When I get there I have nothing to do but see him fish. Only if we were to leave him by himself he would not be happy."
"Oh, Mr. Fitzgerald, how very kind you are are! I do so often think of it. How dull his holidays would be in this place if it were not for you!"
"And what a godsend his holidays are to me!" said Owen. "When they come round I can ride over here and see him, and you--and your mother. Do you think that I am not dull also, living alone at Hap House, and that this is not an infinite blessing to me?"
He had