But the large, low drawing-room, was unoccupied, and placing a chair, the footman retired to announce the visitor. He stood a moment after he was thus left, then strolled to the window, which looked towards the green; but finding little to interest him in the prospect, after a careless glance at one or two pictures, and some exquisite miniatures, which lay on the tables, he walked through the open door, leading into a smaller room within, which opened on the park; and here he stood, as if rooted to the ground--his every faculty absorbed in the contemplation of the living picture before him--till Kate, with that instinct which whispers to us, when a fellow mortal is near, slowly raised her fringed lids, and looked at him a moment, bewildered; then rising, her natural, well-bred, self-possession, heightened by the calmness and indifference consequent on pre-occupation, and the stillness that follows deep emotion--
"I fear I kept you too long waiting; my cousin, Lady Desmond has unfortunately just left me, to pay a visit at the Palace. I will send for her." And she laid her hand on the bell-pull.
The stranger stood a moment, in silence, an unwonted look of irresolution, on his haughty countenance; then, bowing with profound respect, he begged pardon for his intrusion, in soft and refined tones, which, as also his face, grew strangely familiar to Kate's memory, as she looked and listened.
"Pray do not give Lady Desmond the trouble of returning," he said, with a degree of hesitation, marvellously at variance with his air of _un grand seigneur_.
"Her ladyship is not at home, my lord, I did not know she had gone out again."
"I see her returning across the garden," said Miss Vernon, "she will be here immediately," and pointing to a chair, she bent her head gravely to the visitor, and left the room.
He remained gazing after her, then muttering to himself, "most surpassingly novel-like, by Minerva," turned to greet Lady Desmond as she entered, with an easy grace and quiet firmness of manner, very different from the demeanour he had exhibited to her gentle, unassuming cousin.
A sketch of the life and character of the lady, whose name stands at the head of this chapter, is necessary for the right understanding of what follows; so while she talks of Italian skies, and her reminiscences of Naples with her reserved visitor, whose well timed observations and profound attention drew forth her most brilliant conversational powers, we will draw upon the reader's imagination, and transport her or him, to the West of Ireland, twenty years back from the period of which we write. Dungar was then at its highest point of gaiety and apparent prosperity, when intelligence reached Colonel Vernon of the death, at sea, of a certain Lieutenant O'Brien, of whom he had an indistinct recollection, as having incurred the displeasure and disapprobation of a large circle of relatives, amongst whom the Colonel himself was numbered, by eloping, and consequent marriage, with a very beautiful but low-born and penniless girl.