“Well, anyhow”--and she flung down her screen, and flashed upon him a pair of challenging wet eyes--“I’m no lady, and I’m dog ignorant; so what can you do with me?”
“Love you, my dear,” he answered, in a low voice.
“Arrah, how could you? and you and me strangers--you a grand lord, and me just a common girl with no manners, and very foolish and unhandy in myself? I can’t even do a day’s washing; and the bread I bake turns out like leather! I’m no good whatever here, and sure I’d be a million times worse in a strange country!”
“You’re making an awful poor mouth about yourself, Mary asthore,” put in the high, complaining treble of Mrs. Grogan. “Why don’t ye up and tell his lordship how good ye are at learning--how ye were in the sixth book, and if there’d have been a seventh, you’d be in _that_ too?--and that learning and reading and singing and dancing comes as easy to you as kiss me hand?”
“Sir,” said Mary, suddenly drawing herself up and confronting him--did she but know it, with the very face and form of her mother--“I’m no credit to ye. For God’s sake leave me here, where you found me. It will be better for both you and me. Think of the awful scandal and talk it will raise in this parish” (and what of the great Mulgrave connection?), “and my mother always so respected--when people thought it was only raving and wake in the head she was. Now, if it is _true_ what she’s after telling us, they will be saying she’d a right to be jailed up in Tralee!”
“My dear girl,” he said, “since Mrs. Foley has declared before witnesses and a lawyer, that you are no relation to her, but a very near relation to _me_, do you suppose I will leave you among people to whom you have no ties whatever? No; I am much too thankful to have found a daughter.”
“O God! What ails Katty?” screamed Mrs. Grogan. “Glory! she’s come over, and she’s going off in a faint and a wakeness!”
This was true. The recent scene and excitement had been too much for the poor frail woman, and after a few weak gasps she fell back in her chair insensible.
Cold water was procured immediately, also whisky (Mr. Usher, who looked the last man in the world to carry a flask, produced one), and then he and his employer went out of the cottage, leaving the women to attend on the invalid.