This was an O'Hara whose existence she had not dreamed of, and for whose acquaintance, to say the truth, she had small relish.
"What has come to you?" she cried aloud, with another burst of petulance.
"Faith," said he, "and I hardly know myself, Kitty darling. Oh, Kitty," said he, "'tis vastly well to laugh at love, and play at love; but when love comes in earnest it takes a man as it were by the throat, and it's no joke then."
"So I see," said she, with some dryness.
O'Hara clenched his hand and drew a laboured breath.
*****
Straining, slipping now and again, breaking into spurts of trot, to fall into enforced walking pace once more, the gallant team had dragged the chaise to the summit of the great rise at a speed quite unprecedented, yet comparatively slow.
Now the way lay down-hill. The coachman waved his whip. Bounding along the fair road the wheels hummed; the night-wind blowing in through the half-opened window, set Mistress Kitty's laces flapping on her bosom, and a stray curl of Mr. O'Hara's dancing on his pale forehead.
The exhilaration of the rapid flight, the crack of the whip, the mad rhythm of the hoofs, the witchery of the night hour, the risks of the situation, the very madness of the whole enterprise, all combined to set the widow's gay blood delightfully astir, mounting to her light brain like sparkling wine.
What! were all the accessories of the play to be so perfect, and was the chief character to prove such a lamentable failure in his part? What! was she, Kitty Bellairs, to be carried off by the most notorious rake in Bath, only to find him as awkward, as dumb, as embarrassed with the incomparable situation as the veriest greenhorn? "It shall not, and it cannot be," said she to herself. And thereupon she changed her tactics.