"Is your mother aware of so dangerous a proceeding?" I asked with some sternness.
A strange look passed over the girl's face, and she answered with a little laugh, half merry, half wistful:
"Ah! then, don't you know? I'm the orphan from the castle."
"From the castle?" I repeated. I began to think that this creature, after all, was a spirit, such as I had been told lived in the glens and streams of fairy-haunted Ireland.
"Yes," said she, "I am from the castle."
"From Powerscourt?" I suggested; supposing, of course, that she meant the great mansion which all visitors to the Dargle felt bound to see.
"From Powerscourt!" cried she, with contempt in her voice. "Oh, it's easy to see you are from America! Why, the castle I live in was built hundreds of years before there was any Powerscourt at all."
I was again struck dumb by this assurance. What castle could she mean? I knew of none in the neighborhood, and yet I had been studying the latest guidebook with the closest attention.
"If you come with me some day," she said, "I will show you my castle, and granny will be very glad to see you."
She spoke with a grand air, as though she were, indeed, a young princess inviting me to visit her ancestral home.