Everything around him was now melancholy, and therefore these terms had not seemed to have any special force of their own. He did not think it necessary to warn Clara that bad days might be in store for both of them, or to caution her that their path of love might yet be made rough.
"And whom do you think I met, just now, on horseback?" he asked, as soon as this question of her visit had been decided.
"Mr. Owen Fitzgerald, probably," said Clara. "He went from hence about an hour since."
"Owen Fitzgerald here!" he repeated, as though the tidings of such a visit having been made were not exactly pleasant to him. "I thought that Lady Desmond did not even see him now."
"His visit was to me, Herbert, and I will explain it to you. I was just going to tell you when you first came in, only you began about Castle Richmond."
"And have you seen him?"
"Oh yes, I saw him. Mamma thought it best. Yesterday he wrote a note to me which I will show you." And then she gave him such an account of the interview as was possible to her, making it, at any rate, intelligible to him that Owen had come thither to claim her for himself, having heard the rumour of her engagement to his cousin.
"It was inexcusable on his part—unpardonable!" said Herbert, speaking with an angry spot on his face, and with more energy than was usual with him.
"Was it? why?" said Clara, innocently. She felt unconsciously that it was painful to her to hear Owen ill spoken of by her lover, and that she would fain excuse him if she could.
"Why, dearest? Think what motives he could have had; what other object than to place you in a painful position, and to cause trouble and vexation to us all. Did he not know that we were engaged?"