"Good-bye, Lady Clara;" and he also shook hands with her, and it need hardly be said that there was a lover's pressure in the grasp.
"Good-bye," said Clara, through her tears, in the saddest, soberest tone. He was going away, happy, light hearted, with nothing to trouble him. But she had to encounter that fearful task of telling her own crime. She had to depart with her mother;—her mother, who, though never absolutely unkind, had so rarely been tender with her. And then her brother—!
"Desmond," said Fitzgerald, "walk as far as the lodge with me like a good fellow. I have something that I want to say to you."
The mother thought for a moment that she would call her son back; but then she bethought herself that she also might as well be without him. So the young earl, showing plainly by his eyes that he knew that much was the matter, went back with Fitzgerald towards the lodge.
"What is it you have done now?" said the earl. The boy had some sort of an idea that the offence committed was with reference to his sister; and his tone was hardly as gracious as was usual with him.
This want of kindliness at the present moment grated on Owen's ears; but he resolved at once to tell the whole story out, and then leave it to the earl to take it in dudgeon or in brotherly friendship as he might please.
"Desmond," said he, "can you not guess what has passed between me and your sister?"
"I am not good at guessing," he answered, brusquely.
"I have told her that I loved her, and would have her for my wife; and I have asked her to love me in return."
There was an open manliness about this which almost disarmed the earl's anger. He had felt a strong attachment to Fitzgerald, and was very unwilling to give up his friendship; but, nevertheless, he had an idea that it was presumption on the part of Mr. Fitzgerald of Hap House to look up to his sister. Between himself and Owen the earl's coronet never weighed a feather; he could not have abandoned his boy's heart to the man's fellowship more thoroughly had that man been an earl as well as himself. But he could not get over the feeling that Fitzgerald's worldly position was beneath that of his sister;—that such a marriage on his sister's part would be a mesalliance. Doubting, therefore, and in some sort dismayed—and in some sort also angry—he did not at once give any reply.