And then he took his departure, leaving Owen to his solitude, much perplexed. "And where is that man?" Mr. Prendergast asked, as he got on to his car.
"Bedad thin, yer honer, he's very bad intirely. He's jist sitthing over the kitchen fire, moaning and croning this way and that, but sorrow a word he's spoke since the masther hoisted him out o' the big hall door. And thin for blood—why, saving yer honer's presence, he's one mash of gore."
"You'd better wash his face for him, and give him a little tea," said Mr. Prendergast, and then he drove away.
And strange ideas floated across Owen Fitzgerald's brain as he sat there alone, in his hunting gear, leaning on the still covered breakfast-table. They floated across his brain backwards and forwards, and at last remained there, taking almost the form of a definite purpose. He would make a bargain with Herbert; let each of them keep that which was fairly his own; let Herbert have all the broad lands of Castle Richmond; let him have the title, the seat in parliament, and the county honour; but for him, Owen—let him have Clara Desmond. He desired nothing that was not fairly his own; but as his own he did regard her, and without her he did not know how to face the future of his life. And in suggesting this arrangement to himself, he did not altogether throw over her feelings; he did take into account her heart, though he did not take into account her worldly prospects. She had loved him—him—Owen; and he would not teach himself to believe that she did not love him still. Her mother had been too powerful for her, and she had weakly yielded; but as to her heart—Owen could not bring himself to believe that that was gone from him.
They two would make a bargain,—he and his cousin. Honour and renown, and the money and the title would be everything to his cousin. Herbert had been brought up to expect these things, and all the world around him had expected them for him. It would be terrible to him to find himself robbed of them. But the loss of Clara Desmond was equally terrible to Owen Fitzgerald. He allowed his heart to fill itself with a romantic sense of honour, teaching him that it behoved him as a man not to give up his love. Without her he would live disgraced in his own estimation; but who would not think the better of him for refraining from the possession of those Castle Richmond acres? Yes; he would make a bargain with Herbert. Who was there in the world to deny his right to do so?
As he sat revolving these things in his mind, he suddenly heard a rushing sound, as of many horsemen down the avenue, and going to the window, he saw two or three leading men of the hunt, accompanied by the gray-haired old huntsman; and through and about and under the horsemen were the dogs, running in and out of the laurels which skirted the road, with their noses down, giving every now and then short yelps as they caught up the uncertain scent from the leaves on the ground, and hurried on upon the trail of their game.
"Yo ho! to him, Messenger; hark to him, Maybird; good bitch, Merrylass. He's down here, gen'lemen, and he'll never get away alive. He came to a bad place when he looked out for going to ground anywhere near Mr. Owen."
And then there came, fast trotting down through the other horsemen, making his way eagerly to the front, a stout heavy man, with a florid handsome face and eager eye. He might be some fifty years of age, but no lad there of three-and-twenty was so anxious and impetuous as he. He was riding a large-boned, fast-trotting bay horse, that pressed on as eagerly as his rider. As he hurried forward all made way for him, till he was close to the shrubs in the front of the house.
"Bless my soul, gentlemen," he said, in an angry voice, "how, in the name of all that's good, are hounds to hunt if you press them down the road in that way? By heavens, Barry, you are enough to drive a man wild. Yoicks, Merrylass! there it is, Pat;"—Pat was the huntsman—"outside the low wall there, down towards the river." This was Sam O'Grady, the master of the Duhallow hounds, the god of Owen's idolatry. No better fellow ever lived, and no master of hounds, so good; such at least was the opinion common among Duhallow sportsmen.
"Yes, yer honer,—he did skirt round there, I knows that; but he's been among them laurels at the bottom, and he'll be about the place and outhouses somewhere. There's a drain here that I knows on, and he knows on. But Mr. Owen, he knows on it too; and there aint a chance for him." So argued Pat, the Duhallow huntsman, the experienced craft of whose aged mind enabled him to run counter to the cutest dodges of the cutest fox in that and any of the three neighbouring baronies.