He rose so suddenly from his chair that the man did not dare to ask him whether he would not sit over his wine. A suggestion that way was indeed made, would he "visit the laird out o' hand, or would he bide awee?" Phineas decided on visiting the laird out of hand, and was at once led across the hall, down a back passage which he had never before traversed, and introduced to the chamber which had ever been known as the "laird's ain room." Here Robert Kennedy rose to receive him.

Phineas knew the man's age well. He was still under fifty, but he looked as though he were seventy. He had always been thin, but he was thinner now than ever. He was very grey, and stooped so much, that though he came forward a step or two to greet his guest, it seemed as though he had not taken the trouble to raise himself to his proper height. "You find me a much altered man," he said. The change had been so great that it was impossible to deny it, and Phineas muttered something of regret that his host's health should be so bad. "It is trouble of the mind,—not of the body, Mr. Finn. It is her doing,—her doing. Life is not to me a light thing, nor are the obligations of life light. When I married a wife, she became bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Can I lose my bones and my flesh,—knowing that they are not with God but still subject elsewhere to the snares of the devil, and live as though I were a sound man? Had she died I could have borne it. I hope they have made you comfortable, Mr. Finn?"

"Oh, yes," said Phineas.

"Not that Loughlinter can be comfortable now to any one. How can a man, whose wife has deserted him, entertain his guests? I am ashamed even to look a friend in the face, Mr. Finn." As he said this he stretched forth his open hand as though to hide his countenance, and Phineas hardly knew whether the absurdity of the movement or the tragedy of the feeling struck him the more forcibly. "What did I do that she should leave me? Did I strike her? Was I faithless? Had she not the half of all that was mine? Did I frighten her by hard words, or exact hard tasks? Did I not commune with her, telling her all my most inward purposes? In things of this world, and of that better world that is coming, was she not all in all to me? Did I not make her my very wife? Mr. Finn, do you know what made her go away?" He had asked perhaps a dozen questions. As to the eleven which came first it was evident that no answer was required; and they had been put with that pathetic dignity with which it is so easy to invest the interrogatory form of address. But to the last question it was intended that Phineas should give an answer, as Phineas presumed at once; and then it was asked with a wink of the eye, a low eager voice, and a sly twist of the face that were frightfully ludicrous. "I suppose you do know," said Mr. Kennedy, again working his eye, and thrusting his chin forward.

The Laird of Loughlinter.
Click to [ENLARGE]

"I imagine that she was not happy."

"Happy? What right had she to expect to be happy? Are we to believe that we should be happy here? Are we not told that we are to look for happiness there, and to hope for none below?" As he said this he stretched his left hand to the ceiling. "But why shouldn't she have been happy? What did she want? Did she ever say anything against me, Mr. Finn?"

"Nothing but this,—that your temper and hers were incompatible."

"I thought at one time that you advised her to go away?"