“Unless you are very sure she is, and, for a considerable time back, has been, a confirmed lunatic, you’d be very wrong—very ill-advised, I mean, Mr Lynch, to try that game at all. Things would come out which you wouldn’t like; and your motives would be—would be—” seen through at once, the attorney was on the point of saying, but he stopped himself, and finished by the words “called in question”.
“And I’m to sit here, then, and see that young blackguard Kelly, run off with what ought to be my own, and my sister into the bargain? I’m blessed if I do! If you can’t put me in the way of stopping it, I’ll find those that can.”
“You’re getting too much in a hurry, Mr Lynch. Is your sister at the inn now?”
“To be sure she is.”
“And she is engaged to this young man?”
“She is.”
“Why, then, she might be married to him to-morrow, for anything you know.”
“She might, if he was here. But they tell me he’s away, in Dublin.”
“If they told you so to-day, they told you wrong: he came into Dunmore, from Tuam, on the same car with myself, this very afternoon.”
“What, Martin Kelly? Then he’ll be off with her this night, while we’re sitting here!” and Barry jumped up, as if to rush out, and prevent the immediate consummation of his worst fears.