These men belonged to the very class who would now come between him and Mary; he hated them both furiously.
“I tell you what?” said Sir Harry, who had lost his easily mislaid temper, pushing back the gate as he spoke, “I see that I will have to give you a thrashing; you are spoiling for it, as they say here”—and he seized Pat roughly by the coat.
Pat, nothing loth, tore it out of his hand, flung it on the grass, squared himself, and said: “Come on, me little man! and I’ll soon knock the head off ye.”
Hearing this challenge, Captain Deverell jumped down with unexpected agility, caught hold of his companion, and dragged him through the gate, struggling violently, saying: “For heaven’s sake don’t make an ass of yourself! Come along, come along—leave the fellow alone. Why should you interfere with his girl?—how would you like it yourself?”
And the girl called after him, in a clear voice: “Yes; you take your wan off quietly, sir, and I’ll see, that Patsie Maguire here, keeps himself in bounds!”
CHAPTER XIX
After the separation of the would-be combatants, and when the dumb man had, with unlooked-for energy, dragged away his furious struggling companion, Mary found herself tête-à-tête with Patsie. He had on several occasions waylaid her in the hotel garden; now he had tracked her to “the Corner,” and for what good? If Patsie was not pleasing as a lover in the sight of Mary Foley, how could he expect to be acceptable to the same young woman in a much loftier station? What description of a husband would he make for Lord Mulgrave’s daughter and heiress? Why, the thing was ridiculous on the face of it! He realised this instinctively, and yet he would not suffer her to depart without some sort of interview, even if the interview led to nothing. Pat was impulsive, sensitive, warm-hearted, and very vain. It would satisfy his heart, and gratify his vanity, to have a real sort of storybook parting with his sweetheart, and all the world—that is to say, his own little world—would know that she had talked to him as equal to equal, and bidden him good-bye.
This, encouraged by bad whisky, was Pat’s motive in following Mary. Mary had a patrician horror of scenes. A scene was impending. She read its approach in her suitor’s tragic blue eyes; and she was annoyed, not only with him, but herself. She had been led away by some impish spirit to fall into temptation, to play the old part of Mary of the gate to two totally strange gentlemen; and the two strange gentlemen had departed, carrying with them, an entirely wrong impression.