“Bedad, I did—a great fat man, with a bald face, and a pearl on one of his eyes.” She meant cataract.
Lord Mulgrave gave a short laugh; then he said, “So, Joseline, you’ve never had a lover?”
“Is it me? Why I had a couple of dozen or more making shapes at me!”
Her father sat up stiffly in his chair, apprehension in his attitude; the expression of his face was disturbed.
“But sure, I didn’t care a hair for one of them,” she added reassuringly. “I only liked them just for joking and dancing—nothing more, I give ye me word. But I’d fine work keeping them off; they mostly wanted to marry me!”
“You say you had many admirers, my dear. Did you not care for one of them? Come, now, do not be afraid to speak.”
“No. Sorra one of them!”
“And yet you are past one-and-twenty! It is strange that my little girl’s heart has never been touched,” continued Lord Mulgrave, in a meditative tone; “but I think I can explain it. I believe it was a case of like to like, and you instinctively shrank from the claims of a race to which you did not really belong.”
“I expect there was something in that,” assented Joseline. “They said I was too particular, and all for picking and choosing.”
“Now, supposing you had come across a gentleman wooer?”—and Lord Mulgrave paused interrogatively. (Did he notice that Joseline was very pale?) “I wonder how it would have been? Perhaps you and I would not be sitting here to-day, Joseline. I am thankful that you belong only to me!”