'What! Is it Miss Bellew you are to marry?'
'To be sure——'
But I could not finish the sentence, as O'Grady fell upon my shoulder, and his strong frame was convulsed with emotion.
In an instant, however, I tore myself away; and calling out, 'Wait for me, O'Grady!' I rushed upstairs, peeped hastily into the drawing-room, and then hurrying along the corridor opened a door at the end. The blinds of the windows were down, and the room so dark that I could scarcely perceive if any one were there had not my steps been guided by a low sob which I heard issue from the end of the sofa.
'Julia,' said I, rushing forward—'Julia, my dearest cousin! this is no time to deceive ourselves. He loves you—loved you from the first hour he met you. Let me have but one word. Can he, dare he hope that you are not indifferent to him? Let him but see you, but speak to you. Believe me, you have bent a heart as proud and haughty as your own; and you will have broken it if you refuse him. There, dearest girl—— Thanks! my heart's thanks for that!'
The slightest pressure of her taper fingers sent a thrill through me, as I sprang up and dashed down the stairs. In an instant I had seized O'Grady's arm, and the next moment whispered in his ear—
'You 've won her!'
CHAPTER LXI. NEW ARRIVALS
Mr. Paul Rooney's secret was destined to be inviolable as regarded his leg of pork; for Madame de Roni, either from chagrin or fatigue, did not leave her room the entire day. Miss Bellew declined joining us; and we sat down, a party of three, each wrapped up in his own happiness in a degree far too great to render us either social or conversational It is true the wine circulated briskly, and we nodded pleasantly now and then to one another; but all our efforts to talk led to so many blunders and cross answers that we scarcely ventured on more than a chance phrase or a good-humoured smile. There were certainly several barriers in the way of our complete happiness, in the innumerable prejudices of my lady-mother, who would be equally averse to O'Grady's project as to my own; but now was not the time to speculate on these, and we wrapped ourselves up in the glorious anticipation of our success, and cared little for such sources of opposition as might now arise. Meanwhile, Paul entered into a long and doubtless very accurate statement of the Bellew property, to which, I confess, I paid little attention, save when the name of Louisa occurred, which momentarily aroused me from my dreaminess. All the wily stratagems by which he had gained his points with Galway juries, all the cunning devices by which he had circumvented opposing lawyers and obtained verdicts in almost hopeless cases, however I might have relished another time, I only now listened to without interest, or heard without understanding.