‘Isn’t this fine news the morning has brought us, Miss Betty!’ cried he, as he entered the room with a haggard look, and hands clasped before him. ‘Did you ever dream there was such disgrace in store for us?’
‘This marriage, you mean,’ said the old lady dryly.
‘Of course I do—if you call it a marriage at all.’
‘I do call it a marriage—here’s Father Tierney’s certificate, a copy made in his own handwriting: “Daniel Donogan, M.P., of Killamoyle and Innismul, County Kilkenny, to Virginia Kostalergi, of no place in particular, daughter of Prince Kostalergi, of the same localities, contracted in holy matrimony this morning at six o’clock, and witnessed likewise by Morris McCabe, vestry clerk—Mary Kestinogue, her mark.” Do you want more than that?’
‘Do I want more? Do I want a respectable wedding? Do I want a decent man—a gentleman—a man fit to maintain her? Is this the way she ought to have behaved? Is this what we thought of her?’
‘It is not, Mat Kearney—you say truth. I never believed so well of her till now. I never believed before that she had anything in her head but to catch one of those English puppies, with their soft voices and their sneers about Ireland. I never saw her that she wasn’t trying to flatter them, and to please them, and to sing them down, as she called it herself—the very name fit for it! And that she had the high heart to take a man not only poor, but with a rope round his neck, shows me how I wronged her. I could give her five thousand this morning to make her a dowry, and to prove how I honour her.’
‘Can any one tell who he is? What do we know of him?’
‘All Ireland knows of him; and, after all, Mat Kearney, she has only done what her mother did before her.’
‘Poor Matty!’ said Kearney, as he drew his hand across his eyes.
‘Ay, ay! Poor Matty, if you like; but Matty was a beauty run to seed, and, like the rest of them, she married the first good-looking vagabond she saw. Now, this girl was in the very height and bloom of her beauty, and she took a fellow for other qualities than his whiskers or his legs. They tell me he isn’t even well-looking—so that I have hopes of her.’