“The devil a bit of that I could do at all,” cried he, impatiently. “If I can't make the game off the balls,” said he, taking a metaphor from his billiard experiences, “I 'm good for nothing. But will she come round? Do you think she'll change?”
“No; I 'm afraid not,” said she, shaking her head. “Faix! she might do worse,” said he, resolutely. “Do you know that she might do worse? If the mortgages was off, O'Shea-Ville is seventeen hundred a year; and, for family, we beat the county.”
“I 've no doubt of it,” replied she, calmly. “There was ancestors of mine hanged by Henry the Second, and one was strangled in prison two reigns before,” said he, proudly. “The O'Sheas was shedding their blood for Ireland eight centuries ago! Did you ever hear of Mortagh Dhub O'Shea?”
“Never!” said she, mournfully.
“There it is,” sighed he, drearily; “mushrooms is bigger, nowadays, than oak-trees.” And with this dreary reflection he arose and took his hat.
“Won't you dine here? I'm sure they expect you to stop for dinner,” said she; but whether a certain devilry in her laughing eye made the speech seem insincere, or that his own distrust prompted it, he said,—
“No, I 'll not stop; I could n't eat a bit if I did.”
“Come, come, you mustn't take it to heart in this way,” said she, coaxingly.
“Do you think you could do anything for me?” said he, taking her hand in his; “for, to tell truth, it's my pride is hurt. As we say in the House of Commons, now that my name is on the Bill, I 'd like to carry it through. You understand that feeling?”
“Perhaps I do,” said she, doubtfully, while, throwing herself into a chair, she leaned back, so as to display a little more than was absolutely and indispensably necessary of a beautifully rounded ankle and instep. Mr. O'Shea saw it, and marked it. There was no denying she was pretty,—pretty, too, in those feminine and delicate graces which have special attractions for men somewhat hackneyed in life, and a “little shoulder-sore with the collar” of the world. As the Member gazed at the silky curls of her rich auburn hair, the long fringes that shadowed her fair cheeks, and the graceful lines of her beautiful figure, he gave a sigh,—one of those a man inadvertently heaves when contemplating some rare object in a shop-window, which his means forbid him to purchase. It was only as he heaved a second and far deeper one, that she looked up, and with an arch drollery of expression all her own, said, as if answering him, “Yes, you are quite right; but you know you could n't afford it.”