CHAPTER XXXIV. ROLAND “HEARS SOMETHING TO HIS ADVANTAGE.”
Ay, sir, I saw him 'hind the arras.
Sir Gavin.
Cashel would have devoted more attention to the tasteful arrangement of the drawing-room into which they were ushered, if he had not been struck with the handsome and graceful form of a young girl, who from time to time passed before his eyes in an inner chamber, engaged in the office of preparing breakfast, and whom he at once recognized as the granddaughter of whom Linton wrote.
“We were talking of poor Ireland,” said Tiernay, “and all her sorrows.”
“I'll engage you were,” cried Corrigan, laughing, “and I 'll swear you did not make a mournful topic a whit less gloomy by your way of treating it—And that's what he calls entertaining a stranger, sir,—like a bankrupt merchant amusing a party by a sight of his schedule. Now, I 'll wager a trifle my young friend would rather hear where a brace of cocks was to be found, or the sight of a neat grass country to ride over after the fox-hounds,—and I can do both one and the other. But here comes Mary,—my granddaughter, Miss Leicester, sir.”
Mary saluted the stranger with an easy gracefulness, and she shook the doctor's hand cordially.
“You are a little late, doctor,” said she, as she led the way into the breakfast-room.
“That was in part owing to that rogue Keane, who has taken to locking the gate of the avenue, by way of seeming regular, and some one else has done the same with the wicket here. Now, as for fifty years back all the cows of the country have strayed through the one, and all the beggars through the other, I don't know what 's to come of it.”
“I suppose the great house is filling?” said Mary, to withdraw him from a grumbling theme; “we heard the noise of several arrivals this morning early.”
“This gentleman can inform you best upon all that,” said Tiernay; “he himself is one of the company.”